Is this possible? The watch phone has become known as a product in itself. Though it is of course a type of smart watch. It may or may not have other smart watch functions. But it is first and foremost a cell phone worn as a watch.
The First Watch Phone
The first true watch phone was the Samsung SPH-WP10. This came out in early 1999. It had a miniature duplexer, base-band analog processor chip and a tiny fixed antenna. It measured 67mm by 58mm by 20mm. This sounds huge today! But back in 1999 this was quite an achievement. Remember the size of normal cell phones then?
The watch phone offered ninety minutes of call time. It also offered sixty hours of time on standby. It displayed the time using a graphic LCD. It also had several other functions. This included voice activated dialing, a phone directory, vibration alert and an ear microphone. Again – this was considered hi-tech when it first appeared on the market.
It seems that there was only a limited number produced and they centered on the Korean market. If you could get hold of one in the States it would have cost you about $700. Needless to say this watch phone wasn’t around for long……. take a look at this Youtube video of the SPH-WP10.
What watch phones are available today?
There are several watch phones on the market. But you do need to ask yourself what you are hoping for. Yeah ok. You want a smart phone which makes phone calls. You can wear it on your wrist and it’s no larger than a normal wristwatch. But do you really want that? Think about it. How big do you expect the keys to be? Think how many typos you already make on your cell phone. And how large do you want the screen? Only the size of a wristwatch? Or large enough to actually see some detail?
The point we are making here is that the smart phones we are now all used to are no longer just cell phones. That’s why they’re so smart. So technology may allow a smart phone the size of a watch. But from a practical point of view they may fall short.Some manufacturers have got around this by allowing you to pair it with your smartphone. So you need to keep your cell phone with you at all times. But your watch acts as an extension of your phone.
Others have avoided the additional functions and opted for a simple watch / phone. This keeps it to a manageable size. While a few others have gone for the whole smart watch / cell phone. These do tend to be large and chunky. At the end of the day its about what suits the user.
One last important point. Be very careful when buying extra insurance for your watch phone. Not all cell phone insurers will cover this slightly different product. But this won’t necessarily stop the salesperson attempting to sell it to you. To be fair this is more down to confusion and misinformation rather than miss-selling. Just make sure you physically check the insurance small print prior to purchase.
You may now like to know more about the new (but not yet released) Samsung smart watch. Or would you like to know exactly what is a smart watch? Or the smart watch functions? And of course find out more about the other smart watches available.
