Hybrid smart watch ...with mechanical movement

peasant

cool or what?

Eoin

That is pretty cool - and starting at $499, which isn't too bad at all. I'd be far more likely to get a smartwatch like that, if only I could think how I'd use it.

Edit: 499 if you pre-order. 1,000 after that by the looks of things.

Wibbs

Still cheap though considering the tech involved and especially considering the price of high street name mechanicals.

unkel

Amazing!

They also offer a service for $99 which includes replacement / upgrade of all electrical components incl. battery and a service of the mechanical parts. Which seems a very good deal

Unfortunately the cheapest version with the Swiss movement is $989 pre-order with delivery from March 2015

There's not much of a speculator in me, but if there was, I'd pre-order the base $499 version with the Miyota movement (shipping late this year). Surely you will make money flipping that

Eoin

There's a bit of small print on the website saying that the images are renders, size and design might vary, that the overlay will have a different % of opacity and to look at the teeeeeeny photos later on to see what it really looks like. So I wonder how close to production they are.

This might sound like heresy, but perhaps a quartz movement may have been an option to keep the price down, presumably the height too - and make it more appealing to the people who'd buy the likes of an upmarket digital / ana-digi with lots of features.

Still - it's really interesting.

Homer

Eoin wrote: »

This might sound like heresy, but perhaps a quartz movement....

:P

hi5

I don't see the point of it? It's a mechanical watch strapped on to an I watch, the two are not connected in any way.
Now, if they used a generator driven from the rotor as with a kinetic type movement to charge the I watch, then they might be on to something.

Wibbs

Eoin wrote: »

This might sound like heresy, but perhaps a quartz movement may have been an option to keep the price down, presumably the height too.

Well it wouldn't be heresy to me E. Seems like we're both satanists.

I'm with hi5 on this too. Its's trying to mate what marketing has made the "luxury" item, the mechanical watch with the new tech. For me I don't see its reason to be.

Aaaactually on the whole quartz thing and as a rambling, it's Sat night and I have no life riff...

Basically a quartz watch is a tuning fork movement. It even looks like one.

Where the shaped quartz crystal resonates at a much higher frequency than in say a Bulova tuning fork and this is translated into moving the hands by a stepping motor(digitals aside for the mo). The old girard perregaux design from the early 70's. Me and CB rocking them as we speak. Though his is cooler. The bastard. I'm not jealous I swear. Well... .

Now it seems to me, while both the cheaper placcy 10 dollar movement end and the higher thermocompensated, matched crystals end of quartz have improved, they haven't improved by much. Indeed one could argue they've stagnated. The aforementioned girard perregaux layout of just over forty years ago is still the template. In fact other than the lack of some thermocompensation, I would strongly argue it's a "better" movement than 90+% of quartz movements that followed and are around today. It doesn't need oiling of 19th century origin jewels for a start and it can be regulated by a trimmer. It's all very like the basic car engine. Your brand new Merc engine has some extra bells and whistles but it's the exact same design as a 1940's Merc engine.

OK so what could be changed? The use of quartz itself for a start. Surely there is another material that can be vibrated at a higher frequency and more stably and more accurately? Silicon, diamond, ruby? Hell forget that, keep quartz and run it at a much higher frequency. Just like Omega's early quartz jobs that ran at megahertz rather than kilohertz and were scarily accurate. The problem there was battery tech. They chewed through batteries like a fat lad goes through bacon(actually any lad for that matter). Battery tech has come on in leaps and bounds but the majority of quartz' are running old tech button batteries.

So if I was building a "smart" watch, I'd reimagine the quartz movement and improve it. Run it at gigahertz(if possible), run stabilising hardware and software, run teflon or ceramic bearings in metal or ceramic main plates, make it powered by wrist movement and have that power keep the memory in the smart section supported between any main charges for the smart end. And/or have the ability to wind it to power it, like those windup radios. I'd buy that alright. It would be moving the tech along rather than stagnating it.

Why would I aim for such standalone accuracy when the interweb wireless or radio signal could do that for me for much less money? Basically there is a lot to be said IMHO for a standalone timepiece that is that reliable and accurate with no outside help. I had a Junghans radio controlled quartz years ago and internally it could lose a few seconds a day and then run to mammy to reset itself. Lazy I say.

Eoin

hi5 wrote: »

I don't see the point of it? It's a mechanical watch strapped on to an I watch, the two are not connected in any way.

I think it's the opposite. It's a mechanical watch with the smart stuff as an added feature; rather than a wrist based computer with a clock, like the other smart watches. To me, it's more like the classic ana-digi watches.

Zagato

hi5 wrote: »

I don't see the point of it? It's a mechanical watch strapped on to an I watch, the two are not connected in any way.
Now, if they used a generator driven from the rotor as with a kinetic type movement to charge the I watch, then they might be on to something.

In 2011 Ulysse-Nardin launched a phone with a rotor and crown which I presume helped charge the battery.


Linky

Eoin

If people thought the watch was pointless, then check out this new contraption. It adds a big buckle to your watch strap which vibrates if you get a call/SMS/appointment reminder or whatever. There's no visual notification, it just vibrates.

So if you're in the presumably non-existent segment of people who have an android phone with no vibrate feature, or need to know exactly when to pick up your phone to see the notification (that you don't know what it's about, remember), then this could just be for you.

I'm keeping an open mind about how wearable tech will tie in with watches, but this is just a solution desperately seeking a problem to solve.

Mredsnapper

..a solution for those who treat tech like candy.

Eoin

Mredsnapper wrote: »

..a solution for those who treat tech like candy.

That's not entirely fair - candy has its uses.