I had pre-ordered the Meta Watch almost 3 months ago from Texas Instruments and it finally arrived today. 

What exactly is a Meta Watch? Meta Watch is a developer-friendly instrument to heighten user engagement and drive app usage. Meta Watch, when paired with smart phones, enable new kinds of glanceable interactions. In the same way that glancing at a wristwatch is simpler than pulling out a pocket watch to check the time; glancing at Meta Watch is simpler than pulling your phone out of a pocket or handbag to view alerts, notifications, and cloud-based information.

Hands On

The Meta Watch arrived in a small neat retail box pictured above. This watch is a development watch and as such is not ready for the end user. The box contents had the Meta Watch, USB charging cable with a programmable clip that is used to charge the watch and a sheet documenting warranty info, FCC info. I had to go to the Meta Watch website to download the user manual. The user manual was well written and had most of the info I needed to get it up and running. 

The Meta Watch is charged through a programmable pin clip which attaches to the watch connecting the 4 pins to the back of the watch. When it is connected to the PC that supports the flash emulator USB drivers, it can reflash, debug and program the Meta Watch. The Meta Watch requires about 4 hours to initially charge to it’s full capacity. As with every Bluetooth device, it is good to leave it on charge when you are asleep. I haven’t had a chance to test the battery life yet. I will update this blog when I have done more thorough testing.

The Programmable clip which also charges the Meta Watch

Pairing was fairly straightforward. There are a few steps here before the Meta Watch displays useful info. Once you finish pairing, you will need to download the Meta Watch apk file from the Meta Watch website. Once installed, it needs to be started and there are a few settings and what kind of notifications you want displayed like SMS, Gmail, K9 Mail, Alarm, Music track and artist info, Font size, Weather location and a few other settings (pictured below)

The Meta Watch Android Software. Sorry had to take a pic since Android doesn’t allow me to take screenshots from a non rooted phone.

Once all the settings are done, the Meta Watch automatically gets the time and weather info from the phone. The LCD display looks great and comes in 2 formats. One is the normal black on white and the reverse display of white on black. They both look good. Some prefer the reverse display. I do like the normal black on white display. It just looks like the display is on a mirror. The main screen displays the following: time, AM or PM, weather with a graphic, temperature in C or F, High temp and low temp and below that you have the missed calls, number of SMS received and your mail count.

The Meta Watch has a nice screen that shows the basic info.

The information displayed was not in real time and was very slow. Sometimes as long as 2 to 3 minutes. If you receive a call or SMS, it can take up to 3 minutes for the message to show. I couldn’t find any setting to speed that up. One would hope with later firmware updates this will show almost instantly. After all it is transmitting info through Bluetooth. I found this quite frustrating. As for SMS, the Meta Watch displays the full message and the sender as well, however it does so just for a short time. So if you miss this message then you are out of luck. It will show the SMS count so you can check your phone. It is the same when you get a missed call. It will either show the number or the persons name if you have the number in your address book. It would be nice when a call comes in, you can look to your watch and find out who’s calling before you go for your pocket. Hopefully that will come soon with an update.

An incoming SMS notification

Note that the Meta Watch will only work with Android based Mobile phones and will not work with an iPhone. On the Samsung Galaxy S2, the Meta Watch software kept crashing often. It worked fine on the HTC Sensation.

This is what the Meta Watch reversed screen looks like

In a Press Release dated today Meta Watch was acquired by a team of investors: Meta Watch^TM Ltd. announced today that a team of investors led by Juha Pinomaa, former President of Suunto and a former Nokia executive, acquired the Meta Watch branded connected watch business and related IPR assets from Fossil, Inc. Joining Pinomaa as investors and key managers are Bill Geiser and David Rosales, who previously led Fossil’s Watch Technology Division.

Conclusion:

The Meta Watch is pretty raw around the edges and still has a way to go before it is ready for end use. However the potential for this watch is enormous and it can go a long way especially since the software is open source and once developers start getting hold of this watch and start doing cool things, I reckon this watch will do quite well. I can see this doing a lot of great things and I am looking forward to some updates. If you are a developer the Meta Watch is worth buying. End users should wait for some time before rushing to buy it. 

 Pros:

• Nice looking watch with a genuine leather strap
• Screen looks great
• Reverse LCD screen option
• Displays SMS and Emails
• Has great potential 

Meta Watch Rating

UPDATE: I am currently using the Google Nexus One with the Meta Watch and the information coming now to the screen is instant. The reason for this is the HTC Sensation nor the Samsung Galaxy support the SPP Bluetooth profile as a result causing the delay information to the watch. Although if the majority of the phones dont support this then the watch is going to have issues with a lot of users.