[General Accessories] vectron:
OK, let me jump back into discussion :)

Handling phone calls - like a champ! You get caller ID and also an option to hangup or answer the call. You also have a config option to answer the phone and turn speakerphone on. All the phone calling history along with email history and other notifications are stored and can be viewed.

Regarding the look. MetaWatch was started by Fossil guys, so I will give them a benefit of a doubt they know a thing or two about watch ergonomics. If Strata style is too sporty, FRAME style is your typical wrist band style with a replacement band.

I only have Strata, so can't tell you how FRAME looks next to it, but I think its slimmer/trimmer in general.

With different clock faces, I'm sure more stuff will be coming soon since I saw "Analog" option in NE Manager. Regarding graphics, the original MetaWatch manager has better icons and fonts (still digital clock), but not all the functionality is unlocked yet.

With reference to Pebble and Sony smartwatches, I can only judge Sony by a limited experience of playing with discontinued MN800 (LiveView model) - the battery life wasn't that great, and because of OLED display the screen is on for a few seconds before it times out. So it was displaying info only as it being pushed to the watch or when you push the button to view the clock, etc. Without a doubt, having a color screen is an awesome experience, but it comes at a price of battery life and aging of OLED if you keep it on all the time. Plus, OLED is hardly visible in direct sunlight. I do want to get my hands on their latest SmartWatch to see how it works in comparison to LiveView and MetaWatch. With Pebble, I'm hoping to get a review sample one of these days as well. In my opinion it will be similar to MetaWatch in functionality and display graphics. I'm also reading a lot of comments that hardware is ready by software is still work in progress.

You gotta keep in mind, Sony and Nike stuff looks good, but it never took off even at discounted prices. Now, here we have MetaWatch and Pebble, two kickstarter projects that generated a lot of buzz and followers. MetaWatch was ahead with their release and has a very strong base of hackers/users who took matter in their own hands. Pebble probably going to follow the same route since I believe their source is open. I can't judge Pebble, but from use of MetaWatch I found it to do exactly what I would expect from a smart watch - to be remote extension of my phone so I don't have to take my phone out to see who is calling, or start playing music on my bt speaker, to read info about incoming emails where I can see who it's from and the subject line of the email, to see my calendar and all the scheduled talks and to be able to scroll through days and months of content, to see text messages, to get a notification for all these events, and counts for anything I missed, to get a current weather and weather forecast for the next three days, and more.

This is just my personal opinion because I like to have everything on one screen, just like as you can see I have it on my phone with all the widgets and how I set up MetaWatch with everything on one screen. Does it look like a fashionable watch? Not really. It looks like a geek gadget :) My friends at work were telling me I got "**** Tracy" watch. Can you change it? Sure, if you dress it up using FRAME and more minimalistic layout. But don't expect it to look like OLED display because its a different display technology.

This was my first true smart watch experience, and I hope to have more in the near future for comparison. But based on what I have tested and wearing right now - I'm very impressed!!!