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

Jan 31st, 4:45 PM – I now remember why I don’t wear watches. Whenever I start to get even a little bit physically overheated, the watch strap irritates the heck out of my arm, and off it goes. I was at a meeting this morning near a fireplace, and I happened to be wearing a sweater, so I was toasty warm in no time, and the watch strap was driving me crazy.

One thing I don’t like all that much is the buttons on the watch. Like many computer users, I have reoccurring RSI issues, and repetitive short muscle motions cause me discomfort. The buttons on the Fossil Abacus take too much force to press in for my comfort, and my right arm felt a little sore after spending several minutes going through the functions on the watch. I’d like to see a different button design, perhaps one based on touch-sensitive buttons.

Jan 31st, 8:10 PM – It seems that not all MSN Messenger clients support the “Send to Watch” functionality. A friend in Italy uses the Italian version of MSN Messenger, version 6.0, and he doesn’t have the option to send a message to my watch. I think others ran into this issue too, because when I turned on my mobile phone I had six SMS messages – which tells me that that people either missed the Watch option when they were looking at the options, or they didn’t have it. Confusion like that won’t help this watch get off the ground, that’s for sure!

Feb 1st, 5:35 PM – I’ve been wondering why my appointments weren’t synchronizing, but I realized now that I never downloaded the Outlook add-in to make it possible. I somehow assumed that when I checked off the box and clicked “OK” it would have triggered some sort of slick ActiveX install, so I thought there was a bug in the Web page.

Feb 1st, 8:37 PM – I’ve now installed the Outlook add-in for syncing my appointments, but when I click the button on the toolbar, nothing happens. There’s no dialogue box, no pop-up window, and no indication that…oops. I forgot, I need to reboot my computer before it would work. Don’t you just hate software that asks for that? I often have five things open at once, so rebooting isn’t an option until I’m finished everything. Here are a few screen shots of the process:


Figure 16: First you authenticate with your passport...


Figure 17: ...then you select how you want the updates to work. Setting it at automatic is the only logical choice, isn't it?


Figure 18: This is the final step where it tells me 20 appointments have been uploaded. I believe it sends out six days worth of appointments, though I'm sure there are limits to the total number. Perhaps it's the next 20 appointments, regardless of date?


Figure 19: An example of what an appointment reminder looks like.


Figure 20: The calendar month view. Useful for finding out what day of the week a certain day is, but not much else - there's no availability data, which isn't surpsing given the low resolution of the display.

I’m not completely sold on the news feed functionality. It gives you the headline and one to two sentences, which is enough to give you only the most basic bits of info about the story. For some stories, that’s enough – it covers the who/what/where/when, but rarely the why. In other cases, the news blurb is only enough to make you want to read more.


Figure 21: An example of the news feed.