The original Pixel Watch used one type of wireless charging. Then the Pixel Watch 2 & 3 removed wireless charging and swapped to a different charging mechanism. And now the 4 has changed again.

So three different charging cables in under three years. Progress!

While it would be lovely if watches could support Qi charging, they are just too small to make it work effectively - which is why Apple has a proprietary wireless charging system.

So, why not use everyone's favourite mandated charging standard - USB-C?

The Verge says:

These devices are too dang small, and the technology isn’t there yet. Most standard connectors, like USB-C, are too large to fit within a smartwatch or on devices that are meant to mold to your body. The smaller the device, the more difficult this becomes.

To which I say:

Bullshit!

Watches are small, but the USB-C connector isn't massive.

Here's a modern smartwatch which uses USB-C for charging and data:

But having a USB-C connector means water ingress, right? Wrong!

Does this USB-C connector affect the waterproof rating? No, it doesn’t as the USB-C connector on the watch is IPX8 rated, meaning the internals of the watch are completely sealed from the outside of the connector.

OK, the port itself might get water and dirt in it - but a lug will seal it.

Still, that watch is over £200. Not bad for a pretty high-tech gadget with a limited supply. Are there others?

Here's the Colmi P80

It's a pretty basic watch - although it claims to do heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring. It may be crap for all I know - but it only costs £16!

In the middle of that price-range is this £80 smartwatch which is actually an entire Android device!

Again, with USB-C built right in.

And, yes, it might be rubbish as both a watch, Android device, and masc-coded jewellery - but it shows that USB-C is viable for devices of this class.

Why USB-C?

I don't want to have to buy new accessories every time my hardware changes.

I already have hundreds of USB-C cables.

I only want to take one cable with me on holiday to charge my various gadgets.

I don't want to be restricted to only buying products from one company.

I want something which isn't going to be knocked off its charging pad by a particularly strong fart.

So I've bought the £16 AliExpress special and will review it shortly!

The Watchy is the opposite in every single conceivable way.

It is an Arduino powered, open source, eInk display, with no data guzzling tendancies. And is only £60 including delivery. It's gorgeous to look at without being distracting, has a massive battery life, and allows for a bunch of tinkering.

But...

Ah... Let's get it out of the way. This is not a consumer product. It is fiddly to assemble, has very little protection for its delicate components, and to change the timezone you have to recompile the firmware!

Oh, and it uses USB-Micro rather than USB-C 😡

The watch ships in kit form and is not overly satisfying to build. The buttons are especially fiddly to fit, the instructions assume you know how to open a ribbon connector, and there's warnings about how fragile everything is. Took me about 20 minutes all in - and that was mostly aligning the buttons.

But, once built, it does look great. Here are my first impressions:

It is an fun device to play with. But the whole thing is built on a set of (very reasonable) compromises.

The eInk screen is a delight to look at and helps keep the battery lasting for ages. There's no backlight - but that also makes it less of a flashy distraction.

The eInk screen is fragile. Yet, bizarrely, the watch comes with zero protection. There is no plastic shield to keep it from getting bumped or scratched. I appreciate that might cause glare or get dust trapped in it - but I don't think the deep bezel is going to protect that screen.

Similarly, there's no water ingress protection. I wasn't expecting a diver's watch with rubber gaskets - but I'd be nervous about wearing this in the rain. You can 3D print your own case, or buy a different one - but that adds to the cost.

There's no speaker - again, less distracting than other watches. The vibration motor is sufficiently powerful to discreetly alert you to anything important.

There's no touchscreen - again, saves on power and protects the screen. But the buttons are hard, loud, and just don't feel nice. Luckily WiFi can be set up by connecting to the device's own SSID. I was dreading the thought of having to enter details using those buttons!

It won't monitor your heart rate, sweatiness, or blood pressure - nor will it try to sell those data to perverts on the Internet. It does have a step-counter which uses an accelerometer to keep track of your movement.

It can't pair to your headphones for listening to music - but you can use BLE for firmware updates and WiFi for NTP.

You can reprogram it! But there's only 3,673,264 bytes to play with, so you can't squeeze to much in there. Oh, and the instructions are the usual half-finished & untested set of scattered files beloved by hackers.

There's no weird proprietary connectors needed to charge it. But it uses USB-Micro. So you'll have to dig out one of those old cables that you kept when the world moved over to USB-C.

Do you see what I mean? It isn't quite as spartan as the Casio F-91W, but it is missing some things you may find essential in a modern watch.

