Fossil Wrist PDA Named Best of COMDEX

Posted By: Ryan Thursday, November 21, 2002 4:38:46 PM

Fossil Palm OS Wrist PDA ~ Click For LargerFossil, today announced its Palm Powered WRIST PDA was named "Best of COMDEX" in the mobile devices category at COMDEX Fall 2002 by show organizer Key3Media Group Inc. and sponsor PC Magazine. Other products in the mobile devices category included the HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5400 and the Nokia 3650 phone.

Fossil's WRIST PDA with Palm OS is the first truly wearable Palm Powered device that provides consumers convenient access to information while on-the-go, in a sleek and compact form factor. It features an illuminated 160 x 160 touch screen with a stylus integrated into the band for Graffiti input, 2MB internal memory, Rocker switch user interface, infrared port to support beaming between all Palm Powered devices, rechargeable battery, and classic Palm OS applications including: Address Book, Date Book, Memo Pad, Calculator and To Do List.

"We are very excited to be chosen as the best mobile device at COMDEX. This award recognizes the Fossil WRIST PDA with Palm OS as the first wearable Palm Powered product of its kind that combines the functionality of the Palm OS and the portability of a wrist watch," said Donald R. Brewer, vice president of technology for Fossil, Inc.

"We are delighted that Fossil won the Best of COMDEX award in the mobile devices category since it validates Fossil's expertise in creating successful consumer devices and confirms PalmSource's strength in developing the best platform for mobile devices," said David Nagel, president and chief executive officer for PalmSource, Inc. "We look forward to Fossil's development of future innovative and diversified products that extend the reach of the Palm OS."

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Surprising

sr @ 11/21/2002 4:57:46 PM #
I didn't expect that watch to raise that much interest. Kind of funny considering PocketPC users thought Dell would steal the show with Axims! :)

RE: Surprising
masitti @ 11/21/2002 8:14:08 PM #
I do. It's awesome innovation as well as advancement in technology... :)

------------------------
Mario Masitti
O/T Mod
I Love Tennis :)
RE: Surprising
Foo Fighter @ 11/21/2002 9:57:19 PM #
sr: "Kind of funny considering PocketPC users thought Dell would steal the show with Axims! :)"

Personally, I think Dell's device is going to be a huge flop. The Direct sales model won't work in the consumer electronics market. Axim is a brick, and Dell thinks it will sell on price alone..which proves they know nothing about the PDA market.

Even if it does take off, it will do far more damage to other PPC licensees than either Palm or Sony.

"it's better to be a pirate than join the navy." - Steve Jobs

RE: Surprising
TDS Computer @ 11/21/2002 11:23:30 PM #
Thats a good point. Dell's price point may scare off some of the existing PPC players. If they can't make a buck, what is the point of developing new PPC devices? Maybe all they will succeed in doing is reserving good PPC devices to the very high end for some corporate customers, and trivializing the low end.

I have never liked how Dell undercuts everyone. They did it in the computer industry a few years ago, selling hardware at just a little above cost to take market share. Sure it is good fir consumers, but it kills those of us trying to make an honest living selling hardware.



Visit us at www.tdscomputer.com

RE: Surprising
Nebrie @ 11/22/2002 12:09:36 AM #
dell kills innovation too. everyone's set on low cost pcs, not pcs that we would want to buy to replace our old pcs.

RE: Surprising
suilobo @ 11/22/2002 12:11:46 AM #
It's innovate or die. Dell was innovative by doing direct sales and holding no inventory thus they were able to undercut Compaq, HP, IBM, Micron and others on price. Apple was being innovative by coming out with designs that people want thus they are successful in their own niche market.

So if you're in the computer hardware industry it's either compete on price or find your niche market. Don't complain because others have been successful at it.

RE: Surprising
ginsberg @ 12/18/2002 9:05:03 PM #
Whoever voted the Fossil Wrist PDA as "Best of COMDEX" must have been on crack. This Fossil watch is roughly the equivalent of the Palm Zire on your wrist, priced around $150. Sure, it's nice to see some innovation in getting the size down, but how practical is this going to be? How many suckers bought that useless huge Fossil PDA watch in 2002?

Expect worldwide sales of this new watch in low 5 figures in 2003. In the watch industry that's not considered successful, even for specialized watches.

The Tungsten T, HP iPAQ 1910, and Dell Axim will each sell many times as many units as this watch and one of these would have been far more worthy of the title "Best of COMDEX".

