Nine Things Smartwatches Need To Succeed
Apple, Samsung and Google are all rumored to be working on smartwatches. With all the buzz about these devices, it's hard to see the real use cases through the hype. Here are nine things we think any smartwatch worth its salt (and silicon) needs.
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Apple, Samsung and Google are all rumored to be working on smartwatches. With all the buzz about these devices, it's hard to see the real use cases through all the hype. Here's nine things we think any smartwatch worth its salt (and silicon) needs:
1. There should be more than a consumer use case for them.
It wouldn't hurt — and it would almost certainly help — for our future lineups of smart watches to provide things that are valuable in an enterprise setting. Add NFC (which would be trivially easy at this point) and you have a two-factor authentication system. Ditto an edge-mounted fingerprint reader: Imagine being able to log into any computer by swiping your thumb along the side of the watch.
The poster child for smartwatches now is the Android-based Pebble E-Paper Watch, which looks promising. It mostly takes the "mini smartphone" angle. The Pebble SDK just recently became available.
2. They have to be used by people who don't wear watches, or who are going to do more with them than go jogging.
Most smartwatches up to this point have been either gimmick-gadgets (see the next point below) or glorified health monitors. There's nothing wrong with having a smartwatch serve as a sports band — and odds are that functionality will be included by default — but that can't be the only selling point.
Photo credit to puuikibeach on Flickr
3. They have to avoid the mistakes of history.
Too many of the smartwatches sold up to this point have been overpriced, ugly, clunky, with poor battery life (see below) and an indiscriminate package of functionality — essentially glorified proof-of-concept devices. A smartwatch that sports a major brand name can't be redolent of something that was funded through Kickstarter. (No offense to the Kickstarter projects out there.)
4. They can't be too heavy.
The size of the watch, on the other hand, is another issue. Large, flat watches have worked as a fashion accessory for some time now. In fact, a flat display that covers a fair part of the forearm might well be quite useful given that...
Photo credit to Dr Stephen Dann on Flickr
5. They have to sport functionality that is actually worthwhile in such a form factor.
Most of the head-scratching about what smartwatches could do revolves around how the size of the display and the general level of minimalism for the whole device constrains the kinds of interactions you can have with it. We're used to what can be done with a smartphone display a few inches across, but a smartwatch's smaller and inherently less functional display is going to be a designer's — and engineer's — challenge to make useful. Good luck.
Photo credit to nateOne on Flickr
6. They have to be something both sexes will use.
Watches are fashion statements for both men and women, and a well-designed one can be complementary to either of them. Again, the iPhone: its straightforward design lent itself to being a unisex fashion statement, and it could be customized as needed with a case. In a watch's case, you could swap in a different wristband or shroud.
Photo credit to Janitors on Flickr
7. They have to be able to support a full day's use on a single charge, and charge conveniently.
Digital watches could go for months, sometimes years on end with a single battery. Today's cell phones barely make it through the day without keeling over. A smartwatch can't afford to have as bad a track record with power consumption, lest people feel they now have two things that can die on them instead of just one.
And as far as charging goes, here's yet another no-brainer use case for wireless charging. Instead of fumbling with a watch and a really tiny connection port covered by some flimsy rubber plug, why not just take the watch off, dump it on a charging mat next to one's desk or bed, and forget about it?
Photo credit to Vishay Intertechnology on Flickr
8. They can't cost more than $99.
If smartwatches are going to be an accessory rather than a central device, they can't cost more than what people would pay for an accessory — e.g., a high-end headset or a Bluetooth keyboard. Ninety-nine dollars is about the upper limit for such a thing. Charge more than that and you're asking people to buy something that must also work as a standalone device.
Photo credit to conxa.roda on Flickr
9. They have to be as device- and service-neutral as possible.
If watches are auxiliary devices, they need to work with as broad a range of things as possible. Apple might be able to get away with introducing something that only works with iOS, but a company like Samsung would have a harder time expecting people to live with such lock-in.
9. They have to be as device- and service-neutral as possible.
If watches are auxiliary devices, they need to work with as broad a range of things as possible. Apple might be able to get away with introducing something that only works with iOS, but a company like Samsung would have a harder time expecting people to live with such lock-in.
Apple, Samsung and Google are all rumored to be working on smartwatches. With all the buzz about these devices, it's hard to see the real use cases through all the hype. Here's nine things we think any smartwatch worth its salt (and silicon) needs:
1. There should be more than a consumer use case for them.
It wouldn't hurt — and it would almost certainly help — for our future lineups of smart watches to provide things that are valuable in an enterprise setting. Add NFC (which would be trivially easy at this point) and you have a two-factor authentication system. Ditto an edge-mounted fingerprint reader: Imagine being able to log into any computer by swiping your thumb along the side of the watch.
The poster child for smartwatches now is the Android-based Pebble E-Paper Watch, which looks promising. It mostly takes the "mini smartphone" angle. The Pebble SDK just recently became available.
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