Meet the Motorola Tracy XL watchphone, the first gadget watch to come right and out honour the founding father of mobile phone wristwatches. It’s just cropped up on Motorola’s website with some tasty artwork and Dick Tracy references aplenty – but as our trawl through the archives shows, it’ll take some work to avoid being consigned to the scrapheap of tech history, as previous watchphones have been.
Not much is known about this telephonic timepiece, but for a few brief minutes it was live on Motorola Mobility’s website, along with a Motorola Xoom 2 tablet and new Slinline, Zaha and Targa smartphones. That was just enough time for Pocketnow to snaffle up some (low res) screengrabs before Moto took it down, and we now know that it comes with a front facing camera for video chat, natch. Whether it simply syncs to an Android phone or acts as one itself remains to be seen however.
Haven’t we been here before? Five watchphones that have come and gone…
The LG Watch Phone was the boy’s toy of 2009, causing a sensation with its 3G video chat at CES in January, and then just as much hubbub when it went on sale through Orange in the UK in the Summer – and we brought you the first review. Shame about the £500 upfront pricetag.
Sony Ericsson LiveView
Sony Ericsson’s LiveView Bluetooth clip-on timepiece is actually an Android phone accessory, but it comes with its own strap so you can pop it on your wrist and go. It’s actually by far the most practical of any watchphone-type device here, letting you read messages and see who’s calling without having to fish your sensible/actual phone out of your pocket.
It’s not often we’ve regretted trekking out to the launch of a new bit of tech, but Swap’s just-for-the-sake-of-it watch phone was one of those times. Impressively, it managed to squeeze in hands-free calling, a web browser and video calling, as well as an absurd full QWERTY touchscreen keyboard. Impressively, it also managed to be horrendous to use.
inPulse Smart Watch
Long rumoured to be an in-house RIM made BlackBerry watch, the inPulse actually turned out to be a third party (Allerta), platform agnostic timepiece, that sucks in your BlackBerry notifications and even lets you control your iTunes and PowerPoint presentations through its touchscreen. It only costs $149 (£91), but good look tracking one down: inPulse has far more demand than supply right now.
Hyundai MB-910 Watchphone
The Hyundai MB-910 is the only watch phone on this list that actually aspires to look like an analogue clock – for better or worse. It also makes calls, plays MP3 tracks and even MP4 videos, and er, doesn’t ship in the UK.
