Slashdot Mirror
Real PDA Wristwatch
Larry Groebe writes "Just before COMDEX, Fossil announced a new PDA in a wristwatch. Based on the Palm OS, this is nothing less than a complete Palm Pilot on your wrist. See here for features and a picture.
This is completely UNLIKE Fossil's *first* attempt at a wrist PDA, which was a hopeless view-only gadget. This new model allows regular Graffiti input and appears to run all Palm programs! At $149, I may be the first in line when it comes out next spring."
I thought the Google headline was a little deceiving...
"Fossil unveils wrist-worn Palm OS PDA"
It made me think of Back to the Future and all of the time travel Star Trek episodes!
Sounds tempting... but I prefer to not have a palm device. Not having one gives me an excuse for forgetting appointments and such
Cool. This brings to mind the Linux watch IBM made some time ago. Does anyone know what's become of that? Is it still in development or was it just a showpiece?
-- Cheers!
I don't even use a PDA, but looking at that picture, it strikes me that maybe this thing is *too* small. How can you input anything? You'd better be good with a stylus...
--Gaz
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
Get me one of these that is Zaurus-like (based on linux) and is also a cell-phone and also has voice-recognition software that works (who wants to tap a stylus on a tiny little watch face??) and THEN I'll really be excited...
BWCarver
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
I wonder if Fossil's website is powered by one of their watches?
Platform independent bug tracking software
I was the dorky guy in your school who had the calculator wristwatch.
Should I try that again with this thing? After the beatings and the finger pointing? I think not!
While it looks cool and all, it may have hit the market be too late. Cell phones and PDA look to be heading for convergence and almost everyone I know carries a cell phone. Does my watch with its much smaller screen really need to be a (Palm) PDA too? Isn't that why its called a "Palm" and "PocketPC" device?
The day you realize Anonymous Coward isn't the name of a really prolific user, then its time to create your own
They've got more news on the new watch, as well as some nice pictures.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
and like all the other pda/pc watches it's missing one crucial feature...
WATERPROOF!
Why cant they throw in that small and desperately needed thing? It must be waterproof... so I can wear it swimming,snorkling,in the shower... how about just in the shower/tub without fear of it getting killed?
why cant they do that?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They decided to go with Palm OS because there was no way they could fit Windows CE's EULA into something that small.
RMN
~~~
And type quickly before the batteries run out :)
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Yes, because your current Palm OS device is a massive, unruly behemoth of a machine, right? I thought we were all in agreement that the wearable, smaller and smaller computing equipment was a weird and dying trend. Hell, I think the screen on my Visor is too small, now it's a watch?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Pocket PC? All I need is another thing to be able to BSOD on me... Chick: What time is it? Me: It's *bsod* 4B:1A5EDB1
Would anyone seriously use the dinky little stylus that's part of the band? Talk about an ergonomic nightmare (and a choking hazard). Why not just include a selectable-point pen with every watch, that will let you switch between blue/black/red ink and a stylus? That seems to make much more sense from an actual functionality standpoint than that tiny stylus, letting you use the PDA concurrently and seamlessly with more traditional dead-tree technology.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
There are some inherent problems with this solution. Screen size is an issue, ie. is there even enough space to display a full name on one line? How about their address and phone number?
...)
Also, you had better hope there's a smart keylock implemented so you aren't walking around erasing all of your files without realizing it (damn, sure is crowded on these New York subways
In the long run, we're all dead.
Ssh, don't be logical! You are ignoring the infamous Inverse Law of Computer Size.. that is, the smaller a computer is, the more you are supposed to mindlessly want one.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Never went in for calculators on my hips or wrists - this seems like the logical extension of that sort of geekwear. Not the kind of fashion statement I want to make.
Plus - it's sooooo tiny, don't think I could read it anyways.
Next!
I change the batteries enough in my Handspring. I can only imagine how hard it's gonna be to pry the back off of the watch let alone trying to switch out the small watch batteries.
