[Other SmartWatches] simple1i:
THIS IS A RESOURCE FOR SMARTWATCH MAKERS

Northern English pronoun & adverb for nothing is 'Nowt'. The Nowt smartWatch by XDA members.

The corporations won't make a good smartwatch due to greed, smaller firms can't, due to lack resources and software access/rights (more greed by corporations). Crowd funding has repeatedly failed, see Omate TS. Time for a simple revolution ... can XDA members (or the people in general) build a good smartwatch?

Software is one of the biggest issue, but can't a 1000+ committed, devs, electronic engineers, analyst, passionate horologists and very ... very tenacious dreamers attempt it? Starting with finding solutions to the most common issues faced by those who 'have already been there and not quite made it'? If there's one place where the right people are, its here on XDA.

Lots of debates about the issues have been made and forgotten, see the Omate TrueSmart threads and some blogs.

Here's one: http://www.smartwatchgroup.com/overview-smartwatch-industry/

http://www.xda-developers.com/smartwatches-had-no-year-again/ - another one, see [MENTION=3795702]Lokifish Marz[/MENTION] comments. Other comments below to start the discussion off . . . .

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[MENTION=3795702]Lokifish Marz[/MENTION] said:

General rules with Chinese Android smartwatches

Broken firmware

Major security holes

Little to no official support (this includes the phone side app)

English (or any other language other than Chinese) for the phone app is very rare

Incomplete source code (when you can even get it) that is a generic build pulled from a phone

Inconsistent battery life due to broken firmware

IP67 is more like IP54 if lucky

Poor build quality and QC by western standards

Not Lokifish supported (I've walked away from the industry as a whole until they get their collective heads out of their butts)

kuronosan's time is limited so fixes may be slow

Depending on your needs and goals. Talk to Ingenic. The HW is a little slow on the Newton (SmartQ Z uses it), not sure about the Newton 2. Either way they have source (Linux, Android, etc). The package is small enough that you could design and build a smartwatch that's about the same size as a real watch, but the display will need a new "crystal" to pull it off nicely. Find a compatible round display, and you should be able to use off the shelf watch cases with minor modifications giving you a 200m diver's smartwatch if you do it right.

*Side note

Even with a 1/2 million buy in for 3000 units we designed ourselves, Umeox still would not have provided source code, and little to no support. That's what the Chinese ODM's are like. kuronosan can verify this.

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[MENTION=3795702]Lokifish Marz[/MENTION] said:

JZ4775 supports;

Linux (image and source available from Ingenic)

Android (image and source available from Ingenic)

Wear (Com 1's prototype was running Wear before Google strong armed Com 1 and pretty much killed the company)

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simple1I said:

I've come to the conclusion that the only way to build a decent smartwatch is by 500 (or more) xda members coming together on a project:

- committing our own money.

- Electing a group of experts.

- HARDWARE - building from scratch,

- SOFTWARE - take what's out there and amend it.

- trawling thru members ideas.

- People powered, no management, no profits. Not even kickstarter.

The advantage over all other watches would be the 'no profits', so a good quality long lasting watch could be crafted.

I'll leave it for someone else to post the disadvantages...

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[MENTION=3795702]Lokifish Marz[/MENTION] said:

- You would still need some sort of hierarchy.

- 15-20% net profit cap would still be much lower than the industry and allow for growth.

- HW is not the big issue. SW, case design and source are

- ODMs deal in +1000 unit lots so the "buy in" is very expensive

Let's just say this comes from a been there, tried that perspective minus the xda member support. XDA members were not approached, neither was the public, due to one main reason. Corporations with far more purchasing power and capitol are known for "borrowing". Especially in China.

This is of course off topic so back to Mars I go.

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So . . . the software and stealing ideas and people is an issue, how can we overcome these?