PN Futura » News » Sony's latest wearable is a watch made of electronic paper

The Wall Street Journal has uncovered Sony's clandestine involvement in a smartwatch project. Under the name Fashion Entertainment (FES), the company has thrown an electronic paper watch into the wearable product scrum.

All credit to Sony, the watch itself is very slick looking. It overcomes many of the problems existing smartwatches on the market present -- namely that they are overly bulky and have naff battery lives. Electronic paper, which is famously used in ebook readers to provide them with long-lasting battery, should ensure that this device can keep running for weeks on a single charge, rather than just a day or two.

The downside, of course, is that this watch is not exactly "smart". It isn't an internet-connected device and doesn't have any extraneous functions or features. It is simply a timekeeping product -- but one made using new technology and a new material.

Sony secretly put the watch on a crowdfunding site in September, not taking ownership of the product until this week. The device surpassed its 2 million yen goal (£108,000), raising 3.5 million yen (£188,000) in total.

"We hid Sony's name because we wanted to test the real value of the product, whether there will be demand for our concept," a person involved in the project told the WSJ. It might seem unusual for a big brand like Sony to take to a crowdfunding site, but it is becoming an increasingly useful way to test whether or not there is a market for a product.

The electronic paper element of the design is not just restricted to the watch face -- it covers the strap too. This allows wearers to choose from one of 26 different combinations of face and strap designs. It's slim and minimalist, and has something of a next-generation Swatch Skin watch about it.

The Sony team that created the watch is working on other electronic paper products -- including bow ties -- with the aim of redefining the material as a new type of fabric.

It's not clear when exactly the watch will be available yet, but those who backed the crowdfunding campaign have been told that they will receive theirs after May next year, which gives us a fair idea of how long we'll be waiting. Most of the major tech companies have been ploughing away for just over a year now trying to make an impact in the smartwatch market, but with the likes of Apple and Intel yet to release their own products, or products incorporating their hardware, it's still too soon to say who it is that will come out on top.