The Palm watch that time forgot
At last, the long-awaited PDA watch from Fossil is here. Actually, ‘long-forgotten’ might be more accurate. And when we say 'here', we mean 'coming by the end of August'. Shall we start again?
At last, the long-awaited PDA watch from Fossil is here. Actually, ‘long-forgotten’ might be more accurate. And when we say ‘here’, we mean ‘coming by the end of August’. Shall we start again?
Back in 2002 we reported that Fossil would be producing a watch that ran the Palm operating system, allowing you to store contacts, diary information and other stuff on your wrist. Well, buoyed by the massive – ahem – success of its Microsoft SPOT watch (whaddaya mean you’ve never heard of it?), Fossil has finally got round to releasing the Abacus Wrist PDA.
Alas, three years is a long time in tech – these days you have all that functionality, and more, on your phone. Which leaves the Abacus as little more that a bit of geek fashion wear.
To be fair, this is the world’s smallest PDA, cramming in a 160x160pixel monochrome touchscreen (with diddy stylus), 8MB of memory and a 66MHz processor onto your wrist. Wireless comes in the form of, erm, infrared. Fortunately, it can connect to your PC via USB. You’ll find fuller specs here.
Surely the Achilles heel, however, is the 3-day battery life. Will we ever get used to charging a watch? Well, we’ll be finding out soon. Keep watching this space for a full review.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