If they do have 160x160, those icons look awfully big. If they don't have it, lots of apps will break. Guess we'll have to wait and see what the specs really say...
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
When can I have my Dick Tracy phone-watch?
It's only been, what, 60 years since everyone has been waiting for it. We finally get something, and all it can do is graffiti? Sigh, the pace of evolution is slowing to a crawl...
It's underpowered, sure, but the 68k architecture has been around long enough that, by now, it's a straightforward proposition to manufacture cores at low cost. Device makers are still trying to figure out how to put together ARM devices that land in impulse-buy territory, but Fossil can pack a totally functional 68k PDA into a $150 wristwatch. Nifty.
This is definately neat, but I would much rather get this Palm Product for the same price as the watch, but with four times as much memory.
Be able to have my watch not run out of batteries after an hour like it would running one of those. Also, do you think you could fit PocketWindows on a 2MB device? That thing is horribly bloated by comparison to PalmOS.
This is exactly what I'm looking for, or at least it could be: a step up from my Timex Ironman Datalink. Now if they just get rid of the touchscreen, make it interface with the PC the same way as my watch, make it have night light, and 100M water resistant, ti'll be perfect.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Of course, I could be high.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Can sharks wear this laser watch?
At $149, I may be the first in line when it comes out next spring.
I'll bet you will.
And what's with the two hour battery life?
Otherwise, very very cool.
Dr. Parsons spent an extraordinary amount of time getting the hardware for the laser small enough to fit on a wristwatch, and powerful enough despite the small batteries.
The effort was called "The Alan Parsons Project"
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Fossil is a hugely popular brand (they even have Fossil stores in airports!) and with the low margins on watches, they might be looking for a new market. I mean, right now, any Taiwanese sweatshop can put together a POS digital watch, hell, some kid in his garage could do that.
Remember when watches only had an hour and a minute hand? And then all of a sudden, they had a second hand, and now the date, several time zones, "chrono" mode and other stuff.
The PDA is the next step in complexity and "needed" features for a wristwatch. If Fossil were to come out with its own Palmtop OS, or maybe even take Opie or something, they could ink a deal with a few fortune 500 companies just with the force of their name.
And what happens at "What's up Wednesday" when your technology-fetishizing boss passes out a gaggle of huge PDA-watches to all the gals in accounting? I think you may have to start firing up the copy machine to print out resumes!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
It does have the regular screen, but they modified the default apps to have bigger icons. Even so, it would have about .2 mm pixels; way to small to be useful. With even the .5 mm mechanical pencils you would end up always hitting multiple pixels on the digitizer.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Nah, we don't need no stinking high powered lasers on our wrist watches, just a nice Green one.
Like slashdotters aren't already having enough trouble getting a date without wearing one of these goofy things.
At least it doesn't have an antenna...
What's not to be worried about? Everything!
The stylus, hidden in the band, is confused by most airport guards as a prison shank.
No, Pocket PC OS has way too much overhead for such a small device. Do you really need a TCP/IP API and multitasking in a watch??? Probably not. Besides, the technology isn't their yet and it would probably require too much power to run.
This is not the first wrist-pda made by fossil, just the first Palm based one.
They've been advertising their products as something that could interface with a PDA. In other words, they expect you to already have a PDA when you use it. The process of inputting data into it is something like this:
1) Buy a PDA
2) Put your data on your PDA
3) Beam your data from your PDA to your fossil.
I don't really like that too much. What's the point of the middle man? I want a pda for two reason, and two only:
1) Addressbook
2) Expenses data entry (not NEARLY as important).
I need to be able to get data to my PC and from my PC, and I don't need another PDA. And for what I need, I don't need a touch screen, really. I'd rather have a more rugged watch than a touch screen.
I expect that I am not alone in this assessment. I wonder when fossil will get the idea; reviewers have been talking about the serious shortcoming in their product (that they can't interface directly with PCs) for quite some time.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
...is how long it would take me to lose that itty-bitty stylus that comes with the wristband!
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
A palm on the back of your wrist! You know what's next. We'll be eating with our butts and walking on our hands.
