Tech on the Edge: Smartwatches

Tech on the Edge

Tech on the Edge is the first series I will be starting on my blog. This series highlights technologies that have a small adoption compared to their potential. This could be due to their relative age, issues with adoption, or other factors. So let’s take a look at why they haven’t take off, and why they should.

Smartwatches

Setting the Stage

Many people love to hate smartwatches, and there are some good reasons for this. Smartwatches are seen as a minor extension of the phones they are connected to. For smartwatches to become ubiquitous this flaw within the watch offerings will need to be fixed.

Smartwatches do leave something to be desired in their current state. Currently smartwatches are classified by their deeper level of integrations with the phones they connect with. Generally these integrations include notifications, media controls, and some other basics. Past this, the higher end smartwatches, such as those in the Android Wear and Apple Watch lineups, give users access to applications that they can use from their wrist. The biggest issue with these applications, though, has to be the limited controls that they offer and the fact that these actions can generally be performed from the phone more easily.

The other selling feature of many smartwatches is the included hardware for fitness. This is great, but still leaves many without a good enough justification for buying a smartwatch. For some cheaper fitness devices can accomplish many of these tasks just as well and are more appealing. For others, fitness isn't a defining characteristic for tech that they want to buy.

Where We Are At

My first smartwatch was a first generation Pebble. The original Pebble was a much more basic smartwatch than even a first generation Apple Watch, but it was a start. For me it was also an introduction to E-ink displays, which I will be making a post about later. These initial experiences served as a gateway into why I started to use a smartwatch daily.

The price of these devices have already started to come down. Due to this convenience can start to become a driving factor. Already the current generation has more features, is more reliable, and costs less than the offerings of two years ago. This is a standard within tech, but will remove some of the reason that many people do not go for a smartwatch. This will be increasingly true as the price continues to drop or as more entry-level devices are released.

Reasons For Adoption

For me, the convenience of quickly seeing notifications without pulling out my phone is extremely useful. Checking my notifications from there further limits the amount of time I am distracted by messages and notifications. Also, I find myself using applications on my watch quite often. They may only be a stripped down version of the ones on my phone, but they are quite useful for quick status checks.

This benefit is only truly apparent when you receive quite a few notifications or have applications that work well on a small screen. The other justification for part of the price for a smartwatch could be the use of the fitness tools. Many of these, especially on the Apple Watch, integrate very well with system services. Getting a respectable fitness wearable costs a good portion of the cost of a smartwatch. Due to this if you are looking at fitness as a useful feature, it may be a good justification to spend just a little more money to get quite a few more features. This is even more true for people that prefer to have a watch as well.

Where  We Are Going

Personally, cell phone releases are not the events they used to be. New features are mostly minor improvements, with a few exceptions. One of the wonderful parts of a new and growing technology like the smartwatch industry is that there is still a lot of room for changes and improvements. I think this is well shown by Apple's current rumored work towards a non-invasive glucose test that may be a feature for a new generation of watches.

It is quite possible that the proposed glucose test will never get off the ground. The Verge covers some of the challenges of this proposal quite well. Nevertheless, the feature set of smartwatches will continue to grow as they mature. In addition to this the price will drop, or at least become more acceptable for the feature set. As both of these happen, I think it is quite possible that the market for smartwatches will grow quite a bit larger and smartwatches will become much more commonplace.

What are your thoughts on smartwatches? Do you have one? Would you want one? Leave a comment below.