Are you sure it's 160x160?

ardee @ 11/21/2002 6:14:30 PM #
The screen seems awfully small for that resolution. Plus, look at the picture: it's showing FOUR icons!


RE: Are you sure it's 160x160?
Davy Fields @ 11/21/2002 6:22:50 PM #
It's the same DPI roughly as the Tungsten or the Clies.... the icons are just displaying larger because Fossil made them larger so that you can see them on the screen.

-Davy Fields
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palm_OS_5/
RE: Are you sure it's 160x160?
stupidnewpolicy @ 11/21/2002 7:27:00 PM #
Yeah, check out the Title area at the top - you can see the category title and battery. Scale the whole viewable area to THEIR size and it's obviously 160x160.


Ick

RE: Are you sure it's 160x160?
masitti @ 11/21/2002 8:14:35 PM #
You haven't by chance noticed that the title bar and clock are in RATIO to the screen size? Maybe the fact that they made the icons bigger for a easy first glance?


------------------------
Mario Masitti
O/T Mod
I Love Tennis :)

Are you serious?

EdH @ 11/21/2002 7:11:45 PM #
Must have been a boring Comdex...

RE: Are you serious?
masitti @ 11/21/2002 8:15:42 PM #
Today doesn't seem to be April 1st...

------------------------
Mario Masitti
O/T Mod
I Love Tennis :)
RE: Are you serious?
TobyG @ 11/21/2002 9:21:50 PM #
Go easy on Ed. He's probably having ulcers because it wasn't the Axim or HPaq that won.

"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance." - Sam Brown
RE: Are you serious?
treo007 @ 11/21/2002 11:07:24 PM #
>Must have been a boring Comdex...


Beat it troll.

RE: Are you serious?
Haber @ 11/21/2002 11:48:57 PM #
I do think something is wrong at COMDEX if a PDA watch is named "Best of Show." What happened to all the new, strange and exciting products of past years? PDA watches seem to belong on the Home Shopping Network to me...

RE: Are you serious?
sub_tex @ 11/22/2002 12:55:32 AM #
"I do think something is wrong at COMDEX if a PDA watch is named "Best of Show." What happened to all the new, strange and exciting products of past years? PDA watches seem to belong on the Home Shopping Network to me..."

Amen to that.

The watch is neat, but if that was considered the BEST at a show where we should be drooling over new tech, this is lame as hell.


RE: Are you serious?
TobyG @ 11/22/2002 9:14:48 AM #
"The watch is neat, but if that was considered the BEST at a show where we should be drooling over new tech, this is lame as hell."

The purpose of Comdex is not to drool over new tech (or at least that wasn't its original purpose). The purpose is/was for 'Computer Dealers' to learn about the new stuff they're going to have to figure out how to sell next year. CES is more geared to getting consumers to drool. That's the reason why Comdex has gone into the toilet (the writing was on the wall well before 9/11). It lost it's focus and tried to be too many things to too many people.

"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance." - Sam Brown

RE: Are you serious?
EdH @ 11/22/2002 5:58:58 PM #
>Go easy on Ed. He's probably having ulcers because it wasn't the Axim or HPaq that won.

I'd have said the same thing if either of those won. The Axim has nothing that hasn't been available for 2 years - it just puts it at a fantastic price. The 5400 is just an evolution of the 3900. A significant evolution, but an evolution nonetheless. Neither worthy of best of the category, no more than a watch that requires you to use a stylus to use it. Bwahahahahahahahaaha. How lame.

This is Important

robman @ 11/21/2002 7:21:37 PM #
Lets take a look at what's going on here:

1) The device named "Best of COMDEX" in the Mobile Device category was a Palm device. This bodes well for the Palm economy

2) It beat out the HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5400. This a Pocket PC with Bluetooth AND 802.11b AND and integrated fingerprint scanner. This little thing is just a watch with a wimpy Palm Pilot on it that can barely beat my old Palm Pro!

3) It also beat out the Nokia 3650 Mobile Phone. This device does full color audio and video playback AND recording! It even runs Java. Compare that to a "dinky" PDA-watch.

This means that people are starting to realize that it's the *usability* of devices that matter. It's awesome that the iPaq includes such cutting edge features, but as we can all recognize, Pocket PC 2002 is just not as easy to use as the Palm OS. And as great as the Nokia phones are, it's still hard to navigate them and make them use their fancy features.



Palm Researcher at the University of Texas at Austin
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/petrosino/pda

RE: This is Important
masitti @ 11/21/2002 8:16:24 PM #
It's not the OS that made it Best Of Comdex... it isn't the screen, the technology that makes it Best Of Comdex...

