Marginalia
A miscellany of musings on the tech that crosses my path
Tuesday 10 March 2009, 9:42 AM
Hyundai’s phone watch combi
Hyundai has announced that its new phone watch will soon be available in the UK.
The idea of putting a SIM into a watch is not new, and indeed I’ve seen all kinds of things put into watches before, among the more memorable being the Palm OS to create a PDA watch and a TV receiver to create a telly watch. I kid you not.
This one, the MB-910, looks very low tech on the outside having a standard analogue watch face. It has Bluetooth integrated so you don’t need to look like a total geek while using it.
It is a tri-band mobile phone but has no 3G, I’m afraid, the phone book is limited to 300 entries and browsing on the 1.5-inch, 65 thousand colour, 132 x 176 pixel display is limited to WAP. It has 128MB of built in memory and doesn’t support external memory. You can, though, use it as a music and video player, stopwatch, currency converter and notepad.
The specifications say it has a stylus so presumably there is a touch screen in there and maybe you can peck away at a mini keyboard if you need to send SMS messages or even email as it has a POP/SMTP email client built in.
I can see that the MB-910 could work as a handsfree mobile phone and for those who have just a few contacts to page through and don’t mind wearing a Bluetooth headset it could function. But anyone who uses their phone regularly for more could find things a bit of a stretch. I’d certainly not want to do my email on a 1.5-inch screen, for example.
Oh, and one more thing. The MB-910 has a phone-like battery not a watch-like one, which means it’ll need charging. Hyundai says you will get 70 hours on standby with up to three hours of talk.
If you are in mainland Europe it is apparently already available. Here in the UK I anticipate its arrival before the first half of the year is out when it will cost around £200 SIM free.
The idea of putting a SIM into a watch is not new, and indeed I’ve seen all kinds of things put into watches before, among the more memorable being the Palm OS to create a PDA watch and a TV receiver to create a telly watch. I kid you not.
This one, the MB-910, looks very low tech on the outside having a standard analogue watch face. It has Bluetooth integrated so you don’t need to look like a total geek while using it.
It is a tri-band mobile phone but has no 3G, I’m afraid, the phone book is limited to 300 entries and browsing on the 1.5-inch, 65 thousand colour, 132 x 176 pixel display is limited to WAP. It has 128MB of built in memory and doesn’t support external memory. You can, though, use it as a music and video player, stopwatch, currency converter and notepad.
The specifications say it has a stylus so presumably there is a touch screen in there and maybe you can peck away at a mini keyboard if you need to send SMS messages or even email as it has a POP/SMTP email client built in.
I can see that the MB-910 could work as a handsfree mobile phone and for those who have just a few contacts to page through and don’t mind wearing a Bluetooth headset it could function. But anyone who uses their phone regularly for more could find things a bit of a stretch. I’d certainly not want to do my email on a 1.5-inch screen, for example.
Oh, and one more thing. The MB-910 has a phone-like battery not a watch-like one, which means it’ll need charging. Hyundai says you will get 70 hours on standby with up to three hours of talk.
If you are in mainland Europe it is apparently already available. Here in the UK I anticipate its arrival before the first half of the year is out when it will cost around £200 SIM free.
PreviousComments on this post
Apart from it's price, I do see the advantage to an occasional user who more often than not forgets to take his or her phone with them.
However, it appears that the screen should becapable of being rorated 90 degrees so that it can be read comfortably when worn in the normal position, either left handed or right handed - perhaps it is but if not where's my reward?
