If you’re like me, you probably never thought of using the flip-dot technology that you see on roadside signs for a wristwatch. A company called Sequel AG did, though, and has miniaturized it and licensed the technology to Guess for a line of women’s watches appearing this fall to be called G-Motion. If you hit the link, you’ll see a Flash video of the watch in action; in this case the design is Swarovski crystals (red/white) which makes for a standout look.
In effect, the face of the watch becomes a bitmapped display — either on or off — and we’re excited about the possibilities of what a watch designer could do with that. the G-Motion line appears to use it for eight-segment displays of time/date/seconds, but you could also draw graphics, text, or pretty much anything else.
Details are TBD, but we are slated to get some of the first units for review, so keep an eye on WR for that.
It’ll be interesting to see how these are received by the fashionable — it’s a quartz watch, with a digital display, but the pixels are crystals and the maker is Guess. That should be interesting.
By Paul Hubbard
