I like occasionally having a cell-phone on my wrist sometimes, and sometimes I'm fine with a simple bluetooth only product on my wrist. I own a couple of older "no-name" models, so I appreciate the nice general overview link as I'm always looking for new products, but there is a glaring oversight that I have run into over and over when regarding these devices:
Size and weight.
Let's face it. These devices are designed to go on a body-part, of which, everyone has a slightly different size and comfort zone. I have dated women that seemed perfectly comfortable with a gigantic, heavy watch but had the wrists of a bird. I have friends that are built like NFL linemen and hate anything but the smallest of watches.
I myself, for example, do not mind a device's width (measured horizontally from wrist to elbow) and cannot do not like too much height (measured perpendicular from wrist to elbow)... but absolutely HATE devices that are too thick (measured from skin contact from the bottom-most surface of the device to the very top of the user interface).
I once had a device at over 15mm of thickness that, although an otherwise useful piece of kit, drove me nuts and eventually was destroyed by hitting the face on the exterior of a doorknob. Yeah... I was pissed.
Anyways, it would be nice to see real measurements of (regardless of my personal nomenclature above!) length, width, and height. I have seen enough device makers cheat on the all important thickness measurement - iNew, I'm looking at you - to make me wary. Wearable device makers, in particular, cheat by giving measurements and weight of devices WITHOUT including the battery.
Distributors, some of which are here on chinaphonearena.com, do not even bother including any of these measurements. Disappointingly, some will include measurements of the bands length and ignore other measurements.
All of this is unfortunate because many simply will not buy because they do not even have the basic information to start with. Personally, I will not buy on a guess. Apple and Samsung will always have an advantage simply because you can try them on, so for the China companies, it is even more important to imagine what they would be like when wearing them.
You make some fine points, @edcoolio .
Your review on how to review a smartwatch will influence my review when I get mine. I too am somewhat skeptical that I'll continue using it if it isn't ergonomically efficient. My secondary concern is battery life on both the watch and the phone. We shall see.
Strictly from a design and ergonomics standpoint, the No. 1 G2 in the review above looks pretty sweet. Unfortunately, I'm just too cheap to spend $80ish on a watch right now. Especially because I don't know if I'll actually use it.
Another booming market is smart wearable devices. These gadgets range from fitness trackers to the more powerful devices, some of … Continue reading 2014 Smartwatch Review