Click to View

When the first generation of MSN Smart Watches came out over a year ago, most people looked at their giant faces and black, blocky styles and said, "Nope. Not on my wrist. Not in this lifetime."

But if you were one of the few who said, "If only they were bigger," then the Fossil Wrist PDA might be for you.

The first thing anyone will notice about the Wrist PDA is that it's awfully large for a watch; small for a handheld but big for a watch. It's guaranteed to be an instant conversation piece at any social gathering.

So if you think you'd enjoy frequently having the same conversation about what your watch can do, then go for it.


Front View of Wrist PDA

Now, this might be geek heresy, but—as you can tell by the previous paragraphs—we didn't fall in love with the Wrist PDA. We wanted to like the device.. We're as in love with gadgets as the next nerd, but the Wrist PDA needs to go through a few more versions before it's as beautiful and as easy to use as a tech watch should be.

The Tech Specs
The Wrist PDA has a 160 x 160 pixel touchscreen, with a drab 16 levels of grayscale. It runs off Palm OS 4.1 and a 66-MHz Motorola Dragonball processor, so it's no barnburner.

Other features include 8MB of storage and even a backlight. The rechargeable lithium-ion battery isn't as powerful as the one in your Zire or Tungsten, but it gets a respectable four days off a charge, with an average of 30 minutes of use per day.

The button layout is different from a typical Palm OS handheld, so experienced users will need a few minutes to get used to it. The back button is on the left, for going back a page or returning to a previous screen, while Page Up and Page Down buttons are in the top right and bottom right corners.

In the middle of the right side is a rocker switch, which you nudge up or down to move your cursor or press to select a highlighted item. The top left holds a tiny-hinged door that protects the connection port. Above the screen is the IR port, so that you can sync wirelessly or beam information to a friend's Palm OS watch or handheld.

You can sync the Wrist PDA with either a Windows PC running Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, or XP, or a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.1.2 or higher. The watch comes with a combination power and USB cord that connects to your PC, an outlet, and the watch itself. Of course, you can always sync with the IR port, if your computer has that ability.

The watch's software assortment is skimpy, leaving you to find fun any useful applications to transfer to the device. It comes with the standard Palm OS Address Book, Date Book, To Do, Memo, and Calculator apps. If you're running Windows, the installation CD also has PocketMirror for synching with Microsoft Outlook.

There are actually two versions of the Wrist PDA out, although only the band is different. Fossil sells one with a black leather band for $249, while Abacus (which is owned by Fossil) has one with a black rubber band for $199.

PDA Wrist Watch
It would be easier to love the Wrist PDA if the design showed a little more savvy, a little more stylishness. As is, it looks somewhat industrial and somewhat sci-fi, but not in a good way. The giant square stainless steel face is bold, but we'd prefer it look like a regular elegant watch.

The lack of design imagination shows in the changeable watch faces, too. You have your choice of twelve digital faces when the Wrist PDA is in time mode, but they're all poorly created, and most are just numbers in different fonts floating in the middle of the large screen.

Fossil designers should pick up a newer MSN Smart Watches—including their own—to see how fun and creative digital watch faces can be.

To write on the Wrist PDA, you'll need to remove the itty-bitty stylus from where it is cleverly concealed on the buckle.

Concealed Wrist PDA Stylus

The stylus is a hinged piece of metal and orange plastic that unfolds like the world's smallest pocketknife.


Stylus Unfolded

The watch comes with one replacement stylus, in case you lose it. Although a clever way of attaching a stylus, holding the tiny thing between our thumb and forefinger and pecking at the watch's face made us feel like a bear holding a toothpick.

Couldn't a standard telescoping stylus have somehow been concealed in the watch's giant face?

The Palm OS screen will look familiar to any Palm users, and might resemble the first Palm you ever owned, if you've been using them for a long time. Tap the rocker switch to scroll between applications, and then press it to select one.

Wrist PDA is set to use Jot for text input and even comes with wallet-sized cheat-sheets to tell you how to write letters, numbers, punctuation, and commands. Unlike a regular Palm, you can write anywhere on the screen and your lines will display instantly, showing you what you've written. Even if you've used Palm-based devices before, getting the hang of writing on the watch takes some time.

Working with applications on the 160 x 160 pixel resolution screen is no pleasure and not for people who can't read the bottom line of an eye chart. Screens are compact and fonts are small, although some apps have their own font controls. Make sure you have the screen precisely tuned with the digitizer, because otherwise it's difficult to press what you mean to press on the cramped display.

The watch can run third-party apps just like any Palm OS device, but because of the small screen and the different button layout, some of them are more successful than others. AvantGo, for example, translates well, but playing any games is more complicated than. Tetris would be impossible.

Address Book                            Datebook                            To Do List

Memo Pad                            Time App

                                               Wrist PDA Screen Shots

First announced over two years ago, the Wrist PDA with Palm OS was certainly eagerly awaited. It will likely find an audience of early adopters. As for us, we'll be happy to wait until the second or third version—when the watch will hopefully show more refinement—to get one for ourselves.

Until then, we'll be happy to carry a Palm OS handheld or smartphone instead.