We have come to an age in the tech world where we basically have mini-phones or computers on our wrists. Smartwatches. One of the main issues with every smartwatch is that the screen is so small it doesn’t provide comfortable touch control and doesn’t provide that much information at a glance. In order to address this issue, a number of German developers have prototyped a watch strap that provides additional displays. They have done this by embedding the display directly into the watch strap. This prototype first worked successfully with the Galaxy Watch. The screens themselves are OLED and E-ink.
To test applications on the watch strap, the developers used a regular tablet to imitate the display. So far, the Galaxy Watch and the additional watch strap display are in sync due to the “adapter” which is in the form of a mini-PC. All of it is connected by wires.
Some ideas to expand display size in the past have been fairly interesting. For example, there was an idea to have additional screens that were removable. Not a bad idea. Instead of having removable screens, you could have a folding screen. An issue with this could be the fact that the user would want the foldable screen to be as compact as possible.
As well as this, there was another idea to project the screen of the smartwatch onto the user’s hand. This creates issues such as colour distortion and geometry. Additionally, the user’s hand would have to be free of clothing to make sure the display is projected and is completely visible.
If only smartwatches were like smartphones. You don’t have enough space on the screen? Let’s make the screen larger. As much fun as it would seem to have a gargantuan wearable device protruding off of your wrist, it doesn’t seem that practical.
Hopefully this type of wrist-wearable tech is on the horizon.