Best Windows Freeware
This looks like a great entry into the stagnating pda field. However, can really stand the abuse associated with everyday life? First, I probably slam my wrist into some object or another about once every two weeks or so. This used to destroy cheaper watches until my wife bought me a near-indestructable watch (ESQ for anyone who cares). When I think about the fragile touch-screen on my Handera and my old Workpad (both palmOS devices), I wonder how Fossil manages to get a touch-screen that won't get smashed the first time I bump into something when working under my car.
Second, you've gotta wonder about battery life on an item that small. A closely-related third concerns accessories -- If they came out with one of these that could take an MMC card, supported bluetooth, or had any other fancy doodads, the battery life would be pretty abysmal. Then again, I'd nab one of these if it had any sort of expansion or networking capability. The notion of hotsyncing over bluetooth while in a charger stand next to my bed is very cool AND useful. And musing about the possibilities for corporate espionage with a SDIO 802.11 card in your watch strike me as the ultimate anti-Dick-Tracy chic.
I guess I will be first in line... for the second release.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
This is why Palm PDAs are still better for most people, than the Wince and Linux ones: changing the batteries every two months in a $100 m105 is way more convenient than having to charge it every single night.
4 days is still too short, though. I'll pass.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
WARNING: Using this product to view pr0n on your wrist can cause eyestrain and motion sickness.
I tend to like my watch to keep time for more than 4 days before switching the battery out. If you have to replace the battery every 4 days and a battery costs $.50 US, it will cost you ~$45 a year to keep it running. No thanks! My Ericsson T68m has a PDA and clock with the side benefit of letting me call anyone, anywhere in America plus its not much bigger than this clunker of a watch.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
In addition, I was on a train from Paddington Station in London, England this week, and got to see an actual 3G phone working. An employee was testing it (yes, there is a nearly complete 3G network in the UK). The phone was from a Japanese manufacturer, had twin cameras and a very high quality feel. But what blew me away, and this will mean the death of ALL OTHER phones the moment this puppy is launched in the UK in a few months is the fact that it has a PIP (Picture In Picture) feature thanks to the two cameras. The other person sees your face in a window in front of the view you can see, or the other way around. The video quality was at least 10 fps, and the killer app will be shopping. "Dahling, is this the wine you wanted me to get?" And of course, there will be the drunk twit who forgets he has a videophone and while at the bar with a cute chic in view calls his wife to say he will be home late because he's working late at the office. (What he meant to say was orifice.)
(All the above is true. I am not revealing my sources, but within 3 months, everything is going to change. Goodbye privacy. Everyone will be in view of someone's video phone at some point every week. Get out the lipstick baby!)
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Now you can cheat at your exam by storing hard to remember formula, historical events, famous quotes, etc, in the palm enabled watch. When no one is watching, you could browse the information at your own pace. When your teacher is walking nearby, press a couple of the button, it becomes an ordinary watch again. Also, use the IR to beam back and forth for networked cheating. (Assuming your next chair neighbour also has this watch) It is the student's ultimate learning tool :-)
Just image in a beowulf cluster of these! It'd fit on your arm and have enough power to emualate a REAL PDA at about 1/10th speed! Of course, it'd be cool to put five on and get super-micro-wide-screen.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Anyone remember the RUnning comPUTER?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
It's so small it will take me forever to scroll over when I want to look up Paulina Porizkova's phone number!
Shouldn't they call this a wrist pilot?
-Chris
Frankly, I can't imagine using such a thing. PDA's are tough enough at that size, but a watch? The huge sacrifices in usability are certainly not worth the tiny size. Also, it's going to take a tremendous amount of abuse on your wrist, as opposed to a PDA hiding safely in a breast pocket most of the time.
This is, IMO, a perfect example of a gee-whiz product that has minimal practically for all but the most determined gadget freak.
Let's face it, CPU/Memory are no longer the major limiting factors in PDA design. The real issue is(or should be) how to interact with the damn thing in a convenient and rapid manner using our clumsy fingers. A PDA watch is a step in the wrong direction.
