[General Accessories] Ozpeter:
Having played with the TS for a couple of days, frankly I'm pretty impressed. But I speak as a total non-developer!

It seems to me that if you are prepared to forget the history of the thing, and just imagine that it would be on sale in retail outlets, with promotion based on the current spec of the device rather than on the original rather optimistic claims, then at a price of, say, $199 I'd expect it to sell very well.

The good as I see it – phone call quality is remarkable. Perfectly clear at both ends. My wife is a bit concerned that if she called me in the supermarket, everyone within 20 yards would hear what she was saying via the loudspeaker, but that apart she has no reservations.

Most apps I have tried seem to be usable on the tiny screen, including Rdio, BubbleUPnP and Pandora. The whole idea of being able in effect to carry around millions of tracks on one's wrist is pretty cool. Of course audio via the tiny speaker is a bit iffy (though better than I expected) but via bluetooth cans or chromecast or DNLA it's no different from a normal phone.

The bad – those tiny case screws are a real pain to work with. I would have thought they could have been a little bit bigger-headed. You wouldn't want to insert the sim card and memory card more than once (in fact I have yet to tackle the removal of the back, I've only inserted a sim at the side) and you have to approach the task like a brain surgeon – and it's well worth while checking out the YouTube vids which explain how to go about it.

Keyboarding is a bit of a challenge – of course – and for initial password input when generally setting up the device, it's almost essential to connect a bluetooth keyboard. I think I'm going to settle on Swype. Speech input works pretty well for searches etc.

I have no plan to mess with ROMs and stuff – indeed, for the moment I think I'll leave the OTA update alone as I'm not seeing people saying that it's a clear improvement.

I've not had much of a chance to try GPS but initially I couldn't get a satellite fix. Following going through the procedure suggested here to tweak the GPS settings I got four satellites in the back yard last night (crash!) but it's clearly not in the league of my Moto G in this respect.

So why would anyone want a smart watch? Personally I'm not interested in tethering with a phone – I want to be able to leave the phone at home if I'm not wearing phone-friendly clothes, or in an environment where putting the phone down beside me in a restaurant looks a bit naff. It will be more actually useful in the summer in that respect (winter here). For keeping in touch at all times, and for go-anywhere access to basic personal info as well as things like location-based stuff and timekeeping and so forth, it's good, as well as for audio on the move, but for actually reading stuff or watching video and so forth, you need a proper phone.

I wish it could be thinner and lighter and it would be handy if the strap could be metal expanding (but then where would the antennas and speaker go?). But overall, it's a remarkable piece of tech, almost science fiction, and I'm glad I got it despite the wait and the broken promises.

If I lost it today, would I get another one? Well, I'd probably wait a few months to see what is about to come on the market, but most of the announcements from the big boys have seemed to promise functionality which is significantly inferior to the TrueSmart device. But maybe they will do less but better? Or maybe the next model of TS will trounce the others?

Exciting times.