I'm conflicted. I love everything eInk. I like devices which are fully under my control. I don't want to wear something expensive and distracting on my wrist. I want to change the watchface to match my mood.

But... I don't want to wear something fragile. If I go abroad, I don't want to lug a laptop with me just to change timezone. I'm not sure I want to learn yet another programming paradigm. And, if I'm recharging something, I want it to use the same connector as every other gadget I've bought in the last few years.

I enjoy tinkering. But the instruction on the website are incomplete and hard to follow. I've sent a pull request to fix some of the errors I found. Eventually, after some confusion, I was able to download a face, edit the settings, and flash it.

I'm going to spend a few weeks playing with it. The Watchy is crammed full of possibilities. But it remains to be seen if I can fulfil them.

Ever since then, I've loved taking things apart. Putting things back together...? Eh... not so much!

Recently I "acquired" the latest Swiss made smartwatch - MyKronoz ZeWatch.

It's a cute, simple, and cheap smart watch. At around £30 on Amazon, it's not exactly feature packed, but it has enough tech packed inside to make it interesting.

• Bluetooth connection to the phone - for taking phone calls on the wrist, and listening to music.
• Lost phone alert - if you wander off without your phone, your wrist will gently buzz.
• OLED display - showing time and caller alert. Reversible display for left- or right-handed use.

Nothing fancy - but smart enough if you want to upgrade an old Casio watch.

The only problem I had was that the phone just wouldn't charge. The box came with an EU USB plug, and a very strange USB cable.

Rather than a USB mini or micro slot, the phone has two recessed contacts on the back of the face. The plug is a sort-of giant clip into which you place the watch.

No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the clip to align properly with the watch - at least, it never seemed to charge.

Bizarrely, the clip completely obscures the fascia - so it's impossible to see if the device is charging.

Well, what to do when faced with a bit of kit which doesn't work? TO THE SCREWDRIVERS!

Four small cross-head screws on the back, and a little bit of leverage were all that were needed to pop off the plastic covering.

You can see the two charging terminals on the back. As for what's under it...

On the left is the speaker, the vibration motor is in the middle, with the large battery on the right. Top and bottom left are the answer and hang-up buttons.

The battery is unsecured and only held in place by the back plate. Let's lift it up!

The chip on the left is the obsolete SST39VF1601 containing 2MB of memory. The other chip appears to be an end-of-life BlueTooth component from CSR.

The board is held down by 4 more tiny screws. Removing them allows us to flip the board over and see the connector to the screen.

The identification "BP ML E186014 94V-0" indicates that the board was made by a Chinese OEM called Brain Power.

A flimsy ribbon connects to the 128 * 32 OLED screen.

With a bit of effort, it's possible to prise the entire guts out of the body.

The screen is on the right, just above it is the small mono condenser microphone.

Final Thoughts

This is at the cheap end of the "cheap and cheerful" spectrum. The screen isn't very bright, the charging solution is non-standard and finickety, and one of the key-selling points (seeing who is calling) only works with the iPhone.

There's no touch screen, text messaging, or fitness monitoring. But, hey, it's about 10% of the cost of the latest smartwatches. Of course, if you can't get it to charge....

This, very roughly, was my experience with it.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

My first full day with a Sony SmartWatch!

I forgot to wear it, & it spent all day by my bed....

Other than that, it is pretty nifty!

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

2nd full day with a smart watch.
* I remembered to wear it!
* It buzzed to say it was nearly out of juice.
* I walked 24 steps today!

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Day 3 of owning a SmartWatch.
Wore all day & only noticed when I'd got home that it was switched off.
I don't think I'm the target market!

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Day 5,6, & 7 of owning a Smart Watch.
The watch is somewhere in my house. I can connect to it via BlueTooth but can't physically find it...

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Day 17 of owning a SmartWatch.
Have found it under a pile of old papers. Battery 0%.
Wondering whether to resurrect? pic.x.com/h7sfutzozv

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Here's the thing. When I'm at work, my phone is on the desk in front of me. In the car, the ICE displays who is calling - as does the phone itself. When the phone is in my pocket, I feel it vibrate and - if I'm not busy - I look at it.

No one calls me. I mean, seriously, mobile phones are text and email devices. Voice Calls? That's very 20th Century.

Looking through my incoming call history for the last three months - it's really only my family who call. Work tends to be text, email, or - gasp face-to-face meetings.

Calendar reminders were nice, I suppose. But, again, my life isn't back-to-back meetings and urgently rushing to catch a plane to Hong Kong.
Because of the limitations of the Sony SmartWatch2, I have to give the untrustworthy Sony corporation complete access to my email. So that was a big fat "no" from me.

