“Support incoming calls with big head sticker…” “Support incoming call vibration…” “Personality design and delicate craftsmanship, having flown line figure.” These are some humorously translated and hefty promises for these quirky Chinese made phones that will operate on some US GSM phone carriers. All you need to do it place in your SIM card and you are good to go. Make sure your carrier is on the correct GSM frequency.
I would have whined up a storm for something like this when I was a kid. Totally secret agent kind of stuff. I mean, it’s not just a phone on your wrist, but the little color touch screen, pull out stylus, promise of media play back, Bluetooth, and other features just about makes me want to sink the under $200 into one of these phones to play with it. Prices start at about $130. Wearing one of these will make me look like a dork socially (note to Bluetooth headset wearers everywhere), but my young relatives would love it!
You can visit the spec pages to read about the long list of features these wrist watch phone purportedly have. Don’t count on it all, but it is probably safe to say that they at least work. These aren’t going to be streamlined tools having gone through testing, but the low cost and ability to swap SIM cards might make them worth it for those interested enough. Check the links for an eBay seller who has a good deal of them. They each come with chargers and data transfer tools. I’d imagine the English translated software is about as good as the English on the eBay pages.
One of the pictured models has a key pad right on the strap. That is pretty cool actually. Now you just have to imagine holding your wrist up to your ear to talk, Dick Tracy style. “What’s that Chief?” You’ve got the picture. There is actually nothing particularly outstanding from a technological standpoint about these watches. We can make very small cellphones, but we are really limited by practicality, battery size, and sheer ergonomics. Watch phones like these are social experiments in what might come next. If they grow popular, more will pop up. Right now, it is nice to know that watch phones exist, at least somewhere, and it is cool that they will work in the US (AT&T and T-Mobile).
See Chinese Watch Phone Store on eBay [UPDATE 02-25-2014 — Sadly, this store on eBay is now defunct].
[phpbay]watch phone, num, “14324”, “”[/phpbay]