The BlackBerry Smartwatch: Hot, But Silly

Oct 19 2009, 3:00pm CDT | by Robert Evans

Like millions and millions of other people these days, I no longer wear a watch. The advent of the cell phone as a ubiquitous device has made them superfluous for a lot of us. While old-fashioned watches may not be too exciting these days, the concept of the smartwatch most definitely is. Ever since LG's overly-expensive GD910 made it onto the market, we've been waiting to see who the next entrant in the smartwatch category would be.

Today, we know it's RIM. That's right, the makers of the BlackBerry are working on a companion smartwatch (via Gizmodo) for their line of phones. Crackberry posted up several images of the new watch, along with some information on its purpose. This smartwatch is not a stand-alone device, but a BlackBerry accessory designed to display messages from a paired BlackBerry. It's made by a 3rd party manufacturer, and could be marketed as the inPulse.

All we have are renders thus far, and we've seen no information on the hardware this watch could pack. CrackBerry claims that it will pack an OLED screen with a high enough resolution to display readable text.

The idea of an OLED smartwatch is cool, but this thing loses major points if it only works while paired with a BlackBerry. For one thing...how hard is it to pull your phone out of your pocket and read messages? Is this really that much of a time or hassle saver? If this thing is just an add-on device, where's the utility? You're still carrying around your smartphone. All this does is add one extra piece of gear that is functionally useless on its own.

Obviously we don't know the whole story yet, so I'll reserve any sort of final judgements. The renderings look cool, so I am holding onto hope that this could be something awesome.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.