And, again, having to give Sony access to all my social networks in exchange for some wrist-based jollies just wasn't worth the trade-off to me. Partly because I control my social media usage - it doesn't control me.

Ultimately, what is a Smart Watch for? If you have a problem of too many notifications on your phone - turn them off. If you're always missing calls - keep your phone close to hand. Want fewer calls? Don't give out your number or make sure important numbers are set to alert you.

I've spent several weeks with Google Glass and - while more enjoyable than a SmartWatch - both suffer from several of the same problems.

• Yet another thing to charge. One of the reasons I stopped using BlueTooth headphones (other than washing them) was because it was another bloody thing whinging to me that it needed feeding.
• You have to physically strap something to your body. If you already wear glasses or wear a watch, I guess that's not too much of a problem. But with both Glass and a SmartWatch it was easy to forget to put them on.
• The effort required to set things up "just so" would be as well served setting up the phone to only serve the most appropriate notifications.
• The screen simply isn't of high enough quality. When you're used to a full-sized smartphone, anything smaller is like peering through the wrong end of a telescope.
• The interface is just too fiddly. Whether poking around in a fury of half-remembered gestures, or trying to find the correct intonation to make the voice interface works - it's just not very pleasant.
• Ultimately, though, the problem is that the context and importance of a message cannot be determined by a machine.
  Is the message from my wife a silly picture of a cat, or is it letting me know she's need picking up early? My Smart Watch can't possibly know. Even Google's "Priority Inbox" feature has as many false negatives as false positives.

The crop of wearables that I've tried fail at their primary purpose - to save me time and make my life easier. They offer a limited and inconvenient window into your world, when what you crave is expansive and immersive.

Strapping on a SmartWatch in 2014 feels like a 1970's vision of the future.

The BBC is reporting that the Government is so afraid of prisoners having access to concealed mobile phones, they want to introduce a ban.

UK officials are considering banning the sale of small mobile phones designed to resemble car key fobs.

A government spokesman told the BBC that it was discussing the issue with the National Trading Standards Board and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

It follows a report by the Times suggesting some of the Chinese-made products were being advertised with prisoners in mind.

Having a mobile phone in jail is a criminal offence.

The article goes on to conflate a number of issues. As well as the illegality of having a phone in prison, there is the trading standards issue that some of these devices have unauthorised logos on them!

How exactly does one go about banning tiny phones? Two years ago, I reviewed the S16 watch phone. As the name suggests, it's small enough to comfortably fit on one's wrist.

A large percentage of the size is taken up by the touchscreen and the bulky battery. Since I reviewed it, sizes have shrunk dramatically - as have prices. You can now pick up a wrist worn phone for around £30. Now, all of the above are 2G phones. For 3G phones, there's the Micromax Modu. At around £50, it's a svelte 76 x 46.5 x 11 mm and features a reasonably competent Web browser.

Is the Government really going to try to introduce a ban on technology under a certain size? Or technology which looks like some innocuous other item?

Or is this just some sabre rattling to make people thing "well, at least they're doing something!"

I've got a great little IP security camera - the Y-Cam. It's Internet accessible, so it can email me photos of any suspicious behaviour. It will also stream video and audio to a number of devices - including mobiles.

Under Linux, it's very easy to get the video and audio via mplayer.

mplayer http://username:password@example.com/stream.asf

And we get this rather spiffy video playing.

In fact, there are a number of streams available (depending on camera), including RTSP and 3GP. The ASF stream seems the most Linux friendly.

It's also possible to save the video to a file - so if you catch a miscreant in the act of pilfering, you have video and audio evidence.

mplayer http://user:password@example.com/stream.asf
    -dumpstream -dumpfile ycam.asf

You now have a file which can be played back.

What I can't seem to work out is how to do the two together. I want a command which will show me the video and at the same time save it to disk.

So, fearless Internet commentors - any helpful suggestions?

Like many people, I no longer wear a watch. I've got a phone which tells me the time and data - why do I need something cluttering my wrist?

The Evolution of the Watch

I wasn't always this way, I used to love high-tech watches. Throughout my teenaged years I had one of those calculator watches - enabling me to add up my pocket money and write "5318008" for instant humour.

In 1999, I graduated to the seriously awesome Timex 78401. This was an immensely cool bit of kit. It could store hundreds of phone numbers and memos on its internal memory. Rather than wear your fingers out pressing buttons on the phone, you typed your data into a computer. The computer would make the CRT pulse in such a way that the data could be retreived by the watch's optical sensor. Futuristic!