I'll be watching carefully to see how much longer people with these things spend in the bathroom.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Doubles as a birth control device! Wear one of these puppies and watch the women cross the street to avoid you!
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Yea, according to their specs, battery life is like 4 days! The only good thing is that the batteries are Lithium-ion rechargable. They don't say how they are recharged, but according to the linked page, the watch has a USB port. So onw can assume you hook it up to your computer's USB port to recharge at night or something.
My good sig is in the laundry
> Actually, I believe no modern watch claims to be
>"waterproof", it's always "water resistant to xx meters"
Rolex Oyster Perpetual watches are designated as "waterproof": From their website: "An Officially Certified Swiss Chronometer, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual is equipped with a waterproof case, a sapphire crystal and a self-winding movement." Sorry, their site is too annoying to navigate, so I can't give an actual link.
Urban legend used to say that this was because Rolex trademarked the phrase "waterproof", so everyone else had to use "water resistant." I'm not sure if this is the case (I've never seen them stick TM at the end of the phrase in their literature), but the reason could be that Rolex watches are made a little differently than a regular watch.
Rolex Oyster watches are cast all in one piece or slug, rather than assembled from multiple pieces. As a result, when the watch is put together, it is basically sealed. The result is rather heavy -- to give you an idea, take off your shoe, attach that to your wrist, and then walk around for a while -- but they're built to last.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
According to the specs (linked from Fossil's PDA page), the battery does last only 4 days with use, but is rechargable Li-Ion.
I would just not buy this at all. I write with my left hand, and the Palm PDA is already somewhat righty-specific, but not so that it matters, just annoying. This may be odd for a lefty, but I wear my watch on my left wrist. Even the most flexible person I've met can't touch their left fingers to their left wrist, so clearly I'm not going to be doing any Graffiti with it. I would probably be able to get comfortable using my right hand on the controls, but it would take practice. I would never get comfortable with my watch on my right wrist.
Anyway, that's my lefty/righty rant for today. Discuss amonst yourselves.
I had a Fossil watch that lasted all of a year. The first battery went south after 6 months and the stainless steel finish rubbed off after 10 months. What had started out as a very nice looking, functional watch ended up being shabby and definitely not worth the $125 price tag.
We should revoke your /. membership - a true /. geek does his math in his head, not on his wrist.
paintball
Anyone remember the Timex Datalink?. It wasn't a full fledged PDA, but it was really cool back in 1996. The watch would read bars on the monitor to dowload information from the PC. It was a nice way to keep track of phone numbers and Appointments.
Or you could swap the gear guts in an old watch for the PDA guts. That'd be too cool to bust out an old brass pocket watch, pop it open, and check you appointments. For full effect you'd have to do this is a room full-o-geeks.
Most watches aren't too bad worn on the right wrist, but this one looks like it's going to be really inconvenient for lefties... :-/
Since when have Palm used 1px sized widgets?
Remember when watches only had an hour and a minute hand? And then all of a sudden, they had a second hand, and now the date, several time zones, "chrono" mode and other stuff.
Mechanical (NO electronics) watches with chronograph function have been around for decades as mass-market watches and continue to be made in the high-end watch market.
Also, the high-end watch world disdains pretty much everything that isn't 100% mechanical -- no quartz movements.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
How does this watch compare to my Palm V?
The main reason I got the Palm V was to be an alarm clock. I kept missing appointments, even though I had them written in my DayRunner(tm) diary - I just never got into the habit of checking my diary every 15 minutes.
This watch would make life a little easier for me - as slim as the Palm V is, it's still something extra to bulk up my shirt/trouser/backpack pockets with.
The biggest drawback for me would be that the watch isn't designed to be a PDA by itself. It's almost like Fossil only wanted the watch to be a fancy alarm clock with address book function. So you'd have to have the watch as well as a PDA in order to get full functionality from it (using beamed business cards for example).
