Chronos Turn Your Favorite Wrist Watch Into Smart Watch
Smartwatch offers a new level of comfort with more than just a timekeeping. However, smartwatch have not been able to penetrate market well enough. A new innovation from Trivoly is expected to bridge the gap between mechanical watch and smartwatch. Chronos, a tiny disc that is able to turn regular wrist watch into smart watch is planned for shipping worldwide in February 2016.
Most of us already have a watch, and we often have a favorite watch to wear. Buying a smartwatch is equal to replacing our favorite watch with a new one. Smartwatch itself is actually a wearable computer that runs mobile apps connected to a smartphone. Seeing that opportunity, Trivoly, a startup company, offers a convenient way to turn your favorite watch into a smart watch.
Recently, the company launched a crowdsourcing campaign in Kickstarter community for Chronos. It is a tiny disc attached to the back of wrist watch that allow ordinary wrist watch to communicate with Android Phone and iPhone. Chronos offers connectivity with Android smartphone from version 4.2 and iOS 8-9 iPhone using a very thin 0.3 mm metal disc that support 4 days battery life. One attached to regular wrist watch, Trivoly app needs to be download and installed from either Gogle Play or iPhone. Once connected to smartphone, Chronos will be able to bring notification, fitness tracker, remote music player and remote camera control.
Bloomberg also pointed out concern from people who already have watches. Those who like watches are not giving up their watches collection in favor for something digital, and Chronos idea is one of the best attempt to address the gap. It is because according to Bloomberg, for a lot of people who wear mechanical watch, smartwatches have been a nonstarter so far. Especially most fitness tracker don't do a very good job with their fitness notification and other things.
Mark Nichol, CEO of Trivoly told Forbes, that Chronos is designed to seamlessly integrate modern notification and tracking technology with watches people always loved to wear. Chronos features and smart notifications like haptic feedback, accelerometers, microsuction, wireless charging, and light alerts, provide a convenient way for watch collectors to have smartwatch functionaltity in their favorite watch. Nichols also said that Chronos fits on over 80% of watches sold today.
Although a smartwatch grows, the biggest market is on the mechanical watch wearer. As new products keep entering the market like the latest one from Huawei, the smartwatch market is slowly becoming saturated. Even so, Huawei watch will be the strongest competitor for Apple Watch and is already available in UK market since Novermber 5, as reported by Tech Times.
It is interesting to wait for Trivoly's performance in market. As the Delaware-based company will begin shipping Chronos next year, their target market is the watch collector. So far, Chronos is the best implementation to bridge gap between mechanical watch and smartwatch with a $99 price tag.