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Personal Tech

Turn your wristwatch into Caller ID

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 29, 2007

Among consumer gadgets, watches are an odd category. The most expensive and prestigious watches aren't the ones with the most functions or the most up-to-date chips. They're the ones that do the least, in as old-fashioned a way as possible. Just think of mechanical Rolexes.

So when a watch comes along that uses digital technology to do something new, it usually ends up looking like a gimmick. That was my first reaction to Sony Ericsson's Bluetooth Watch MBW-100 ($399), which alerts you to calls on your cell phone and tells you who's calling.

But I warmed to it over time. While it's far from an earth-shattering innovation, it's a cool idea that could be more widely adopted; it only works with a dozen Sony Ericsson phones that are equipped with Bluetooth chips, the wireless technology that's usually used to connect to headsets.

As long as the watch is within about 30 feet of the cell phone, it will vibrate gently when you have an incoming call and show the number on a small but crisp digital display below the main analog watch face. If you have the number associated with a name in the cell phone's contact list, the watch will show that name. Press a button once to mute the phone's ring signal or twice to send the call to voice mail.

Pressing another of the phone's three buttons will start or pause the phone's digital music player, a convenient feature for Sony's music-oriented phones, like the Walkman W810i I tried it with. The watch can vibrate to alert you that it's losing touch with the phone because it's too far away.

The MBW-100 is stylish, but heavy. It weighs 6.6 ounces, in the upper weight range of macho watches.

Probably because the battery and vibration mechanism are too big, there's no ladies' model, which is a bit of a pity - women often carry their phones in their handbags and would have more use for this watch than men who carry phones in their pockets.

Fast Facts:

Cheaper models

If you don't want to fork over the $399 for the silver-colored MBW-100 Bluetooth watch sold on the Sony Ericsson Web site (www.sonyericsson.com), Fossil (www.fossil.com) sells a black version with different styling for $249. Fossil's Abacus MobileWear brand sells two other versions through retailers like CompUSA and Amazon.com for as low as $149.

[Last modified January 29, 2007, 06:13:10]