Four students from India have just beaten the major smartphone manufacturers in the race to create a fully featured Smart Watch. Well. Sort of.
Smart Watches have been in the news a lot recently, in part due to speculation that Apple may announce one soon as an accessory for their iPhone range, or possibly even as a standalone product. There has also been traction from Sony who’s basic design fromlast year is set to be updated in a releaseexpected in September. What separates this Indian venture from this and other current high profile products such as Pebble is that it has been engineered to be a complete phone, utilising all phone features of the Android operating system including calls and messaging, whereas recent watches have acted more like notification hub accessories that sync with a primary device.
The new watch is called Androidly and has been developed by software developer Ankit Pradhan, communications professional Pavneet Singh Puri and lawyer Apurva Sukant. Also on the list of names is 17 year old Siddhant Vats. The group of 4 claim to have long been friends and begun the project as part of a shared idea to develop a mobile device that is always visible and accessible. The story goes that one day Puri was receiving many calls regarding a college festival – one in particular when he was eating lunch, his hands covered in chicken curry! Unable to take the call he mused on creating a solution and Androidly was born.
Androidly runs Android 2.2 Froyo, so in real terms is by no means up to date, however it is impressive to see just how many features the team has been able to implement. With a 2 inch capacitive touchscreen, Android 2.2 is running in its entirety which means access to Google Play and any app supported by the hardware specification, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 2MP camera and of course a micro SIM card slot for that all important data connection. The full feature set of Androidly is set out below, taken from their website and Androidly is currently on pre0order for £150 from their store
Androidly specifications
| Weight | 160 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 6.4 x 4.2 x 1.4 cm |
| Operating System | Android 2.2 |
| Processor | 416 MhZ |
| Memory | 256 MB RAM |
| Removable Storage | 8 GB SD included., Upto 16 GB SD. |
| Phone | 2.5 GSM network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 |
| Wireless | Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi B/G |
| Camera | 2 Mega Pixel |
| GPS | GPS with A-GPS |
| Sensor | Accelerometer |
| Screen | 2 inch, Capacitive Touch Screen., 320×240 Resolution. |
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