Phosphor World Time Curved E Ink watch
Not just for e-book readers, you know
Review Unlike almost every other modern gadget - TVs being a notable exception, perhaps - watches have been getting steadily bigger over the years, not smaller.
Miniaturisation is not the name of the game, even though microelectronics have replaced clockwork and batteries have replaced springs.
Phosphor Watches' World Time Curved: designer digital
Maybe too many guys hope that wearing a big-bezelled boy on their wrist really will make everyone else think they're racing drivers - the old four-wheeled penis extension no longer cutting the mustard - but these days chunky is in, compact is for the chicks.
It's fashion, of course, not technology that has driven this trend. My grandfather's low-end Omega was the height of manliness when he bought it in the early 1960s, but this heirloom now looks positively childlike compared to the "sports" watches favoured by my colleagues.
Not that advances in electronics have been ignored. Phosphor Watches' new dual world time offering is vast but it also packs in the latest in display technology: E Ink.
This watch is big in every way. The black plastic strap barely narrows below an inch, and the large buckle sports two prongs. The body of the watch is 30 x 60mm, and while it's only 6mm thick - "ultra-thin", boasts Phosphor - it still seems chunky to me.
The display's 'paper' colour is rather more grey than the PR snaps suggest
Partly that's the extra space for the CR2032 battery, partly it's the stainless steel construction. Either way, this is watch that dominates your wrist. It wants to be noticed.
Next page: Big boy
COMMENTS
oh well
Nice to see I'm not the only person left who likes their watch to be discreet. And preferably very slim. In general, the bigger the watch, the more likely the strap is to split when you bend your wrist under tension or weight.
So, not great for work then unless you're a graphic designer or something equally "metrosexual".
Presumably...
...by 'in business' you mean 'in those layers of dull middle management where nothing useful gets done'. Because I work in engineering, where all the work gets done, and no-one gives a shit; and I know enough people who work at the boardroom level, where all the direction gets done, and I know no-one there gives a shit either. It's just you schmucks in the middle who think what you wear on your watch is a vital indicator of manliness / success / ability to close the deal or some such mind-numbing bullshit.
Good value?
A £150 watch with a display technology that doesn't update quickly enough to display seconds. Er...?
Judged by your watch?
Really? You'll be telling me next there are still companies that care about your choice of tie or suit. Any company that requires either is not one I would care to work for. The only uniform I had to wear each day was at school.
(So obviously I'll always be poor, so feel free to feel superior, while I slouch about and get the job done regardless)
Yuck
It looks like it was designed by a first year art student who'd spent the first 95% of their assignment time drunk.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
