Fossil/Palm PDA Watch Reviewed

SLiK812 writes "Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good review of Palm's and Fossil's new wrist PDA. We all knew some time ago that this was coming out, and was initially covered last November and briefly last month. This is the first review I've seen, and Mossberg does bring up some interesting points, both good and bad. Definitely worth the read before buying it."

Comments

Battery

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Assuming I would want to wear an ugly huge watch (that's a personal opinion of couse) that's called "Fossil" and is MSN-enabled (uuh), I have a problem with such small devices that have an internal battery.

From the specs page :

POWER REQUIREMENTS : AC power adapter (100V-240V), DC output (4V-9V), Lithium-ion rechargeable battery (internal).

BATTERY LIFE : 4-5 days (based on average use of 30 minutes per day with no backlight or IR)

Right, so in real life, if I was to use the thing normally, with backlight at night and syncing with my desktop with IR, I'd say I'd probably have to charge it up every 2 or 3 days. Given that a real-life Li-Ion batteries have a typical life of 300 recharge cycles (yes, you can get more out of them, but you have to be *very* careful when you charge and for how long, which isn't always practical in a consumer device), especially since it's probably a super-small fragile battery, that means the battery will have to be changed after 2.5 years of use at most.

Do I want to see the face of the watch repairman when I bring him the Fossil for a battery change? Do I want to see the bill when I have to send the watch back to Fossil for a battery replacement? No.

So, no PDA watch for me. Nosiree ...