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Resolved Question

Why haven't wristwatches added this feature?

Sep 6, 2011 12:37AM PDT

Since watches no-longer just SHOW time, on their face, with many having stop-watches, medicine alarms, and a host of other features, I am wondering if anyone has thought of adding caller I.D., with name, to the watch.

My thought is that, like pre-paid phone service, a customer should be able to enter name, address, and so on, on a web-site, which would, then send a code, to the watch, (sent the same way as Atomic clocks self-set).

The watch would, then be "connected", via wireless connection, such as 900 MegaHertz, to the persons own home phone.

As a ressult, when a person is AT home, they wont have to run to the caller I.D., to see who is calling. Their watch would, automatically, switch from time-showing, to show who is calling. When their phone stops ringing, the wrist-watch would revert back to time keeping mode.

I am sure that such an addition would be possible. If watches can be made to TALK to the blind, then, surely, they can be programmed, for caller I.D.

Has anyone done this, yet? If so, please submit web-address, and model number.

Discussion is locked

powderpuff2364 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Those did show up years ago.
Sep 6, 2011 1:03AM PDT

Was it the Microsoft Spot? and other wristwatches tried it years ago. The problem is that the engineering cost has to be amortized over the unit sales. Folk also didn't like charging their watches every day or week.

So nothing stopped such from being possible but it was not what enough folk wanted.
Bob

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LG had something
Sep 6, 2011 11:32AM PDT

LG had something like this too a year or two ago. It was basically a smartphone that was about the size of a calculator watch. I highly doubt it functioned all that effectively, and was quickly buried. Assuming it ever even made it to market. While it might be kind of cool from a purely "Hey, lookit at way we did!" viewpoint, practically there would be so many engineering tradeoffs that would have to be made to get the cost down to anything even remotely close to what people would be willing to pay... Then the idea of having to hold your wrist up to your mouth like you're some kind of secret service agent or something would likely get old real fast.

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Sorry to tell you this.
Sep 7, 2011 12:30AM PDT

Jimmy, I am sorry to have to tell you this, but, telephones, on wristwatches ARE available, TODAY. They are just not priced for the average purchaser. I saw them, in use, on one of those primetime news shows.

As for your reply, I believe that you MIS-understood the question.

I was NOT asking if telephones could be placed into watches, I was asking about caller I.D., alone.

My entry was asking if any company might sell a wristwatch, which had caller I.D. built in.

Reason: I thought it would be easier to be ableto look at ones wrist, to find out who is calling. My entry said nothing about answering the phone. It was about having caller I.D. at ones finger-tips.

I apologize for my entry not being clear enough for your to understand it, easily.

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No, I got that
Sep 7, 2011 11:08AM PDT

No, I got that, but what you didn't quite seem to get is that why stop at just caller ID? Besides the fact that you'd need some kind of hard link to the phone line in the residence or a separate transmitter. The former would kind of defeat the purpose I would think, and the latter is just one more reason why it wouldn't work. We won't get into the physics of antennas.

Anyway, why would companies stop at just caller ID? Why not just go and make it a full fledged cordless phone? And then why not just make it a full fledged cellular phone if you're going to do that much? The amount of difficulty between those is pretty negligible really. It might even be easier to make a cell phone in watch form than any kind of cordless phone.

All of this also completely ignores the fact that people are abandoning landlines in ever greater numbers, so the growth market for any product like this would be to have a cell phone in wristwatch form factor. Who wants to spend millions of dollars developing something that has a shrinking userbase?

My apologies if I incorrectly assumed that you were doing the same basic analysis in your head. I sometimes forget that things that are almost second nature to me, do not necessarily come easy to others.

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Answer
How many homephones do you know ...
Sep 7, 2011 1:06AM PDT

that wirelessly connect to a predefined external device (such as a watch) to show the caller-ID if somebody calls in. Without such a phone, it wouldn't work.

Now imagine you have such a watch and your partner has such a watch also. Then the homephone would either have to use some broadcast protocol or be able to connect to 2 different watches at the same time.

With many different home phone makers and even more watchmakers, this seems to call for some IEEE standard before anyone would even consider making either a watch or a phone that does it.

Kees