Can you imagine that everything you need is combined in one device? Phone, watch, camera. The “Flex Smartwatch” concept shows our very likely future.
Wearable devices
At CES 2016, alongside the Mate 8 smartphone, Huawei unveiled the Swarovski crystal-encrusted Jewel and Elegant smartwatches designed for women. Until now, smartwatches have been more of a male accessory or rather a toy, but that is changing now. The watches complement the collection of Classic, Active and Elite smartwatches launched by Huawei last year.
With the prestigious Swiss Alp wristwatch, the H. Moser & Cie brand did exactly the opposite of the current trend among wristwatch providers. Instead of (re)creating a classic wristwatch and embedding a digital heart in it, they did the opposite. The Swiss Alp wristwatch was inspired by modern smart watch designs (so much so that they are likely to be sued by Apple), but it is a purely mechanical wristwatch.
Are smart watches "meteors" for classic wristwatches? Although classic wristwatches will not become fossils so quickly, even traditional watch providers do not want to leave anything to chance or technological evolution and the law of "stronger". Who will win in the end, whether smart or classic watches, or whether they will co-exist, is still hard to say, but the fact is that watch providers who have been with us in the past will have to adapt to modern needs. TAG Heuer has already done this, followed by Movado, and now the Fossil brand has expanded its "vehicle fleet" with a line of smart watches, whose first representative is the Q Founder.
The jump from a classic to a smart wristwatch can be painful, which is why many people don't opt for it. Most smart watches are far from reaching the elegance of classic wristwatches. You can already see from Mars that you are carrying a computer. Well, a few examples can at least partly disprove us, but even these examples will not convince the most ardent fans of the classics. But they will be convinced by Chronos, a technological attachment in the form of a button battery that hides inconspicuously under the case and turns a classic wristwatch into a smart watch.
Are smartwatches the future or a fad? The balance is leaning towards the first option, as traditional watch providers are also entering the smart watch market. One of the first is the Swiss watch giant TAG Heuer, which together with Google and Intel presented its first TAG Heuer Connected smartwatch. At first glance, this is a mirror image of the TAG Heuer Carrera wristwatch, but in reality it is a powerful computer. And if the CEO of TAG Heuer says that traditional mechanical watches are a thing of the past because they have no added value for younger users, smart watches are here to stay.
Chinese Huawei, Chinese Vogue and the famous designer Barnaba Fornasetti have prepared a special edition of a smart watch, which is a "sticker" of art, smart technology and design, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Chinese version of the aforementioned magazine. The dial of the watch is decorated with Fornasetti's motif "Tema e Variazioni", countless variations of the face of Lina Cavalieri, while at the same time the watch offers connectivity anywhere, notification of calls, messages and e-mails.
Pebble, which nearly took down Kickstarter half a year ago after setting a new record for the crowdfunding portal by raising $1 million in just 30 minutes, is now presenting its first round watch. Although he seems to have no problem convincing customers, now he is also targeting skeptics (read nostalgics) who swear by classic wristwatches with all his guns. If you squint at the offer, it doesn't take long to realize that there is a circular trend. Nevertheless, the first smartwatches were square. But even such popular smart watches as Pebble had to resort to "grandmother's" advice.
The world of luxury watches is awash with tributes to human greed, but American company Nico Gerard has still somehow managed to create a timepiece that stands out. Namely, they made a wristwatch that was combined with the Apple Watch smart watch. It's not a crossover, their idea was to wear both watches at the same time. That's why the Pinnacle has a classic Swiss-made analog wristwatch on the front, and an Apple Watch on the other. Why, you ask? Because five-year-olds never have enough.
The vice president of Apple's design department, Jony Ive, was very graphic last September when he said what the Apple Watch would mean for Switzerland - the watches of the "old forge" are doomed. Even if we take the bragging out of the equation, Ive has a point. The Swiss industry must be aware of what wrist computers mean for their business. Smart watches do not necessarily mean the decline of classic wristwatches, but their golden days are definitely over. But there is a product on the market that keeps up with the tech toys, even if it's not as high-tech as Apple's revolutionary model. It is a Sistem51 watch from the Swiss brand Swatch.
WATCHme, also Watchus cyclopus, is a new "species" of memory stations for smart watches "discovered" by Vivien Muller. The cyclops monster that powers the Apple Watch was inspired by monsters from movies and cartoons. And although the offer of such chargers is already quite concentrated, none is as cute as the combination of a Minion and a one-eyed green ball of Mike from Monsters in the Closet, sorry from Kickstarter, where WATCHme is collecting start-up funds.
It started with Lego bricks, then we built computers, now, after smartphones, we will build watches. At the Computex 2015 fair in Taipei, the Qualcomm company released a study of the Blocks modular smart watch, which was created in collaboration with the jewelry brand Tateossian. This allows complete freedom to choose functions and other features that we will choose through modules that will serve as part of the strap.