The latest gadget to hit our shelves over the next few months will be SWAP’s (Smart Watch and Phone) mobile watch, and hopes to entice the public with its delightfully vivid colours and features. But with a tag price at £189.99, who is going to shell out money for what is effectively a wrist watch that doubles up as a phone?
The SWAP watch is aptly named the Rebel; it is ambitious in its design, and will no doubt blind rivals with its choice of colours (bright pink, yellow, orange, green, black and white). After getting over my initial ‘wtf’ reaction at the colour (bright orange), I began to discover the pros and the cons of the Rebel.
Features:
In-built USB port
Earphones and FM Radio
In-built camera/video recorder
SIM card port
Colour and touch screen
Miniature stylus
Comfortable rubber material
The Good:
Using your SIM card, the watch easily transforms from a regular watch to your mobile phone.
Text messages are easy to find with the envelope clearly sign-posted.
Calling a friend just needs you to access your phonebook and push a button, not too difficult to get
your head around!
The colour screen looks good, and even though it’s a small screen you can still see all the icons/words.
It plays a welcoming tune on turning the device on or off.
It is relatively light, so won’t weigh you down.
The inbuilt camera is clear and detects objects easily.
The screen turns itself off after a few seconds to conserve energy and battery power.
Voice calls are clear and the microphone can detect your voice from a fair distance (30cm or so).
It comes with earphones so that you can listen to the radio while you’re on the go (I listened to Capital FM while walking around the house). The signal is also good in an indoor environment.
The radio cuts off as soon as a call comes through, so you’ll never miss a call again.
The Bad:
The watch is far too bulky to wear for everyday use, and I wouldn’t recommend it for women with small wrists!
The colour is far too bright, plus it’s plain with no desirable patterning.
The watch comes with a stylus that fits easily into a small compartment, but it’s far too small and could easily be lost amongst other things. To try and find it would literally be trying to find a needle in a haystack!
The stylus doesn’t respond well to the screen, and it takes numerous attempts to press the correct button.
Trying to text is an absolute nightmare! The stylus often misses the desired letter, which results in your message taking far too long to type.
You cannot change the background or the clock face on the screen, so if you don’t like it then tough!
The menu screen is rather limited, and frustrating to navigate with both the stylus and your finger.
When using the camera/video recorder it is difficult to place the gadget in a suitable location to take the picture/film so that you often end up with a blurred or out-of-focus image.
The Rebel watch certainly has some great features and is brilliant as a convenient, on-the-move gadget. However, some of the features just don’t cut it, and need to be rigorously improved to come up to scratch with other technology in this field. I admire the product for its ambitious attempt, but with the current retail price, I’m not entirely sure it will be a success.
