So I had been awaiting for the arrival of this Smart Watch from Cronologics ,who has been assisted on the Indiegogo Crowd funding platform to launch this product. Being one of the 1800 backers , and being an early one at that, I waited patiently for 6 months for this watch from concept to fruition. This goes for around $200 USD at that time. I was happy to receive this one early evening in September after my "DHL " delivery was acknowledged from a Hong Kong based company called "Quickfish Intelligence". You know , I had been quite skeptical of DHL deliveries since there had been many scammers portraying as DHL couriers lately... =_= But yes ,this turns out to be a genuine product that I had supported on Indiegogo.
This watch comes with "limited"warranty from Shenzhen iMCO, and an instruction booklet.
I had yet to understand what that limited warranty means but that's for another day.
The review below are my initial thoughts on using this watch and for anybody interested in taking a look at yet smart watch on the market.
Okay, so Cronologics is made of folks from ex Googlers/ex Android team and collaboration with some Chinese folks from Shenzen iMCO, and the Cronologics operating system does have a variant feel to the Android based "Wear" OS. This somehow has a "reminiscent" feel to the Android Moto 360 Gen 1 that I had been using, which unfortunately is giving way due to bad battery life recently, very often being my table talk topic whenever I meet someone into tech gadgets.
The Feel.
My first initial "feel" of this watch is that this is quite a solidly built watch, having a metallic finish of aluminium material /alloy and a ceramic watch base, which I suspect should be for the antenna /receiver and also for its wear and resistance to scratches properties. The mesh strap feels great as well, unlike the usual "stainless" steel straps that always "plucks" my hairy hand. haha..
Setup and Wear.
The initial setup is quite a breeze. I would say it is more intuitive than going through another 2 watches I had , the Pebble Steel and Moto 360. The good thing is when you need to key in stuff on it, such as the "Wifi" password for instance, it will switch to your mobile phone to offer the bigger mobile screen to type instead. I hate keying in on small screens so this is a nifty thought. Oh yes, just FYI, it supports both Android and iOS for its "companion App" so this is not an Android wear watch. The companion app allows you get to make fine setup tweaks. Just hunt for the key word " Co Watch" , although the initial set up process already puts you through a QR code scan to get that app downloaded. If you would like the additional functionality to have Amazon's Alexa talk to you ,much like Google Talk and Apple's Siri, there is the initial additional step to log into your Amazon account to give access permissions to this watch.
More on what is Alexa virtual assistant here. (Although at this time, Alexa only caters to customization on US based addresses so when you talk to your watch you are getting a US based address and weather based in the States. There is a settings for metric measurements for temperature and distance though. I reckon I would get sick of this "talk to your watch" thingy anyway so that is not such a big deal. Within this clean and solid casing is a 1.2Ghz Ingenic M200 Processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, which is twice as much as what is provided in most smartwatches.
The battery charger is a base connected by USB cable and has a magnetic fast snap to your watch. The charger is pretty light and compact, with the base having metal contacts for charging.
This watch sits in nicely with a magnetic soft snap onto the base. Note how the watch is still powered up with the simplified watch face when selecting "always on" option
The wear is pretty cool after adjusting the strap to fit and wrap around my hand. (You get an attached "spanner tool" in the package to adjust the clasp).
Showing the full watch face with the "containers' (inner circles on the watch face) within.
So what is different between this watch and the rest of what is now in the market ?
The Features.
As this is not a full fledged Android wear base watch, you do not get to include almost every app from the mobile phone onto the watch view. Instead what you get are the "containers apps " into the watch face itself, so you get to select functionalities dictated by what are the ones loaded in the containers for now. E.g. below , you can select from the few ones that I tried out such as the heart rate monitor , the music player control ,and steps tracker.
You can run the containers icon within the watch face to select some of the functionalies such as the heart rate monitor, and the steps tracker.
So this means that the usual stuff is there to achieve it, accelerometer and gyroscopes are onboard, and the heart rate sensor for activity tracking.
The music controller container app is also pretty nifty if you want to keep your mobile in the pocket while listening to music, do note though that you need to first start your music app on the mobile before it picks up which is the music app that is tied to the controls.
you get the artiste details and a background of the track art on the watch face
So finally, what comes to test would be the battery life, which matters the most to all the smart watches out there.
The "always on" watch face is simplified but it does show the basics, the Time.
With the option set to "always on" mode, you get the simplified watch face running, unless you double tap on the screen. This sets the full details with the container apps for you to swipe left and right. I had this watch charged to almost full battery life on the test and it lasted around 14-15hrs with 40% + battery life left based on normal usage such as the occasionally swipes to run some apps. So it should manage the supposedly promised battery life of almost 30 hours before you need to recharge it. This compares favorably with what is out in the market, where at least 24 hours should be the minimum to make it practical, however still short on the ever more impressive Pebble watches with 5-7 days of battery life on monochrome display.
The Verdict.
As an early "supporter" on the crowd funded product, I get a better price than when it is released on the shelves , so that will kind of defray the waiting times I had to bear with usually for such projects. The build quality did not fail me, the features wise are adequate actually and focused on what an "urbanite" would need on his/her watch, and it fact most folks would find smart watch apps an overkill. The most basic functionality if it can fulfill is to keep track of time, would be a nice consistent battery life without constant charging. It does look aesthetically pleasing and is a "dress" watch that feels good on the wrist. This should be my alternate switch between the heavy duty Pebble Steel that I wear most of the times.
Cheerios to whoever might find this review useful.
