The Gadget Show Live: mobile phone watches [video]

mob-watches

This is a product category that has me far from convinced but it’s intriguing nonetheless. I’m talking about mobile phone watches, which are about as Star Trek or Knight Rider as they come. I got to see two such devices up close (to varying degrees) at The Gadget Show Live last week.

First up was the sWaP watch (Smart Watch and Phone), which throws in everything but the kitchen sink: GSM radio (unlocked), media player, stills and video camera, microSD card slot, Bluetooth, and of course a clock! All accessible via a tiny 1.5 inch touch screen designed to operated by the included stylus and fiddly hardware controls down the side (see our blurry video below).

The major takeaway from seeing the sWaP watch in person, however, was not only that miniaturization can, frankly, be taken too far, but also how much this chunky device weighed.

Next up was LG’s recently announced watch phone, which I could look at but not touch. In fact nobody could as the company was “focused on the Arena today“, I was told. Instead we were left watching a powered down device rotating in a carousel inside a glass cabinet (see video below), although even at that distance it looked a lot more appealing than the sWaP.

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last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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