My Vidonn X5 activity tracker died on me a few weeks ago about over a year of service. While it was useful to keep me active thanks to its “steps” counter, I realized I was not a big fan of OLED displays as they aren’t turned on all the time in order to save power, and are hard to read when there’s a strong sunlight, the battery did not last that long (about 2 days), and using motion sensors to evaluate activity is not that accurate. So I’m interested in wearables with always-on displays, readable in sunlight, that don’t suck too much battery (e.g one charge per week), and with a strapless heart rate monitor. The first three are normally only achievable with E-Ink or E-Paper displays and the latter have become much more common thanks to electro-optical heart rate monitors. I’m also a budget conscious guy, so I’d like a product matching my requirements for less than $100 shipped.
And it looks like SMA-Q smartwatch may fulfill all these requirements:
- SoC – N/A
- System Memory – 128KB RAM
- Storage – 512KB flash (for firmware)
- Display – 1.33″ color E-paper display by Sharp with 6 different clock interfaces
- Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0
- Sensors – Heart rate monitor, likely some motion / gyro sensors to act as a pedometer and sleep monitor
- Misc – 4 buttons, vibrating motor
- Battery – Polymer battery (capacity not specified); Up to 30 days standby time; Charged with magnetically attached cable
- Dimensions – Watch face 4.3 x 3.5 x 1.0 cm; Watch band: 14 to 21 cm wrist circumference (TPSiV material)
- Weight – 45 grams
- IP Rating – Not specified but is said to be “30 meters water resistant”, i.e. usable while “washing hands and face”.
The watch can also pair with Android or iOS mobile devices to display incoming and missed calls, messages, and be used a camera remote control. Phone independent functions include health tracker with sedentary reminder, 24-hour heart rate monitor, sleep monitor, pedometer, as well as alarm and calendar. The watch firmware is said to support both English and Chinese languages.
You can also download SMAlife app for Android 4.4 or greater, or iOS 7.1 or above to keep track of your fitness data, and sleep patterns over time. I’ve tried for Android, and permissions include making phone calls and sending SMS, and once you start the application, they’ll ask you to register using your mobile phone number, which is quite annoying and should be unnecessary…
The package includes SMA-Q Smart Watch, a pogo pin charging cable, and a Chinese and English user’s manual. The watch is available in four colors: black, khaki, blue and red. The color is somewhat important as the khaki version sells for $56 on GearBest, while if you select the other colors the price goes up to $78.22… People who live in China could also purchase the watch on Taobao (I can’t see the price as the page won’t load here). More details may also be available on SMA-Q Watch product page.
Via Gadgeto Adicto
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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The Taobao page loads for me, and google translated for me.
It is a fundraiser page (which is already closed).
Cheapest price on it is 299 yuan for early birds, 329 and up for later; translation is not that good, but it seems to me that they claim a 499 yuan store price.
I would be interested in your actual findings (especially on battery life and quality of the heart beat measurements).
I get it that they’re going for battery life here but this is really, really weak:
System Memory – 128KB RAM
Storage – 512KB flash (for firmware)
I’ve got a $10 MT6261 that has 4MB RAM and 4 MB NOR flash
Marius, what watch is that with MT6261 ?
I think this is going to be big. For 30 days uptime I am really wanted to rethink to buy one!
@Tadej
I’m not sure what 30-day standby time means though. Maybe it’s with the watch on the table with the HRM disabled…
I think Pebble Time gets around 7 days with an e-ink display, so if SMA-Q could last one week for typical use I would still be satisfied.
@Tadej
This one here: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3-colors-Sport-U8-U80-Bluetooth-Smart-Wrist-Bracelet-Watch-Phone-Mate-For-Android-IOS-Iphone/32465419985.html?spm=2114.031010208.3.1.Sni591&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_6_71_72_73_74_75,searchweb201527_3,searchweb201560_9
Well any watch that says it’s an U8 and it’s very cheap ( around $10-12 ) on Aliexpress or Ebay is actually a MT6261 clone. The watch is actually decent if you use the Mediatek app for Android and you don’t expect too much from it.
I just got 2 of them to hack them. I’m now trying to get fernly from ferndale to work ( Xobs is helping me out ). You can check the thread here:
http://www.kosagi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=204&p=3
@Marius Cirsta
No heartbeat monitoring 🙁
Also not sure about battery life.
And it looks less nice.
Still for $10 I might buy one just to play with.
Yeah, those Sharp color LCDs (they’re not actually e-paper, they are very low power LCD’s) aren’t cheap, so $56 is pretty reasonable, especially for color.
