Concept in Definition ABC

The evolution of smart electronic devices seems to have no end; First, our computers were equipped with something similar to the intelligence, thanks to the power of its hardware, and then our mobile (with the already ubiquitous smartphones) and even our television (who does not know the smart TV?).

Although they have been among us for some time, the last objects to embrace the paradigm of intelligence have been watches, creating what in English has been called smartwatch "Smart watch".

But how exactly do we define one of these devices?

A smartwatch is a device that takes the form of a wristwatch, but internally has a hardware from a mobile device such as a smartphone, allowing you to run applications and connect with the outside world

In short, it is a smartphone miniaturized and whose possibilities are adjusted to the size of the device.

A smartwatch has a processor and memory to be able to work like any smart device, whose structure is at a basic level that of a computer.

You also need to have an area of storage, even if only for the part of the apps that communicate with the cell phone.

For such communication, you need a tool, which in this case is Bluetooth, a wireless communications protocol for small distances, which in its latest versions supports low-consumption applications, something that suits a watch like a glove smart.

You also need a battery to keep all of this going hardware aforementioned, and a screen to display data and... Clear time! (If not, a good watch would be ...).

When the first smartwatch They were not well received by a part of the public, which was largely frustrated because their possibilities did not meet expectations.

However, I have always said that such frustration was due to many consumers not knowing -or they did not want to see that a watch cannot be compared to other devices in possibilities, it is something logical.

In the first place, by the screen, which is a maximum of an inch and a bit, with which the user interfaces are seen restricted to presenting few data, but also the input methods, since the same size of the screen prevents us from having, for example, a keyboard minimally useful touch, also making it difficult to write freehand.

Voice recognition is perhaps the only form of interaction with the user that is up to par with both these devices and others such as smart phones or touch tablets.

Neither the computing power can be the same given the size they present. In a space that is only a part of what the smartphones, there must be a series of components that play an equivalent role, so that with greater miniaturization capabilities are lost.

That is why these clocks download part of their workload on the cell phone, being the same watches, in the end, a means of receiving notifications and interacting to some extent with the telephone.

Anyone who currently buys a smart watch, and once the first wave of disappointed users has passed, usually knows exactly what he is buying and what it is going to do for him.

The latest generations of smart watches already incorporate elements that allow them to do without the cell phone to work on many occasions, as a direct cellular connection through an eSIM or a nano SIM, or GPS

Although the idea of ​​this is to be able to go out to do sport without taking the phone, the fields of action of the smartwatches independently are expanding, and with the potential growth of the hardware that awaits us in the future, it is logical to think that they will become more useful day by day and more dispensable to connect them to a cell phone.

Although smart watches seem like an invention of recent years, the truth is that the desire to wear a smart gadget on the wrist goes back much further. And if not, watch any James Bond film and they'll tell me.

The first wristwatches capable of connecting to a computer were the 1984 Seiko RC series, which could connect to the most popular PCs of the time.

In 1999 Samsung introduced the SPH-WP10, the first watch that also had mobile phone functions, but without doubtless it was the Fossil-Abacus Wrist PDA with Palm OS, the first device that we can consider as a smartwatch as such.

Why's that? Simple: because this is the first wristwatch that accepted the installation of applications, presenting practically all the characteristics of a modern smartwatch with the exception of wireless communications (it had to be connected with a cable to the PC).

Photos: Fotolia - Nataliya Yakovleva

Themes in Smartwatch