Lately There's been a lot of commercials on TV advertising sales for the blu-ray DVD of the "X-Men: Day's of Future Past" movie. In case you're a bit foggy it's the 2014 sequel to the X-Men movie franchise centering around time travel and terminator like machines known as "Sentinels" who capture people with special abilities. Now I know you're probably asking yourselves what this all has to do with smartwatches but it really got me to thinking about how a lot of today's futuristic tech trends seem to be based off old innovations that fell out of popularity because they were ahead of their time. It's like we knew the future before it happened then forgot about it and now we're stuck in deja vu. The tech industry routinely revisits old trends and "smartwatches" are no exception. By definition a smartwatch is a computerized wristwatch with functionality that goes beyond that of basic timekeeping. The concept isn't new, in fact tech companies have been pushing the boundaries of what watches could do for years. Back in the late 80's I remember seeing calculator watches on older kids then in the early 90's when I was about ten I got one myself. While Mrs. Wright was checking our algebra answers out on the board using "PLEASE EXCUSE MY DEAR AUNT SALLY" I was able to punch those same equations into my watch and have the answer seconds.
You could easily do the same thing with any standard calculator but doing it on your watch just made you feel cooler. All the best specialty watches were always made by Casio Ltd. They were the kings of novelty, always thinking outside the box and bringing new and unusual things to market. Casio made this thing called the TM100 Transmitter watch back in the late 80's which let you transmit any audio your watch picked up to nearby radios. At first we were using them as practical jokes by setting up table top radios to receive the frequency and waiting for unsuspecting victims to walk by. My personal favorite was when people pretended they were stuck in the radio and couldn't get out like the kid in Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
Around about the year before I graduated from high school Casio came out with this cool watch that took pictures. The face acted as a LCD for viewing what you were taking pictures of and the camera lens was on the front edge of the watch where a blue arrow pointed. It was like something out of an spy movie where you'd see secret agents taking pictures of classified documents with their watches. The best thing about it was how convenient it was. You always had a camera attached to your body to catch those fleeting moments. Today's smartphones aren't nearly as handy; their large screen sizes don't really make for a very pocket friendly experience and ironically this makes them easily forgotten or left behind.
I guess the question I have after all the nostalgia is are the new smartwatches really better? I mean take the Apple Watch, the Pebble and all the Google Watches for example. Apps considered they're all pretty multifaceted and provide users with a lot of useful information but in terms of hardware there is still the issue of not being able to take pictures.
