DIY Smartwatch: Current Offerings

Time for the most important step of the design process: the product definition.  I'm going to take some time, research some examples, and write down specifically what I (would) want in a custom smartwatch.  Let me start off by outlining the features of some current smartwatches on the market and using them to zero in on what I want.

Battery life:

• Pebble - Roughly 7 days, mostly due to the ePaper display
• Galaxy Gear - Roughly one day
• Qualcomm Toq - 3 to 4 days
• Sony SmartWatch 2 - 3 to 4 days

Screen:

• Pebble -
• Sharp Memory or ePaper which means no color, just black and white, but has a backlight
• 1.26"
• 144x168 pixels
• Galaxy Gear - 
• Super AMOLED display which means lots of bright vibrant colors and no power draining backlight
• 1.63"
• 320x320 pixels
• Qualcomm Toq - 
• Mirasol Color Display, similar to eInk but with color, pretty low power usage
• 1.55"
• 288x192 pixels
• Sony SmartWatch 2 -
• Transflexive LCD which I assume means some sort of low power LCD screen
• 1.6"
• 220x176 pixels

Size:

• Pebble - 32mm (W) x 50.33mm (H) x 8.44mm (D)
• Galaxy Gear - 36.8mm (W) x 56.6mm (H) x 11.1mm (D)
• Qualcomm Toq - 47.6mm (W) x  43.3mm (H) x 9.96mm (D)
• Sony SmartWatch 2 - 42mm (W) x  41mm (H) x 9mm (D)

Connectivity:

• Pebble - Bluetooth 2.1 or 4.0 (BLE)
• Galaxy Gear - Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE)
• Qualcomm Toq - Bluetooth 4.0
• Sony SmartWatch 2 - Bluetooth 3.0, NFC

Interactivity:

• Pebble - 4 navigation buttons, accelerometer for dismissing notifications with a shake, magnetometer, ambient light sensor
• Galaxy Gear - Camera, 2 microphones, speaker, accelerometer, gyroscope, interactions with S Voice and other Galaxy features, touchscreen
• Qualcomm Toq - touchscreen
• Sony SmartWatch 2 - touchscreen

Price:

• Pebble - $150
• Galaxy Gear - $300
• Qualcomm Toq - $300
• Sony SmartWatch 2 - $180

So as a whole, the smartwatches on the market now have a lot to offer.  I probably won't be able to achieve the same resolution as any of the commercial offerings, but I think I can at least get some of the same features.  Size might also end up being an issue.  I'll most likely need to find a balance between features and size constraints.  Price is also worth mentioning.  $150 for the cheapest smartwatch is pretty steep.  The early backer price for the Pebble on Kickstarter was $100 so I'm going to try and shoot for less than that price range.