Smartphone Thoughts: Got The Time? The SPOT Watch Review

Feb 2nd, 3:13 PM � The battery life drain seems to have accelerated lately, I�m now down to 27%. I don�t feel I�ve been using the watch more in the last 24 hours than the first 24 hours, but I haven�t been tracking my behavior all that closely.

Feb 2nd, 10:25 PM � The watch just warned me that the battery life was down to 20%, and it switched to Low Battery Mode. I�m not sure what that means, but I imagine the radio has turned off now. I guess it�s time to recharge! Not bad on battery life: roughly four days and 11 hours (107 hours of battery life). When you place the watch on the charging cradle, it lights up and makes a beep when it has a solid connection for charging. That�s a nice touch � users need feedback to know if they�ve done something correctly or not.

Feb 3rd, 2:45 PM � My watch just beeped at me, and I assumed it was reminding me about an appointment I have in 15 minutes. Instead, when I looked down at the watch the screen was blank. After a few seconds, I saw a Microsoft and Fossil logo � the watch had rebooted on me! After the reboot, it looks like things are more or less wiped out. The watch was displaying 12:00 PM (thankfully it wasn�t blinking - that would just be creepy), and in looking at the settings, I have 0% signal strength. The battery level is at 98%, so it wasn�t an issue of power. It will be interesting to see how the watch �repairs� itself � if it doesn�t, I�m not sure what to do. Re-register it with the MSN Direct service? It's not like Sprite Software backups "SPOT Backup Software" just yet...

Feb 3rd, 5:50 PM � Good news! Within five minutes, my watch had the correct time from the network, and within another 30 or so minutes I had all my information back onto the watch � calendar appointments, etc. Very cool! A �self healing� device that re-syncs with the network is a brilliant idea. Someone in the Pocket PC group should take note of this. ;-)

Feb 5th, 2:20 PM � Things with the SPOT watch are now more or less �there�. I know what I can use it for, and what I can�t. One thing I find a little irritating is how news comes in under the Messages category. To me, Messages should be reserved for instant messages from people, and news should be for news. I don�t quite grasp the difference between News and Messages � I wonder if the news in the Messages category is the �Breaking News� category. Ah yes, look at the description here:



What does that mean exactly? That regular news is somehow delayed, and in order to get breaking news I have to subscribe to the Breaking News channel? I�m going to turn that feature off, along with a few of the hard news channels I�m subscribed too. It�s a little psychologically depressing to be getting disaster news sent to your watch on a regular basis. Maybe the Space.com channel will be happier. ;-)

I�m in the MSN Direct Web page not tweaking my options a little, and I just noticed that you can configure the way the Glance function works. So, for instance, I really only want the Weather and Calendar channels on my glance, not news, so I can adjust that. Nice!

I just took the watch off the charging stand, where I had left it for the past 24 hours. It immediately started binging at me with appointments from yesterday � why didn't they trigger yesterday? It seems as though when the watch is charging it's suspended to some degree. Although there might be a technical reason for why that is, I think it's a bad design decision. A device that you rely on for appointment reminders should always trigger those reminders, regardless of what state it's in (other than dead from lack of power of course).