AfterDawn: Tech news

The Michael Bastian, HP designed smartwatch is the nicest looking yet

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 31 Oct 2014 11:05 User comments (6)

The Michael Bastian, HP designed smartwatch is the nicest looking yet The upcoming MB Chronowing, the smartwatch designed by designer Michael Bastian and tech giant HP, is easily the nicest looking watch to date but it will lack in many of the features seen in the Apple Watch or Android Wear.
MB Chronowings will not have a touchscreen, no mic, and no way to track your heart rate or steps but it will give you notifications of your texts, emails and notifications from a multitude of apps.

Says Bastian of the new watch: "How many times have you been in a lunch and someone keeps checking their phone?" The new watch is "intended to make you more polite." It does work with both iOS and Android and Bastian jokes that it has a "clock dial on the face, because that's the thing you're going to use 99% of the time."

The actual display is a monochrome LCD and it can show full messages, your stock portfolio, alarms, calendar events, the weather and more. On the side of the device are physical buttons (what are those?) that can be used to navigate the device, turn on the backlight (like Casio G Shock and other watches) and you can also control your music.



Because of the lack of a full touch color LCD screen, the device has a stated battery life of 7 days, easily beating out the current lineup of watches that last a day.

The device goes on sale through luxury flash sale site Gilt on November 7th with two models. The base model has leather, rubber and nylon straps for $349 while the special edition model is all black and has a sapphire-glass crystal and an alligator skin strap for $649.

There's a little bit more information here.







Previous Next  

6 user comments

11.11.2014 10:28

Wearable tech man...........only dorks, nerds, the socially-challenged, WHATEVER, wear this garbage.

Nothing like having a watch that tells you what your phone is already telling you. Nothing like saving time (a cpl of seconds) by streamlining the ability to check what the phone in your pocket is trying to tell you by looking at your wrist. 3 seconds saved...YES!!!!!!!!!

21.11.2014 15:51

Originally posted by hearme0:
Wearable tech man...........only dorks, nerds, the socially-challenged, WHATEVER, wear this garbage.

Nothing like having a watch that tells you what your phone is already telling you. Nothing like saving time (a cpl of seconds) by streamlining the ability to check what the phone in your pocket is trying to tell you by looking at your wrist. 3 seconds saved...YES!!!!!!!!!
Most professionals cannot take their phones out of their pockets repeatedly throughout the work day.

31.11.2014 18:01

Originally posted by DVDBack23:
Most professionals cannot take their phones out of their pockets repeatedly throughout the work day.
If you are doing anything more than telling the time by glancing to your watch then what is the difference? If anything, it is more obnoxious for a "professional" who shouldn't be using their phone (and I think this is the minority now anyway) to be doing it on their niche product smartwatch.

43.11.2014 19:44

Originally posted by hearme0:
Wearable tech man...........only dorks, nerds, the socially-challenged, WHATEVER, wear this garbage.

Nothing like having a watch that tells you what your phone is already telling you. Nothing like saving time (a cpl of seconds) by streamlining the ability to check what the phone in your pocket is trying to tell you by looking at your wrist. 3 seconds saved...YES!!!!!!!!!
I'm always worried that something in my pocket will fall out when I take my phone out. I need to be able to check emails and texts constantly but since my hands are usually tied with doing something, it takes effort to pull my phone out, turn the screen on, check, put it back away, then set everything back up to continue what I had been doing for the last hour.
Having a smartwatch with an always on screen that shows me alerts would save me considerable amount of time and effort. I'm not saying this is a justification for everyone but for my career it is.

54.11.2014 15:47

And you're all NERDS! :)

People been pulling phones in/out/in/out/in/out for YEARS w/o issue........now that the NERDS have something that can be openly worn w/o looking 'too much' like a dork, you're all flocking to it as a purported 'solution' to a problem that's NOT A PROBLEM.

Too funny. I'm the network engineer that never nerded out and I also ditched my cellular yr and half ago so I'm just laughing my ass off.

66.11.2014 02:03

Originally posted by hearme0:
And you're all NERDS! :)

People been pulling phones in/out/in/out/in/out for YEARS w/o issue........now that the NERDS have something that can be openly worn w/o looking 'too much' like a dork, you're all flocking to it as a purported 'solution' to a problem that's NOT A PROBLEM.

Too funny. I'm the network engineer that never nerded out and I also ditched my cellular yr and half ago so I'm just laughing my ass off.
Lol cry some more. Things change, deal with it. Smartphones didn't have such large displays back in the day and they are way likely to fall and break especially when taking out of the pocket.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

VLC hits milestone: over 5 billion downloads VLC hits milestone: over 5 billion downloads (16 Mar 2024 4:31)
VLC Media Player, the versatile video-software powerhouse, has achieved a remarkable feat: it has been downloaded over 5 billion times.
1 user comment
Sideloading apps to Android gets easier, as Google settles its lawsuit Sideloading apps to Android gets easier, as Google settles its lawsuit (19 Dec 2023 11:09)
Google settled its lawsuit in September 2023, and one of the settlement terms was that the way applications are installed on Android from outside the Google Play Store must become simpler. In the future, installing APK files will be easier.
8 user comments
Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments

News archive