Sony SmartWatch

» see sonymobile.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

sony got to smartwatches before the rest of the industry had decided what a smartwatch was for. the original mn2 shipped at ces 2012, paired over bluetooth to an xperia phone, ran a tiny version of android, and showed you notifications on a 1.3 inch screen. the smartwatch 2 in september 2013 had a metal body, nfc, and ip57 water resistance. the smartwatch 3 in october 2014 ran android wear, had built-in gps for runners, and was for a while genuinely the best non-apple smartwatch you could buy.

then sony stopped. there was no smartwatch 4. in march 2017 kaz tajima from sony mobile told techradar that the smartwatch problem was not yet solved from a technological point of view, which was the polite way of saying battery life was bad and nobody was buying enough of them to justify the next bom. by then apple watch series 2 was on shelves, fitbit had eaten the fitness band tier, and android wear was being slowly absorbed into google's wider mess. the smartwatch line was just gone.

i watched the smartwatch generation from the engineering side, not the consumer side. i had an xperia phone for one stretch around 2013 and saw the bluetooth pairing flow for the original smartwatch in the play store. i did not buy one. nobody i knew in ankara bought one. the 250 dollar wearable that needed a specific phone to be useful was not a turkish purchase in 2013. by the time the smartwatch 3 was cheap enough to be a casual buy, android wear was already dying, and you could see it dying in the reviews.

~ the chronicle ~

~ three watches, three operating systems ~

the original mn2 ran a stripped sony os. the smartwatch 2 ran a slightly less stripped sony os with a marketplace. the smartwatch 3 ran android wear, which was google's. three generations, three software stacks, no continuity. anyone who bought the first one and tried to keep using it learned the same lesson that sony pda owners learned with the clie: sony's wearables existed inside whatever sony was excited about that quarter, and the next quarter was always somewhere else.

~ what the swr50 actually was ~

the smartwatch 3 was a serious piece of hardware. transflective display that worked in sunlight. built-in gps that meant you could go running without a phone. waterproof, microsd-free music sync for spotify in the wear app of that era. removable wrist strap with stainless or rubber options. it was reviewed well by the wear-os press because it solved problems most other wear devices did not bother with. it sold poorly because sony had no retail story outside of a few sony stores in tokyo and a few amazon listings everywhere else.

~ the exit ~

sony mobile's exit from wearables was part of the larger sony mobile exit from premium consumer phones, which was part of the larger sony exit from being a brand that mattered in north american and european electronics. the smartwatch was an early casualty. by 2018 sony was doing wena, a smart-strap-for-analog-watches product, mostly in japan. that is the real sony wearable answer: build the smart bit into a strap so the watch on top can be whatever the customer wanted in the first place. it is a clever idea. it has not changed the market.

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