Windows Phone Thoughts: Got The Time? The SPOT Watch Review

Jan 30th, 5:07 PM – I asked a friend to send me a message, and the option wasn’t showing up in his version of Messenger, so I don’t think it’s compatible with Messenger 4.7. Not surprising – the entire Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger versioning is a complete debacle anyway. :roll: Another friend had MSN Messenger 6.1 installed, and he was able to send me a message…but I’m still waiting for it. Aha! It just came in at 5:09 PM, so roughly two minutes. Not bad at all! A news flash came in at the same moment, and it’s not really obvious how to switch between them, but I guess the manual method will have to do.


Figure 9: A message sent by a friend. Notice how big the font is, and how little text can fit on the screen at one time - only eight characters. It makes for some rather nonsensical messages on first glance. I would have preferred to see the first display of the message not waste space on the time/date stamp, and have the FROM name in a much smaller font. Actually, everything should be in a smaller font on this watch...

Note to MSN Direct: in Canada, we use something called “Celsius” for measuring temperature. If the system is smart enough to know I’m in Calgary by looking at my Passport preferences, why can’t it figure out what my weather should be in Metric measurements? After poking around in the settings for a minute I found the function to switch it to Metric, so the problem is solved, but that should be automatic.


Figure 10: There are two choices for transitions on the watch (Cross Fade and Flash Fade), and this is an example of the Cross Fade in action. Not exactly smooth, but it works.

I find it irritating that when you view a message or news item, it doesn’t seem to go back to the “home” screen after a certain period of time. It just sits at the message until you force your way through the menu back to the clock. In fact, the design of this seems to be focused on having no “home” screen – rather, it stays on whatever you last were looking at. That seems illogical somehow, because what possible reason would there be for me to stare at the same message multiple times a day?

The “watch face of the month” I requested just came in, and it was horrifically ugly 8O , so when it asked “Keep? Yes/No”, I deleted it right away. That’s a nice touch.