Finally, a few years ago, I picked up an MP4 watch from eBay. Stuffed with a 2GB USB disk inside (large, for those days) the watch could play mp3 audio and mp4 video! Well, video had to be converted to something lo-res and low-bit rate - but it played video! On my wrist! It would also pick up FM radio, act as a voice recorder and - just about - tell the time.

The Mobile Phone Watch

Long considered the holy-grail of the phone world. Can you cram a GSM phone into a watch? The answer is a resounding yes... but...

The watch itself retails from anywhere between US$70 and US$200. My parents picked it up in Hong Kong for £50 - which is factory gate price. Thanks ma and pa!

The first thing you should know about this phone, is that is is shit. I don't mean "it is the shit". I mean it truly is one of the worst devices I have ever used. The touchscreen in unresponsive and inaccurate - even if it wasn't, the UI is a clusterfuck of every design mistake you've ever heard of. It's hard to use, has poor battery life, is far too fiddly for day-to-day use and has a non-standard USB plug. But, it's only fifty quid - and you do get to impress girls at parties* by saying "I've got a mobile phone in my watch!"

In short, it's cheap Chinese tat. I love it :-)

*I don't go to many parties. Is that how things normally work?

Camera, Video, Sound

The camera seems to be 640*480 - although it will interpolate up to 1280x1024.

Sample Image - click for full size

Audio is limited to 8KHz mono - good enough for voice, as this demo should prove.

Web Browser

After diving through 3 different menus, I finally got the Vodafone GPRS settings into it. It came pre-set with the APNs of a number of Chinese and Hong Kong providers. So, what's the web browsing experience like? Well, experience is a bit of a strong word. Imagine using the original Netscape Navigator, while peering through a tiny window, on sub-dial-up speeds, waiting for the inevitable crash.

The results from the W3C Mobile Test Harness show it supports virtually nothing.

For fans of browser statistics, the highly detailed User Agent String is

MAUI WAP Browser

Take a look at how unbearably bad the web browser is.

The Specs

This is a surprisingly feature packed phone. Although you'll be hard pressed to find all the features easily; who would think of looking for the BlueTooth settings within the "Organiser" menu?

A run down of the major features includes

• GSM Compatibility: 850MHZ, 900MHZ, 1800MHZ, 1900MHZ. So it should work everywhere that there is 2G coverage
• Language: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic and Chinese. What's most impressive is the handwriting recognition. It's marginally faster than multi-tapping on the tiny keypad.
• Screen: 1.4 inch, QICF touch screen, 176*144 pixels. Touch-screen is a bit optimistic. Use your fingernail to point vaguely at the screen hoping to elicit a response doesn't have quite the same ring. It does come with an integrated stylus.
• Vibration: Support
• Memory: MicroSD Card Support.（Up to 16GB in size). Didn't come with one, but happily accepted a 1GB card I had. Just as well; the internal memory is limited to 400KB. That's not a typo - less than half a megabyte of storage.
• Connection Methods: Mass Storage, Webcam, COM Port. Works on Linux, claims to work on Windows and Mac. Mass storage works well - if slow. Can also be set to be used as a webcam. I assume the COM port is if you need to connect to the Internet.
• Accelerometer. Well... sort of. There's a compass function built in - but it's hit and miss.
• GPRS Support: Browse WAP Website. Ha! Brilliant! Possibly the worst browser I've ever encountered.
• SMS/MMS/Email. SMS send and receive worked perfectly. No support for delivery receipts.
• E-Book Reader: TXT. Yes! Throw away your Kindle and read .txt files on this minuscule screen.
• Bluetooth Support: Bluetooth (V2.0). Pretty impressive, actually. Paired with my Jabra Clipper and worked as both a music player and headset/mic. Claims to support Handsfree, Headset, SPP, DUN, OPP, FTP, A2DP, AVRCP. It played music through my bluetooth headphones - although the decoder is shockingly bad.
• Net weight: 65g. Chunky - but not too heavy.

Conclusion

I asked my parents to buy me a knock-off phone for under £50. This doesn't disappoint. I think it's kinda nifty looking - if you dig that retro vibe.

As a phone, you expect it to make and receive phone calls. You can either hold it up to your ear - like a spy in a bad movie - use the supplied headphones, or BlueTooth. Call quality was adequate. As a basic phone, the best I can say about it is "it works".

The S16 will frustrate you and horrify you in equal measure. But, there's no denying - taking a phone call from your wrist is cool!

Assuming it doesn't give you cancer of the wrist. Which would be bad.