It's the originality, functionality, and interesting small design that made it!

If it would have had a PPC OS on it, it still would have made Best Of Comdex...

------------------------
Mario Masitti
O/T Mod
I Love Tennis :)

Video AND Java in a 'dinky' watch
rsc1000 @ 11/21/2002 8:35:36 PM #
>>This device does full color audio and video playback AND recording! It even runs Java. Compare that to a "dinky" PDA-watch

Hmmm - must be one of these PPC guys who doesn't know whats happened in the Palm camp the last couple of years. If this truely runs Palm OS 4 on a 33Mhz processor, then it can run Kinoma to play video (with r-e-a-l-l-y crude audio) AND it can run Java (with several different KVM/JVMs available - including one from Sun) as well. Not bad for a 'dinky' watch. We already knew you could do the above in PDA form factor - so whats yr point? Having this in a watch is 'cute' and exciting - it represents a symbolic milestone on the path to miniturization. And making things smaller is a large part of what this whole industry (computer tech) has been about for the last half century. Or maybe you hadn't heard?

RE: This is Important
Cheap Guy @ 11/21/2002 8:52:52 PM #
"It's not the OS that made it Best Of Comdex... it isn't the screen, the technology that makes it Best Of Comdex...

It's the originality, functionality, and interesting small design that made it!

If it would have had a PPC OS on it, it still would have made Best Of Comdex..."


Ahhh, but it IS the OS that's the key. If I remember correctly, Fossil made a similar watch with a differnt OS and it didn't go over to well. Given the overhead and the forced requirements necessary to run PPC, I wonder if it's even possible to run PPC on a device this small, and if so, would it be realistically function in this format.

Regarding Dell's new offerings, the only thing "new" about them is the low price. It didn't take much innovation to make a PPC device in a LARGER format than competing devices. Once again, that's why even though Fossil's watch may never be a commercial success, it definitely shows some creativity using Palm OS.



RE: This is Important
rsc1000 @ 11/21/2002 9:36:06 PM #
My apologies to robman for the tone of my above comment - i just re-read yr post and realized that it was actually pro fossil/palm os. i just scanned the comments and lumped yrs together with the negative ones in my head, then posted. too much coffee (or not enough?).

RE: This is Important
Foo Fighter @ 11/21/2002 9:55:03 PM #
Robman: "This bodes well for the Palm economy"

Not really. It remains to be seen how well this watch will actually sell. This is, after all, a niche luxury item...not a mainstream product.


"it's better to be a pirate than join the navy." - Steve Jobs

RE: This is Important
Fly-By-Night @ 11/22/2002 4:54:54 AM #
"If it would have had a PPC OS on it, it still would have made Best Of Comdex..."

If it was a PPC device it would have looked like a grandfather clock...

FBN

RE: This is Important
robman @ 11/22/2002 10:15:25 AM #
Foo Fighter, I think the _award_ bodes well for the Palm Economy. I don't think the device will sell that well but who cares---if Palm licensees are winning prizes for their adaptations of the Palm line, this is good for Palm.

And guess what---the Palm OS is the OS that vendors have scaled to different requirements. Every Pocket PC is about the size of a thick paperback book, but now Palm OS devices range from the small (a watch!) to the large (the AlphaSmart Dana!). It's interesting to note that when Microsoft wants to make larger devices they abandon Pocket PC 2002 in favor of Windows XP -- see the Tablet PC as the prime example.

Just my two cents.


Palm Researcher at the University of Texas at Austin
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/petrosino/pda

Texas research?
ginsberg @ 12/18/2002 9:28:53 PM #
Robman:

Fossil can win dozens of awards, but this does nothing to help Palm and little to help PalmSource unless these watches sell in decent quantities.

I guess you missed the iPAQ 1910 - smaller than any Palm except the Zire - at 4.2 ounces.

Next time, do your homework.

PUHLEASE

dequardo @ 11/21/2002 8:42:03 PM #
For those who say the likes of 'us' are geeks and to get a life I say.

THEY ARE CORRECT.

This product is ludicrous. A rechargeable watch?? Or are we supposed to wear a regular watch in addition to this thing? The joke will be on those who actually pay retail for this. They won't be able to give these away a year from now.

