iWatch 2.0

I stopped wearing my watch years ago. Exactly when I realized I had been carrying my cellphone with me all the time. And the cellphone was showing time. And it had a calendar. And an alarm clock. I check the time quite rarely. I mean, I do not pull the phone from my pocket just to check the time. Clocks are everywhere. On car's dashboard, in public buses and trams, at airports.

But I do pull the phone from my pocket more often to check other things. Messages and notifications. I can predict the time quite accurately, but I find it hard to predict who has sent me the message that just vibrated in my pocket.

So here comes the Watch 2.0 idea. I will describe it using the Apple building blocks.

You have the iPhone in your pocket. It runs a number of apps. Email client. Twitter. Facebook. Calendar. Navigation. You are walking down the street. The phone vibrates. You stop, pull it out and see a new tweet. Or a calendar reminder. Or Navigation app telling you to turn left. You put the phone back in the pocket and continue walking.

Now picture this. There is an iPod Nano on your wrist. People already are doing this. But in the Watch 2.0 concept the Nano is connected to the iPhone via a Bluetooth Link. So you continue walking and the Phone vibrates, so you look at your watch and see this is the new tweet from someone you follow. Then it vibrates again, you look at the watch and this time there is an arrow from your navigation app pointing to the left, you turn left and continue the stroll.

Yes I know we have had similar things before. But they failed. And now they will not. There are several reasons to that.

First, the power consumption has been optimized. The latest iPhone has the latest Bluetooth 4.0 low power radio, known before as BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and renamed now to Bluetooth Smart. So the Nano (aka iWatch) will last a week, not a day. Second, our lives are now fully online - augmented and the stream of notifications we receive flows really quickly. Look around and you will see people walking staring at the phones they hold in hands. Not very convenient.

And the third, probably the most important reason, is the unified development platform. Using the Xcode integrated development environment you can create iOS apps that use the paired Nano as a second display. Well, actually, you cannot. Yet.

But the integration of an iPhone with an iPad Nano is the most obvious move for Apple. And an easy one too. They have all the building blocks. The Nano. The Bluetooth. The iPhone. The Xcode. And yes, people will be rushing to buy the new connected Nanos. And rushing to upgrade to the 4s (as the older iPhones do not have the low power Bluetooth). And rushing to upgrade the apps. One small step and a big market will be created.

The alternative scenario is the same, only there will be Google / Motorola instead of Apple. Android has long had the concept of application widgets, a natural way to adapt to a second display. Moto has already been experimenting with phone - connected gadgets, namely the MotoActv line. There may be other salvos fired by Sony (all Xperias have been equipped with the ANT+ low power radio for a long time) or Samsung (who is on fire on all fronts), but for successful proliferation there has to be support for the second wireless display natively built into the operating system. Hence my Apple / Googarola bet. And the prediction (80% probability) is we will see the concept announced this year. Afterall they both read my blog ;P.