Sony has just unleashed their new Xperia Smartwatch and if you’re wondering how it compares to their first attempt, the LiveView, or rivals like the WIMM One you’ll want to read on for details and impressions. This little Android-powered watch is quite unique with its OLED touchscreen display, but is it worth the buy? That is the question.
The Sony Smartwatch comes equipped with a 1.3″ color OLED display with full touchscreen capabilities, and even multitouch like pinch-to-zoom gestures. Everything is controlled with the 1.3″ 128 x 128 resolution display and all we have is a single power button on the side. Thankfully this time around Sony gave us full multitouch control as the original, the LiveView, was only capable of single taps and had touch-sensitive buttons around the display, which also made it larger and hard to handle.
For those that aren’t too familiar it doubles as a watch, and defaults to watch faces that are user customizable. Once engaged the color touchscreen turns on and goes into a higher power state for full usage. Using Bluetooth 3.0 the watch receives email and call alerts, can control your music, or help the fitness fanatic track their workout. Whether this is something you’ll actually use on a day to day basis is purely up to the user, but head on over to our sister site SlashGear from the link below for their video demonstration. That should help any considering the purchase.
The Sony SmartWatch is small and made of plastic so is extremely lightweight. The included watch strap makes it easy to wear daily but can also be clipped to a bag, or shoulder strap. Tap, swipes, and pinches are used to navigate the menu’s, sync to twitter or your device, and answer calls although it has no speakerphone or microphone to actually take or communicate calls. If we had Google’s voice actions I could truly see this being an awesome accessory. Without it, it’s merely a tool to help users decide if a tweet, call, or email is worth pulling their phone out of a pocket or bag to save some time.
Obviously the usage scenarios are highly subjective and will vary from user to user. Hit the link below to learn more in the full SlashGear review. The Sony Smartwatch will officially be available sometime in mid-April for around $119 and works great with Sony smartphones.
[via SlashGear]