@TonyT
I’ve just found an interesting thread discussing E-ink vs E-paper.
https://forums.getpebble.com/discussion/3072/pebble-is-not-e-paper-or-e-ink-it-is-lcd
So I’ve edited the title of this post, since the display is not an e-paper display made by E-Ink.
More details about Sharp reflective LCDs (RLCD) @ http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/resources/polarizer-free_reflective_lcd_white_paper.pdf
By the way I can find some monochrome ones for sale, but the color ones are harder to find.
@cnxsoft,
Tell me about it – I think the Sharp memory LCD’s are pretty cool, but they’re pricey and monochrome only from normal distributors (DK, Mouser) last time I checked. I do have a monochrome one (the TI Booster Pack one) but haven’t had time to play with it yet.
I have taken the plunge, i’m using a Metawach (strata and frame) now but the battery is starting to die on me :(. So time for something new, i already have a Weloop Tommy but that one does not work on android 5.0 so now i try this one.
I hope that it’s as hackable as the weloop Tommy and that the XDA developers like this watch so mutch that they make hacks for it 🙂 there is a nice community for the Weloop Tommy 🙂
For 55 dollar a color smartwatch that can last for 30 days (i think in real life 20 days) is verry nice. Now i need to bring my charger with me if i stay somewhere for more than 3 day’s (and the Metawach is still batery positive)
Ordered for the same reason! I really hope it’s like the Tommy, if it ends up as popular it will be massively worth the £36. Any battery life over a week will be better than my now faulty GWatch too!!
Gearbest page (not linked from the post) says “presale till Nov 16”.
> there is a nice community for the Weloop Tommy
How can there be nice hacking community for Weloop Tommy, if CNX didn’t post about it? Prooflinks or doesn’t exist. What I remember about Weloop Tommy is year-old posts on their forum: “Are you going to release open SDK?” – “Of course we are” – [silence].
@Paul
Oops.. Mistake. Thanks for noticing… I’ve added the link.
@Paul
http://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch/other-smartwatches/weloop-tommy-smartwatch-faq-updates-t2995858
Heee is a treath where you can find: a watchface make tool, an alternative firmware from another company and an open custom made firmware from some users.
Official there is no support from weloop
Will this watch alert you when you reach a certain heart rate, or does it simply monitor it and chart it for you over time?
@Robyn
Not sure yet. I’ve asked for a sample, so I’ll find out soon.
Hello
I was interested by the 30m waterproof resistance, but it seems it’s a mistake. I asked Gearbest about the heart monitoring during swimming, here is their answer :
“The watch is water resistance: You can wear it to wash hands and face. You can not wear it when swimming. We hope you enjoy shopping here with us.”
If you can not wear it when swimming, it’s hard to understand how it could be waterproof up to 30m
@Myst3r
OK, I understand now. I used “waterproof” instead of “water resistant” (and GearBest too), and the watch is “30m water resistant”
See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resistant_mark
@cnxsoft
OK I understand better now ! Thanks for the clarification…
Anyone received these yet?
@Paul
I’ve been told It will be in stock next week.
I should get one from Gearbest or tinydeal.
Hi there, I ordered the SMA Q watch from the factory. It arrived today and so far everything works as described on Gearbest. I got tired of waiting on Gearbest (I ordered pre-sale on November 2) and my thinking is that Gearbest is waiting for 500 orders, before Gearbest actually places the order with the factory. Price I paid was USD 72’50 +shipping cost.
Hi All,
if there is someone, who are still interested in this device – as update, SMA released a new fw for the watch, the actual is 1.6, and also an update of the app. It was the second refreshment still I have this device, from 5th of Jan.
Niw I can confirm, it works as it was described on the page, all function alive, including sleep as well. I need to test the tracking – this function freezed the previous version of app – but it it promising, that that now it is not crashed when i set it up. Of course there are several issues with the device, like hard to reed the display, the alarm does not ring….. The battery is great, Im using it from 5th of Jan, without charging, and it is 35% now…
@Glitch69
Hi, I just placed the order for this watch at gearbest.
How’s your experience with the watch so far? I just browsed thru the SMA watch FB page…seems there’s a lot of issues with the watch……
hope my batch of watches go out with less or minimal bugs…
@mjj
I have reviewed it here too: http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/12/22/sma-q-smartwatch-mini-review-and-teardown/
Mine only lasted over one week before dying. I’ve sent it to a developer that is working on an open source firmware for the watch.
Where that project can be found?
@Paul
It’s the guy who worked on Weloop Tommy’s firmware @ https://hackaday.io/project/4510-open-source-sportsmart-watch