Whenever someone shows a labor-of-love working demo of a wearable, SOC, OS, shell, circuit, power and all, I'm reminded that there are so many ways to make to make this happen nowadays, there's no shortage of ways to reproduce these ideas at moderate scale and budget, and yet for some reason there are no fashion watches or flip-phones today.
Sensorwatch [1] is the closest I could think of.
I would _really_ love to see a fashion watch brand do BLE sync on a device and display something low attention demand on the 7-segment or matrix display. Casio and their likes managed to cram impressive functionality into featurewatches (is that a term?) in the 80s, and those things were gorgeous looking, and demanding very little unwarranted attention.
we_have_to_go_back.gif
edit: new RTOS watch is incredible, this rant is orthogonal.
Sensorwatch looks nice. However I just recently learned that the Casio F-91W (also worn by US president Obama) has become known as the “Terrorist Watch" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism). And allegedly wearing it would put you under scrutiny of US immigration / homeland security agencies. Replacing the board would not exactly help in that situation I guess :) Then again you could probably travel the rest of the world with it without problems.
> According to secret documents [...] released by The Guardian, "the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda' and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantanamo Bay
Where does homeland security find these security analysts? UFO conspiracy conventions? Guilde of unemployed fortune tellers?
"The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a non-fiction work by Jon Ronson concerning the U.S. Army's exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them and stopping their hearts"
Or to answer your sarcastic question with a horrifying answer: yes, essentially.
Probably the CIA. Remember when they kidnapped and then tortured a bunch of people for bogus reasons (he has the same name/watch as a terrorist, waterboarding it is!)? And the people involved not only didn't go to jail, but got promotions (is the head of the CIA still the one that had a major part in the torture program and destroyed evidence about it?).
You make it sound like a negative, it's cool on my book to wear a watch that would make you theoretically a target for a stupid agent. Especially since there's no obligation for you to wear it for traveling to US.
You realise you are literally terrorized by US propaganda and that there is exactly zero chance you will get hit by a drone because you wear an F91 (even if you're from afghanistan, have a big beard and pray in the mosque everyday)
There seems to be at least some fashion watches that have smart features, but I think they are limited by the fact that watch people really like analogness.
Flip phones very much still exist and are made all the time, although the version I would consider (A Bluetooth headset with the features of a flip phone, using a smartphone as a backend, so you can leave it in your backpack and not be tempted to check it) doesn't seem to be a big thing.
I would _really_ love to see a fashion watch brand do BLE sync on a device and display something low attention demand on the 7-segment or matrix display. Casio and their likes managed to cram impressive functionality into featurewatches (is that a term?) in the 80s, and those things were gorgeous looking, and demanding very little unwarranted attention.
we_have_to_go_back.gif
edit: new RTOS watch is incredible, this rant is orthogonal.
[1] https://www.sensorwatch.net