Dick Tracy's Gadgets Have Arrived

Smart Watch

Photo courtesy of Samsung

Dick Tracy's Gadget's Have Arrived
| Published March 3, 2014 |

By Thursday Review staff

In the classic newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy, which debuted in the 1930s, everyone’s favorite big city detective uses a high tech wristwatch to communicate quickly with fellow cops and police department brass. That iconic watch made its first appearance on January 13, 1946, and became a staple of the series for decades after its arrival as Tracy battled hoodlums like Flattop and Big Boy.

That was then, this is now.

Soon, (and without a detective’s gold shield) almost anyone can wear a wristband device with more technical capacity and computing power than your first desktop from the 1980s, and certainly more versatility than those two-way wrist radios of the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Competition among the companies making the devices is heating up with the same ferocity that we once saw with the breathtaking ascension of cell phones and wireless devices. The company that carves out the best niche for growing demand may become the next Apple or Microsoft, or at least “the Apple or Dell of watches.”

Equally competitive is the battle over the technology packed inside these wearable computers. Those companies making the software and the tiny chips that make the smart watches possible are fighting over the seemingly unlimited turf for the brains of these watches, much of it believed to have ever-expanding medical and health care uses.

The applications and functions of smart watches are nearly limitless, and their common uses are already include medical monitoring (heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, respiration, body temperature), athletics and exercise (heart rate—again—along with respiration and rate of calorie burn), communications alerts (they can inform you of an important email or text), data transfer (smart watches can then send any and all of the aforementioned data to your computer or smart phone, basically keeping all of your other devices in the loop on what you are doing at that moment). Many smart watches also have calendars.

Apple’s iWatch might one day do even more, and some of the smart watches to be released later this year and early in 2015 are rumored to have even more remarkable tools, including GPS technology and language translation apps.

But Samsung’s latest version, which falls into their subcategory “Galaxy Gear,” can send and receive calls and text messages—directly—without being a middleman for your phone or tablet or computer. That means that Samsung has finally bridged that gap between the cop sci-fi of Chester Gould’s classic comic strip hero and the technologies of the here-and-now. By popping open a small panel, you can talk or listen by holding the watch near your face and ear. Yes, think of Clint Eastwood in that movie in which he plays an aging Secret Service agent assigned to the President.

Galaxy Gear also has camera and video capabilities—limited, to be sure, but which Samsung assures us will see vast improvements very quickly. The Samsung devices have a simple point-and-click screen which enables users to touch the screen to make selections, such as watch (clock) or camera. Users will also have the option bring up instant functions like a dictation app for recording text messages and short emails, and can be programmed to remind you of appointments, phone calls, meds or special events. And like you smart phone, newer versions of the watches may also have the ability to keep you alerted to activity on social media, like Facebook or Twitter.

So companies like Samsung, Sony, Apple and Huawei are rolling out new and improved versions of these smart watches as fast as they can work out the bugs.

Some potential customers do not like the fact that Samsung (using a business model similar to Apple’s) has designed its smart watch to work only with Samsung products. But folks we talked to in the industry suggest that Samsung is already under pressure, internally and externally, to end that template and begin developing watches with the capacity to interact with other brands of technology.

The smart watches are expensive for now; some can cost as much as $300 to $400. But as is typical with new gadgets, industry experts expect that price tag to drop rapidly as demand picks up, technology improves, and other manufacturers pile on to the bandwagon. The cost of some smart watches next year could be as low as $175 to $200, putting their price tags on par with high end smart phones.

So, get ready for a lot more distractions as you walk through malls, drive your car or work your way through your office each day.

And did we also mention that these smart watched can tell you the time?

Related Thursday Review articles:

High Tech, You Can Wear; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; January 8, 2014.