We first featured the Blocks modular smartwatch on Concept Sunday back in July. Much like Project Ara is doing for smartphones, the Blocks modular smartwatch wanted to bring customizeability to smartwatches. The concept envisions that most of the watch’s functionality would come in the form of wristband modules. Each block would support a range of functions such as GPS, health sensors, battery, camera, SIM card and more. Snapped together and combined with a display of your choice (OLED, e-ink, square, round, etc), you would have exactly the smartwatch you want.
Fast forward a few months and the Blocks modular smartwatch appears to be well on its way to becoming reality. The project has secured funding from Intel and support from PhoneBloks and is now working on new prototypes.
The team has managed to get a display block, motion block and an environment block to connect to the main core processor block. The latter is able to detect the hardware upon connection and pass data back and forth successfully. Recent blog entries also reveal that “we’ve finally found the answer to open-design as well as cross-activity comfort!” and that “development is well underway for the amazingly small and powerful Intel chip.”
A new video shows the current vision for the Blocks modular smartwatch. Among the details revealed are that the blocks will come with custom colour covers, allowing you to not only customize the watch’s functionality but colour as well.
We also get a glimpse at some user interface concepts under consideration:
Perhaps the Blocks modular smartwatch will become reality in 2015. The team is aiming to have basic configurations sell for between US$200 and US$250 with more expensive configurations going for up to US$350.
Source : Blocks