More and more folks these days are leaving their wristwatches at home because they always carry a mobile phone on their person, which functions less like a wristwatch than it does a pocketwatch. Well there is a reason the pocketwatch fell out of mainstream use behind the wristwatch: convenience. Who wants to fish it out of a pocket and flip it open (or light up the screen) every time they need to check the time? Not I, says I!
I'm known to folks who know me as a bit of a gadget freak. I always have some fancy doohickey with me (portable battery backup, radar detector, iPod nano wristwatch, Android tablet, Android smartphone, Bluetooth earpiece, etc.). Despite all this technology, I still enjoy the convenience of a wristwatch.
The only downside to the wristwatch comes in winter when I wear jackets which cover up the watch. What an annoyance it is to pull back a tight-fitting sleeve just to check the time. But wait! I shouldn't have to.... I wear a Plantronics Voyager Pro HD Bluetooth, which tells me things like battery life, remaining talk time, and connection status at the tap of a button. Even works with gloves on. There's even a Plantronics app which displays the battery life on my phone screen. Clearly, communication between headset and phone is not a problem.
So how about a simple button (or tap sequence) on the headset which speaks the time in my ear? That is all.-- 21 Quest, Mar 13 2013 //when I wear jackets which cover up the watch
Yes, it's really annoying to us people who don't wear watches (allergies to plastic and metal) as we either have to fish out the mobile or wait until spring to find out what the time is, because we can't see yours.-- not_morrison_rm, Mar 13 2013 This could actually be done quite simply with an app, which would be compatible with just about any Bluetooth earpiece that supports streaming media. Configure the app to autorun when the earpiece is connected to the phone and stream the spoken time to the earpiece when it detects, say, a half-second press of the talk button. The actual button used or the tap/press length/ sequence may have to vary depending on the button presets configured at the factory into the earpiece, but a well- programmed app ought to be able to work something out.-- 21 Quest, Mar 13 2013 + This idea is well-baked enough IMHO to warrant a letter to Plantronic’s customer feedback folk – seems like it could make enough happy customers that they’d be inclined to get it into popular phone app stores PDQ. It’s niche-y, though. Around the turn of the millennium, lots of gadget wisdom predicted that we’d all have “personal area networks” (Bluetooth was a popular, but not the only, approach and protocol being discussed) connecting lots of little gadgets squirreled around our various pockets and protuberances – a buttonless wireless network appliance in one pocket, it’s viewer and keys on a worn wristwatch, or palmheld size device, something stuck in our ear for sound and voicepickup. To these folks’ surprise, the market field was won by one-piece do-it-all devices – Palmpilots, iPods, iPhones, etc, the Bluetooth headset being one of the few predicted pieces that retained some popularity. Even that popularity is narrowspread – cellphones with built-in pop-out headsets came and left the market faster than I could buy one.
My guess is that this trend will continue, with convenient do-it-all gadgets dominating over PAN- connected ones except among eccentrics. Much current wisdom is eyeing Google Glass as the next killer gadget class (prototype Glasses are wifi and Bluetooth-only, but I expect a cellphone to be offered at or soon after public rollout). I have a hunch headsets with integral cellphones – either simple voice or talking/voice controlled smartphones – without the Glass’s AR eyepiece, may compete successfully with Glass class gadgets.-- CraigD, Mar 13 2013 good in its simplicity. [+]-- sqeaketh the wheel, Mar 15 2013 It would be more sensible to wear clothes with a transparent section in the sleeve.-- hippo, Mar 15 2013 Following that to its logical conclusion, it might well be more sensible to simply go naked.-- 21 Quest, Mar 15 2013 Or to live in a giant clock and never leave it?-- pocmloc, Mar 16 2013 //Or to live in a giant clock and never leave it
The Earth?-- not_morrison_rm, Mar 19 2013 random, halfbakery