New trend in Tech ; Smartwatches.

Smartwatches. According to the consumer technology space in the past year, they've been the next big thing. Smartwatches have been around for a while - Microsoft's SPOT connected device model delivered data over FM radio to Fossil, Suunto, and Tissot watches. In 2004.

Motorola, too, had a smartwatch, though the MOTOACTV came out in 2011 and paired with a smartphone. BlackBerry paired up with InPulse in 2009 for a smartwatch, and its makers eventually went on to launch Pebble - an iOS- and Android-compatible follow-up in early 2013. But why is that suddenly everybody from Samsung to LG to Microsoft to Sony is working on a smartwatch?
Because Apple is rumored to.
It may be cynical to say that. But there's no denying no doubt that Apple's been a trendsetter in consumer technology over the past several years. The iPhone ushered in the era of capacitive screen slate smartphones, the iPad showed how to build a tablet people will buy, and now Apple's competitors fear that they'll release a smartwatch and it'll take them years to catch up. Again.

The people's smartwatch

After working the venture capital process for $375,000 in funding, Pebble Technology turned to Kickstarter in April 2012 to raise additional funding (and awareness) for their Pebble smartwatch. The funding goal was set at a modest $100,000: 870 pledgers at the $115 Kickstarter backer pricing. Afters 37 days of funding, Pebble smashed Kickstarter records with more than $10 million in pledges from 68,929 backers.
Pebble uses a low-power ePaper display and pairs with Android and iOS phones over Bluetooth, and gets 7 days on a charge. In addition to telling time, Pebble can act as a fitness distance tracker, golf rangefinder, and music controller, and displays notifications for email, callers, social networking, and more from the paired phone.
Of course, everybody's working on a smartwatch, whether or not they've publicly said so, or already released or unveiled it, like Sony and Samsung.
The question we have to ask is what can these smartwatches do for us, and do they make it any easier? Thanks to the ever-shrinking size of sensors, processors, radios, and other components, building a decent smartwatch is easier than ever. It's the smart part that's hard.

What can these smartwatches do for us, and do they make it any easier?

User interface design is hard enough on a 4-to-6-inch smartphone. When you're working on a 1.5-inch screen it's a different game entirely. Apple's iPod Nano, for example, has a touch screen, but doesn't work much like their iOS handhelds. The Samsung Galaxy Gear's user experience is very different than that of the Galaxy S4 or Note 3.
There's also the matter of what it does. Should it just forward notifications from your phone, or are there things the watch should do on its own too? Should it be a fitness tracker or a navigator or a phone handset (wristset?) in addition to telling the time? And how do you make it so the battery lasts for days without recharge? There are a lot of hurdles to overcome - hardware, software, and design - but I think smartwatches will get there eventually. It remains to be seen whether or not it'll be something I want to wear. And I love watches!