RE: PUHLEASE
mikemusick @ 11/21/2002 8:47:30 PM #
[quote]They won't be able to give these away a year from now.[/quote]
Try four months from now. :(

RE: PUHLEASE
GregGaub @ 11/21/2002 8:57:32 PM #
Yeah, 4 months (hopefully) until they announce a newer, slimmer version that doesn't feel like a ball and chain on the wrist. No, I haven't had one on my wrist yet, but from the specified dimensions it's fairly big, and if it's metal like the photo makes it look, then it's probably fairly heavy. I wonder if this one is on www.palmevolution.com? :)

-- SeaPUG: http://www.seapug.com --
RE: PUHLEASE
asiayeah @ 11/22/2002 3:42:59 AM #
A rechargable watch does sounds funny. I hope the device would warn the users when the battery becomes low and save enough battery just to maintain the clock and display the clock for a short interval.

BTW, I haven't weared a watch for ages, since either my mobile phone or my Palm can a clock on it and yet both are both are just rechargable devices.

Tony



--
With great power comes great responsiblity.

RE: PUHLEASE
Palm_Otaku @ 11/22/2002 6:18:11 AM #
GregGaub: I wonder if this one is on www.palmevolution.com? :)

Heh, well the Fossil Wrist PDA is certainly an interesting evolutionary development, isn't it? :-)

FWIW, the "Milestones" page was updated with the Fossil Licensee announcement on the day of release, but the "Palm Tree" page won't be updated until the device is actually available (i.e. same for Samsung i330 and i500 and the forthcoming Garmin etc.). Word from PalmSource is that there's more than one new Licensee to be announced this fall, so that page is going to see some big changes.... That gives me a little time to figure out how to minimize "horizontal spread" for this growing, branching tree!

RE: PUHLEASE
hkklife @ 11/22/2002 9:08:46 AM #
The funny thing is that a few months ago I was like "Oh the Zire? A 2mb, missing button, non-backlit Palm PDA? PUHHHLEEASE!" Now I am saying the same thing (but even more so) about this 'gadget'. Let's just say that Fossil might be a more apt moniker than anyone thought. What surprises me so much is that Fossil, basically a maker of decent, stylish and cheap analog wristwatches is jumping into this market. I would have expected it to be Timex if not some smaller start-up firm (Casio has too many ties to the PPC camp). I suppose Fosssil have figured the market for department store <$100 analog watches is not going to be the wave of the future.

*funny story*

This actually sort of reminds me of a touch screen "Databank" Casio I had about 10-11 years ago. It could hold 200 telememos (that is, 200 addresses, 200 short memos or any combination of the two as long as it didn't exceed 200 blocks). It was entirely touchscreen--no hard buttons at all, and no backlight. The screen was recessed and MADDENINGLY difficult to push. This was before I knew about proper styli and I think I ended up killing my first watch by trying to use paperclips and pen tips to input data. I got a 2nd unit and used that for well over a year before finally deciding it was far too geeky and far too eye-straining to use without a backlight. I got a cheap Casio with a backlight and a Swatch and used them interchangably until I got my first cell phone. Now I don't wear a watch at all. Supposedly Casion released an improved version of their Touchscreen Databank 3 or 4 years ago, with a backlight and crude looking icons and more memory. I never saw one in the flesh so I cannot comment. They still turn up on E-bay every so often, however!

price??

WoNGsTeR @ 11/22/2002 2:45:04 AM #
how much you think this palm/watch is going to be?
RE: price??
asiayeah @ 11/22/2002 3:46:44 AM #
A guess, US$99?



--
With great power comes great responsiblity.

RE: price??
M3wThr33 @ 11/22/2002 4:10:45 AM #
It says $149 on Fossil's own site.
After I get the Kyocera 7135, I'll probably get this, too, just because it's cheap and I need a second watch, although it means my current watch(WQV-3) will need to be replaced with the non-resin band WQV-10; A digital camera watch with a color screen(And metal band) to match the pda watch. Then I can be totally integrated... and set off airport metal detectors miles around.

I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. We're in space.
RE: price??
M3wThr33 @ 11/22/2002 4:10:45 AM #
It says $149 on Fossil's own site.
After I get the Kyocera 7135, I'll probably get this, too, just because it's cheap and I need a second watch, although it means my current watch(WQV-3) will need to be replaced with the non-resin band WQV-10; A digital camera watch with a color screen(And metal band) to match the pda watch. Then I can be totally integrated... and set off airport metal detectors miles around.

I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. We're in space.
RE: price??
epotter @ 11/22/2002 8:51:08 AM #
Does anyone know when this thing will be released?
RE: price??
TobyG @ 11/22/2002 9:20:58 AM #
"It says $149 on Fossil's own site."

That's for the previous iteration. This one isn't available in their online store yet.

"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance." - Sam Brown

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