GSM Wristwatch Phone to be sold
 

I always thought a wristwatch cellphone was just a Dick Tracy cartoon idea, or a prototype that would never make it to market, but apparently a company in Australia is actually going to be releasing a bluetooth enabled triband gsm watch phone very soon, with more models to come. Check this site out: http://www.mymobilewatch.com

It's cute, but a bit on the expensive side. Still, it's an incredible feat of engineering to make a workable phone this small. Hope they do well.

Wrist watch phones that make it to market are a rare event. There was a Japanese Wristomo watch that worked on their proprietary handyphone system. There also was a bulky watchphone made a while back in China. Also some bluetooth enabled watches have been made, but that's different from making an actual watchphone.

The shopping cart is down right now, so I can't tell how much it is. How much is it?

I see a GSM 850/1900 version is coming but even the 900/1800/1900 tempts me a bit. :) GSM 1900 coverage here in Canada is reasonable. There are no sites here that are GSM 850 only.

The price on their website is $649 Australian which based on http://www.xe.com/ucc would be about $605 Canadian or $520 US. Kind of expensive but I think it's appropriate for what it costs to build an ultra-mini phone like this. Closest distributors to North America look like one in the US, and one in the Dominican Republic. Due to the high cost, would caution you should probably check to make sure it's in stock and ready to ship before you give them (or one of their distributors) a credit card number.

They just updated their website. While the M300 model was apparently a 900/1800/1900 triband, the fancier M500 model is apparently quad band. No price listed for the M500, it probably falls under the category of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." Still it's amazing they can build a quad band phone with a touch screen keypad, bluetooth, a PDA organizer, and an MP3 player into a wristwatch that weighs 60 grams :)

Apparently CECT of China is rushing a competing watchphone (in choice of colors) to market before SMS(who has repeatedly delayed release of their phone). Both are scheduled for release in early September:

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...78&newsLang=en

No word on the price of the CECT W100 or whether it's dual, tri or quad band gsm (if it's made only for the domestic Mainland China market, it may be only dual band). They even managed to squeeze in a camera. If it turns out it's a triband or quadband phone that's not too expensive, I might try ordering one through ebay and pretend I'm Dick Tracy :)

Just ordered a CECT M800 wristwatch phone on ebay yesterday(with postage and insurance added in it came out to US$157).

Link to a short review of it and a picture:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mobil...et-71095.shtml

Doesn't have a camera, but it only weighs 70 grams, has an MP3 and video player, bluetooth, a touchscreen triband 900/1800/1900 GSM phone (only the last frequency band will work in North America), and oh yes, it does tell the time. :)

Dealer is located in Hong Kong, so it may not show up in my mailbox for a while. Can't wait to try it with different sims and see how it works in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean.

Granted this is an oversized watch phone toy, but it should be a lot of fun to play with. I'll report on how it works when I get it.

It lacks a dual sim option :p

LOL, I'm not sure they could fit another sim card in something that small :)

Just got in the mail. Nice toy :)

Tried with call back and direct dial sims. All worked fine. Tried Beyond Wireless/AT&T-USA, Fido-Canada, Digicel-Bermuda, UM+, and Yackie Mobile. May also try with a T-Mobile/Tuyo chip when in a T-Mobile coverage area.

Dialing is by menu or virtual keyboard.

Texting is by handwriting recognition.

Amazing they can fit a phone in something this small. Receiver sensitivity is good. Tried calls both talking at my wrist (should be interesting trying that in public....), and via bluetooth.

Also has an MP4 audio/video player that plays either vertically or horizontally for video. Haven't converted files for it yet, but intend to. Also can play ebooks.

Instruction manual is in English and Chinese. No diagrams but can figure out most watch functions through the manual and rummaging through the menus on the phone.

USB cables provided to charge headset or phone. Cables connect either to a PC or to an included AC Adapter (110-240V AC; has rounds pins). Spare battery provided and sim cards easily install under the battery pack on the back of the phone.

USB drivers weren't included but were easily found by Windows XP on the internet (3 drivers were downloaded by the hardware installer when I plugged in the USB cable). USB cable can be used to either use the phone as a USB drive or as a communications cable to teather a device.

