Smartwatches Vs. Smartphones: A Blippar review of the wearable tech

Jonathan Barrowman, Blippar’s Commercial Director EMEA, found a Moto 360 in his stocking this Christmas. But how useful are smartwatches, how is the tech - and the apps available for it - improving, and how do they compare with the tech in everyone’s pocket – the smartphone?

This Christmas, for the second year running, Santa despatched the latest smartwatch down my chimney. The fledgling wearable sector is evolving quickly, so I'm grateful for this new tradition; last Christmas' gift of the world’s first voice-controlled smartwatch was already beginning to feel outdated in light of the Android Wear and Apple Watch announcements of 2014, and all the new smartwatch developments announced at CES in Las Vegas last week. So how does my shiny new Moto 360 measure up?

1. Smartwatches serve a genuine purpose

Mobile has become an obsession: people text while traversing train stations, respond to messages descending escalators - we're driven by a compulsive disorder. I unconsciously reach for my mobile, unlock the screen, check texts, open inbox, browse calendar, ad infinitum. The need to be connected is a major symptom of FOMO (fear of missing out), and most research points to people using their phones an enormous 130 times a day.

Enter the smartwatch, to help soothe your paranoia. Using a smartwatch has reduced my daily mobile-checking habit to under 20. I keep on top of my incoming messages, my agenda and an array of notifications simply by glancing at my wrist. My mobile therefore stays in my pocket or on my desk, unchecked, until I actually need to use it.

7/10 for identifying a new consumer need

The Apple watch is due for release around March 2015

2. Controlling the world from your wrist

The world of swooshes, pings, tings and Mission Impossible ringtones is now, happily, history. My mobile is permanently (blissfully) on silent. Noise pollution is replaced by a subtle vibration on my wrist, as each notification of a call, text, tweet or meeting reminder appears on my Moto 360. Dismissing or deleting a message also removes it from your mobile, so each piece of tech is nicely integrated.

Android Wear 1.0 is improving with every update, and the supporting app market is growing quickly: Facer crowdsources over 200+ watchfaces with the ability to create bespoke versions; Calculator is surprisingly easy to use on a small screen; Evernote's version for Wear works well; Find My Phone does just what is says.

One surprising positive of having more control on your wrist is that it actually improves human interaction; I'm often the only one in a meeting who doesn't feel compelled to look at their mobile rather than the person actually speaking!

8/10 for keeping me on top of notification whiplash

Android Wear is improving with every update, both in terms of the hardware and apps offered

3. Technology can surprise and delight

I personally never appreciated the power of Siri and ‘Ok, Google’ until I started using a smartwatch. Dialogue with a smartwatch still feels like magic - it has almost become a party piece - so I love voice control as a user interface. There are, of course, (many) times when talking into a watch definitely makes you feel like, well, a bit of a wally.

An app called Coffee cleverly allows you to respond to and send texts directly from your watch with a series of customisable messages, and proves invaluable at least three times every day. Whenever I'm playing Spotify on my phone or via Sonos at home, the track details appear on my watch and from there I can skip, pause or change volume. It's witchcraft, I tell you!

The Guardian have a very simple but effective way of getting news alerts onto the watch which means I never miss breaking news. Flashlight has been surprisingly helpful on numerous dark occasions. The list goes on, but they all surprise, delight and make me smile.

6/10 for unlocking content in new ways

In summary…

The Moto 360 looks like a 'real' watch, and the growing app market delivers meaningful features. It's still not perfect; I'm constantly tweaking things, which is OK if you love the openness of Android, but will annoy the hell out of you if prefer a seamless Apple experience.

I have no doubt, however, that Christmas 2015 will herald the next generation of smartwatches which will take them from gadget geek to mass market.