Msoft to release smart watch this year

Allegedly it will run on arm based processors. Sorry for the pun.

No word on what OS or dare I say framework that it will run on. I can’t wait to try out MS Office.

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Wearing a watch doesn’t make sense to me given I carry a phone and it has a watch and a bunch of other stuff, so a watch is unneeded redundancy as far as I’m concerned, but I’d consider wearing a sensor bracelet if the sensors are worthy (which makes me wonder why doesn’t my phone have a temperature sensor in it).

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2 use cases for me for a smart watch that pairs with my phone (aside from the sensors):

When riding my bike to work, I would love to have a remote display/control of my phone - to view SMS without stopping to pull the phone out of my bag; to be able to change the song Pandora is playing, etc.

If you are in meetings, not having to look at your phone for emails, SMS, calls etc would be nice.

@ mhectorgato - What sort of control would you want to use for changing tracks and reading SMS etc?

Would a long rectangular display rather than a more square display work for you?

Doesn’t something like the Samsung gear do this ?

In those 2 use cases, I wouldn’t be looking to do as much as on the device itself.

The primary useage would be to quickly see who messaging/calling me with enough information to determine if I need to respond. But other features listed below would be nice.

Control – my preference would be physical buttons of some sort, but touch screen could work as well.

Buttons:
Mode – cycle between modes
Several action buttons

Modes –

  • Time

  • Stopwatch; Actions:
    [ul]* start/stop
    lap
    clear
    reset
    save for upload (perhaps with some GPS coordination, one the phone device)[/ul]

  • SMS; Actions:
    [ul]List recent senders/time stamps
    Select to view from list

  • Respond with pre-programmed response (like “On my bike now, I’ll respond soon”)
    Would be nice to have several response options, so buttons to select which one[/ul]
  • Audio; Actions:
    [ul]Stop/Pause/Play
  • Next track
    Volume up/down (usually get headphones with a volume already)
    Not sure Pandora supports it, but buttons to “like”/“dislike” a song[/ul]

The items with * would be, for me, the minimum desired.


Display – Ratio is not important to me, as long as there’s enough rows of data to see:

Message Type (call, email, sms, etc)
Sender name
Message summary (maybe first x characters of the message)

It would be nice for the device to interface with Cortana :slight_smile: so that I could speak a text reply without pulling out the phone.

Another nicety would be A2DP perhaps to use the wearable as a speakerphone extension. But would be tricky when riding the bike to provide adequate volume and to cancel out the wind noise.

They only pair with only Samsung Android devices. I’ve got a Lumia.

@ mhectorgato - ta

Which means you are their tech assist and microbe.net is on the device.

@ njbuch - Nope…

I’m unleashing wearable madness on my own time :smiley:

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Pun intended?

@ mhectorgato - no idea what your talking about :whistle:

I only need three features in my smartphone:-

  1. Laser beam capable of cutting through iron bars.
  2. Voice communication with a self driving car.
  3. Show the current time.

I am willing to foresake the last feature.

Btw - I think future plans should allow for user defined messaging as well

@ mhectorgato - naturally…

If it can’t run VS 2013 then I don’t want it.
I need something I can code with at any free second I have 8)

For me, that’s not as important. I think the processor and communication intensive work would happen on the phone. The wearable tech should expose its sensor data for the phone.

If there’s expandability imo it should be via a MEF style extensibility, rather than getting at the source code. So a dev could write modules that plug into the wearable (like an app on a phone). But everyone has different wants/needs.

I think you didn’t understand. I want VS to run on the watch, so I can code anywhere, anytime :smiley:

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ha ha ha – brilliant!!! :clap:

I still use watches because I can get the time in a fraction of a second, as oppose to having to find my phone (which is not always on my person). It is because my phone is not always on my person and my watch is that I would def buy a “arm” watch if it worked flawlessly with phone7