But for the original purpose that I bought the Palm V - reminding me of appointments (and putting out the trash, and leaving the computer game to go to bed) - this watch is just right. I don't think I'd be willing to pony up the $AU600 though - that kind of money would get a really nice watch from Casio.
Since I already have a PalmOS device, this watch wouldn't really be much use to me. If I didn't have a PalmOS device, I'd consider buying it, if it was half the price.
Yes, but the PalmOS 5 doesn't add any user-visible features over 4.1. It *does* run ARM code, however, whereas 4.x and earlier only run Dragonball code.
... you can run the Greatest Palm Game of all: Space Trader (http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/p.spronck/picoverse/Spac eTrader/STDownload.html)
As for games
so quitcherwhinin!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Its probably going to lose its battery every week, and have to be replaced. It says in the faq that all data is stored in flash, and the only thing that will have to be reset is the time...
I don't know about you, but I think it would be worth it to have a cheap backup battery inside the watch to keep the time when the watch loses main power. You know, to make it actually function well as a watch.
We keep duplicating desktop User Interface (UI) metaphor to mobile device, i.e., copy GUI, web stuffs to PDA, cellular phone and now, watch. Come on, it wouldn't work well. We need an innovative UI for mobile device. I don't know what it will be. But I do know it wouldn't be GUI stuff. Probably audio based UI.
Lovely piece of fantasy, give it a score of 2 for originality..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I got the Fossil watch a few months ago and it was $149. To bad I didn't wait. Heh, doesn't matter really... I lost my Handspring Visor Delux on Saturday so I need a new PDA now.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Figures. I gave an email address to the developers
link on the fossil site, hoping to get some insight
on writing apps for the thing. Within an hour I
got an email from fossil.com welcoming me to
their "Fossil Collector's Club" , trying to sell
me watches. Screw them and their worthless
little trinkets.
If you look carefully, you'll see that this is a FAQ for the currently existing Wrist PDA, as it mentions problems that have occurred since the device's inception (look at the title of the FAQ). This is not a FAQ for the new watch.
The only thing available for the new watch are specs , data, and a really, really bad flash demo.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I bought a Timex Data Link, that reads the phone numbers, birthdays, and more from the database you type into the computer. It uses a barcode reader, but the program doesn't work on a Pentium II unless I slow it down.
The battery lasted for 3 years as promised, and I'm only on my second battery now. I would highly recommend this watch to anyone who doesn't want to carry around a wallet full of membership numbers, and such. Great phonebook too.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Mine has a circular slide rule. Not as visually offensive as the casio calculator, but even more geeky (plus, it takes square roots, which I don't believe the casio did).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Anyone notice that the Fossile press release list "Rocker" as a registered trademark?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
BREITLING has accomplished a new technical feat with the launch of the AVENGER SEAWOLF a professional diver's watch that is water-resistant to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters)
And yes, they say "water resistant".
It seems to imply that helium is forced into the case at great depths, which they evacuate through a safety valve. Helium is an extremely agile molecule, so it makes sense that it would creep in through the best of seals, but I was not aware that there was any appreciable amount of helium dissolved in sea water. Hmm.
The second hit in the search seemed to be about robustly water-resistant makeup that can withstand facial expressions being projected over a thousand feet...I believe they're talking about some theater thing, not diving, though, unless diving has changed really radically since I last went! :-)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
You know, all those palm functions would be nice, but what I really want from a thing I wear on my wrist is the ability to know at a glance what time it is. If this thing tells you about all your meetings at 11:30, 2 and 4 without telling you what time is now, I'll laugh. An ordinary watch is still a pretty good personal organizer if you ask me.
a Beowulf cluster of those!
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
My Timex Beepwear PRO is 1/2 thick. You'll also find a lot of "G-Shock" like watches sold these days to be just as thick.
They never seemed too cumbersome to me.
A PDA watch at 1/2" thick is probably a good size for a first design. I'd expected it would have been thicker to start.
At last, I can play SimCity Classic on my wristwatch!
Now, my life is complete and I can die happily.