All in all a good value for US$157 with postage on ebay.

More competition here:
$159: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10479
$165: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10480

Phones are tri-band 900/1800/1900 and include Bluetooth, MP4, etc. Prices include air shipping from Hong Kong.

The deal extreme offer looks fair...article I saw had a suggested retail of $150, and you would expect a little more to cover their shipping cost.

Warning from mycellwatch.com forums is that you don't want to put any of these phones in flight mode (mobile phone off but everything else works) if it has a software version before mid-November because they may freeze up due to a software error. Apparently they rushed the first phones to market before they were thoroughly tested. Mine is OK, it has a Nov 17th software date. Can be checked with *#8375# code on phone.

I tried a T-Mobile USA reseller prepaid sim chip called Tuyo in it. Activated fine, and I set up the voicemail and tweaked the GPRS/GSM settings so I could access their website store in the browser (ringtones, wallpapers, etc.). Wow, that's an incredibly small screen for looking at the web! :)

M800
 

Gadget Ken, I can't get wap or DUN working on my M800 using T-Mobile.

I used an APN of internet2.voicestream.com and also tried wap.myvoicestream.com. Couldn't get the browser to work at all. Also, I can't figure out how to turn DUN on, though it's listed as a protocol. Do you have any advice?

When I set GPRS to Always On, I do get a "G" on the front page of the watch.

its water proof?

I have three of these no-name Chinese watch phones (M600 since 2007-12-04, N388 since mid-2008, & W08 since later in 2008) and the W08 seems to be the best one I got so far. The former two are only tri-band (900/1800/1900 MHz) while the W08 is quad-band. The W08 claims to be water-resistant to 3 bars but I doubt that. The N388 & W08 have cameras while the M600 doesn't. The units with cameras are very thick & wide (20 mm thick) compared to watches with phones in them, though someone used to wearing a Casio G-Shock would adjust easily. Firmware-wise, they all seem to have the same software with a few variations here and there. Only my W08 can vibrate, while the others just remain silent when calls come in even when the vibration setting is on. I bet that the much lower battery life on the W08 is due to the quad-band radio that unit has. The N388 seems to be the worst out of all three units I bought. It detaches from a plastic base, however what held it in the first place are just two plastic clips much like what one sees on a battery door. The N388 looks exactly like the 'Hyundai' W100. The M600 still works nicely these days even though I had to replace the strap twice. M600 has the worst reception but best battery life (once got 7 days standby from when the W08 would be lucky to last 2.5). By the way, all of these models I bought came with two batteries. It sucks that none of them have standard USB connectors on the devices themselves (though the W08 & N388 have jacks that look like mini-USB, they are not).

WAP works on these, however you must manually input all connection settings in the profiles. I have successfully got it working nicely with T-Mobile's & AT&T's set-ups. Even then, you can view only very small and extremely simple pages. The units run out of memory very quickly (anyone that uses older dumbphones probably knows what I'm talking about).

Firmware is very clunky if you ask me. You have to go through each and every menu and sub-menu to find some settings.

Using bluetooth or talking through the wrist-set's mic works OK for voice but my W08 has no mic on the device itself, forcing you to use bluetooth (not a big problem if you ask me). Expect maybe a couple hours talk time at most, maybe even an hour.

I mainly have an international SIM in whichever watch phone I am wearing to take advantage of the extra coverage one gets when using such SIMs. I find the display of the MCC/MNC in the alpha tag spot at times (this seems to happen more often with my int'l SIMs as opposed to local SIMs in the watch phone though) to be a cool geeky touch. Only placed two calls on these watch phones ever, just to show someone that it really works.

All in all, I find it cool to have one of these and have foregone regular watches for stuff that actually has connectivity. I do consider these at present to be novelty devices and wouldn't suggest replacing your regular phone with one of these. They are very cheaply made and using a tiny stylus for the resistive touch screen can get very frustrating at times. I do miss having the seconds and day of the week on the main display, as well as other wristwatch features such as a better stopwatch & countdown timer.

I can't wait till LG releases their first watch phone, the GD910, and hopefully shows us how it should be done.

If anyone has any questions relating to these, just fire away.