Six Things We Want From an Android Smartwatch
We look to the future of smart watches.
Currently there are around five smartwatches on the market: the Galaxy Gear, the Martian, the Pebble, the Sony Smart Watch 2 and the Qualcomm Toq. Each have their own capabilities, but none are perfect. Google's now has the opportunity to make the perfect smartwatch with Android Wear. Ultimately, what do we want to see from a smartwatch? This is our wishlist:
Standalone
We would like our smart watches to work on their own, please. That means installing apps directly on the device, making calls without having to pull the phone out of our pockets, and supporting a Wireless N (or AC) network. Tethering from a smartphone should only occur while outside a local network. Note that the Galaxy Gear and Martian are capable of making calls, but they still require a paired smartphone.
Local Storage
This goes along with the previous standalone concept: locally installed apps need local storage. But let's push that even further. What if the smartwatch had enough local storage to play host to movies, videos and music. Users could plug in earphones and listen to their favorite album without needing an MP3 player or phone. Of course, this would require a better, smartphone-class battery.
Video Playback
Eventually this is going to happen. Smart watches will provide support for the various types of video compression, allowing users to watch a purchased movie or one taken by the user's smartphone camera. Smart watches would also need a mini-HDMI output component, or perhaps a way to stream video to a smart TV or some other DLNA-certified device.
Internet Browser
Sure, the internet would be rather small on a smart watch face, but smartphones started with small screens and highly simple internet pages. This is also where the local storage comes into play: storing Internet cache so that the browser isn't burning up the battery charge by downloading pages over and over. This would seemingly need a screen capable of a decent resolution and ppi.
Remote Control
What if you could control a desktop or laptop simply by touching the screen of your smart watch? That would be an interesting feature, requiring users to install apps on both platforms. Roccat does something similar with its Power-Grid software, which requires both the smartphone/tablet and desktop/laptop to remain on the same wireless network. Using a smartwatch to turn a room's lights on and off would be a neat feature as well.
Activate the Teleporter
Ok maybe we're asking too much.
I think you're missing the point; features are fine, but there's usually a cost in complexity, or power consumption, neither of which is a good thing for a smart watch to have. I just want smart watches to stick to being simple devices that can do a few useful things of their own, while hooking into a more powerful device to act as an accessory.
For example, instead of my watch giving a full-fledged calendar app, it might sync with my calendars then just show me alerts for calendar events; if I want to edit those events I'll then use my phone. Or if the watch can do it, it'll just be very basic (picks a default event name and calendar, and simply lets me set a time).
Hardware features like WiFi only have marginal benefit to a smart watch IMO, and would be too much of a drain on the battery for what it would add.
Just stop by your local Best Buy and you will find bins full, like smart watches nobody really wants them either.
But, if you must have one there many brands to choose from they monitor everything and tell time.
This "device" is a money-grab; one more gadget to be upgraded every year (or more often), requiring some kind of subscription service (or increase to another, like your data plan), and one more "shiny" to keep people distracted from the stuff that really matters.