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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3685 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wearable tech needs to find a genre-defining product | Digital Trends

I don't think so. Wristwatches are smaller and more convenient than pocketwatches. Smartphones are bigger and more involved than dumb phones. More than that, smartphones are defined by feature creep - my first smartphone had a 240x320 screen and one camera. My current smartphone is 1080p, has two cameras (one of them shoots 14MP or 4k video at 120hz - it has better still resolution than my Canon 5D and better video resolution than my friend's RED MX), stereo speakers, a GPS antenna, bluetooth, a compass, a gyroscope and wonders I don't even know how to use.

Wearables are supposed to be less complex, smaller and more convenient than our phones. The analogy is inverted.





aerowid  ·  3684 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why should wearables be less complex? Sure, what on the market now is, but I see no reason wearable systems couldn't be more complex than smartphones and more convenient

kleinbl00  ·  3684 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wearables are necessarily less complex. If it's strapped to your body somehow, it's less convenient to manipulate. an Iphone 6 plus on an armband isn't a wearable, it's a phablet you've anchored to your bicep. A Nexus 6 on your wrist is a Nexus 6 you can only use one hand on.

Complexity requires dexterity. Wearables are less dextrous than non-wearables. Pocket watches had latching covers to protect their watch glass because opening a watch glass cover was a natural, easy motion when the pocket watch was in your palm. Wristwatches don't because it's cumbersome and inconvenient, even though wristwatches actually need more protection than pocket watches.

bioemerl  ·  3684 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wearables need to

A) look good. Phones aren't something you wear.

B) overcome the stigma against wearing a large screen.

C) last long enough to not be annoying or go dead midway through the day.

D) work in bright sunlight, survive harsh environments, etc.

I honestly don't see watches replacing phones. Not now, not ever. They will become a very good tool to help use of phones, but I can't see it going further than that. It will become a "Tracker" that you can see and monitor your day and life through, where the phone is a "portal" to the internet and to other people.