No, it’s not another phone watch that gets launched but never seems to actually be on sale in Australian stores.

It’s a designer watch from Fossil that uses Bluetooth to transmit the Caller ID of your caller to a small screen on the watch face, so you know who’s calling while the phone is still in your pocket, either by their phone number, or the name you have programmed for them in your phone book.

Of course if your caller has set their ID to ‘private’, you’ll still have to answer the call or screen it via voicemail to really know who’s calling.

The small rectangular screen you can see in the image above is where the number would appear, with the screen technology being ‘OLED’, or an organic light emitting diode. These screens require no backlight, as LCD screens do, as they emit enough light by themselves. OLED technology has matured to be seen in mobile phones and on some devices with smaller screens, along with demonstration units of TVs and LCD monitor replacements.

Arriving in November at US $249, the Fossile FX6001 also notifies you when your phone rings with a discreet vibrating sensation while it displays Caller ID details. When an SMS/text message is received the watch will vibrate and the text alert icon will appear. You can mute the phone’s ringer or reject a call by simply pushing a button on the watch.

Unfortunately you can’t read text messages on the watch’s screen. That would have been a handy feature, but you’ll still need to pull your phone out for that. Perhaps that feature will appear in the next model.

There’s no word on when it will arrive in Australia, but if you get your hands on one overseas, you’ll be able to use it with Sony Ericsson Bluetooth enabled mobile phones, and Series 60 phones using Symbian OS version 7, 8, and 8.1 (which includes those from Nokia).

Is simply displaying the Caller ID details on your watch enough? We feel that if it can do this, it should be able to stream SMS messages to the watch screen, and provide other connectivity – perhaps showing you other information that is meaningful in such a small screen. Weather forecasts through GPRS data on your phone, or the ability to display the time in a digital fashion are a couple of things we can think of right away.

Microsoft did release a watch that received information from broadcasts on the FM band, but they never made it to Australia. The Fossil watch is likely to appear, however – the rest of the Fossil range is easily found in watch stores over here. If you’re prepared to spend US $249 on a new toy, here it is… but for my money I’d be interested to see what extra features their ‘version 2.0′ model has, if and when they decide to release one, which probably won’t be until this time next year!

Until then – there are Bluetooth headsets with the same ability to display Caller ID – and you can always leave your phone on the table in plain view. Still, on the flipside, you’re likely to have your watch and your phone with you almost always, so it is a combination that will work for owners of this watch.

The watch is recharged through a USB cable or by the supplied universal AC adapter. Other features include a stainless steel case, water resistance to 3 ATM, mineral glass watch crystal, Bluetooth 2.0 compatibility, a 96×16 pixel OLED display, and 5-7 days of active battery life thanks to the use of a power save function.

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Entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 2:04 pm under Cell phones, Technology.

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