| 2012.12.10 |
My wife made me go shopping for my Christmas gift this past weekend.
So the watch I'm going to have to make myself live with is a sporty Citizen
Eco-Drive Proximity. Get this:
Introducing Proximity, a perpetual calendar chronograph with Bluetooth®4.0
low energy powered by Eco-Drive technology. Convenient key features include
Time/Date Sync, iPhone® Search, Call & Email Alert, Calendar Event Notification
and 10-Meter Sync. Also includes second time zone, 12/24 hour time, power
reserve, the strap is leather with a nylon backing, 45mm case & 100M WR.
(See link below.)
Let's review:
- It syncs its time with my phone. That means pretty much never having to
change the time on my watch when I fly into a different time zone or switch
from standard to DST
- The WATCH will alert me whenever I get a new email, call, or a calendar
event notification. I've had times where my wife was trying to contact me
and I couldn't feel my phone vibrate because it was inside a pocket in loose-fitting
trousers. Sounds dumb, but that's happened twice and my wife worked herself
into hysterics because she couldn't reach me.
- The WATCH will also alert me if I leave my phone someplace and walk away.
Say you're in a movie theater and your phone slips from your pocket during
the film. Once the watch can't see the phone anymore, the watch will alert
you. I have a bracelet that does this — it's a nice little insurance policy.
- And for extra credit, you can also use the watch to FIND your phone.
Push a button chord on the watch to make the phone play a sound.
UPDATE: I tried the watch on. The alerts come in the form of two pairs of quick
pulses of vibration. Each pair is spaced a few seconds apart. Each pair is
certainly powerful enough to get your attention. It's almost as if the first
pair fires, giving your brain enough time to process the sensation and ask
yourself whether the watch just notified you — that's when the second pair
arrives.
The FAQ reports the watch connects to an iPhone 4S or 5 via an app. The mail
notification feature is a little cheesy because you have to register a mail
account with the app, and the app will poll the account for an unread messages
flag. It won't just pick up the flag your phone already reports. This can lead
to some confusion, because the account registered to your phone and the
account you set up through the Citizen app will poll your mail server at
different times — meaning your watch may alert you to new messages that
your phone doesn't yet have, or your phone may have had a new message before
you're alerted by the watch. Sadly, it's a necessary evil because Apple has
a history of denying third-party access to its programming APIs.
(Of course, you can look at this another way: You can set your watch to
poll traffic on an account you don't have set up on your phone.)
By the way, the watch doesn't come with a printed manual for using the
special features of the watch and app. The FAQ link is your best resource.
The version of the FAQ is currently 1.09, and it is dated December 1, 2012.
Links:
Citizen Eco-Drive Proximity Watch (Citizen Watch Co., LTD)
Proximity FAQ (PDF) (Citizen Watch Co., LTD)
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