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The Sony Ericsson LiveView is already available in several regions, but without a US release I had not seen the nifty little accessory in the flesh…or plastic, rather. When I stumbled upon it at Sony Ericsson’s booth at MWC I couldn’t pass up the chance to check it out. Good news was learned, too. The LiveView is a mere few weeks away from a US and Canadian release.
Initially believing the LiveView only worked with Sony Ericsson devices, speaking to the head of application outreach at SE I learned the platform is completely open both to developers and users of handsets from other manufacturers. You need only to install a LiveView bridge app and the LiveWare software that allows you to narrow down Android Market results to LiveView-compatible services. They download on your phone and install to the device over the air.
But the idea of the LiveView is what makes it so compelling. A sports bundle that includes a running app download from the market and some accessories to mount your gear while in motion highlights just one of the areas where the LiveView becomes extremely useful. Your phone takes care of all the monitoring of distance, time, and calories burned while the LiveView’s mini display presents the information in an easy manner. Just glance at your wrist with no need to manage your phone while running.
Of course, you could always use it as a smart watch to display time, recent texts and emails, and countless other applications for just about anything you could think. So it looks a little dorky…but SE promises us their working on that too. A new version will be a bit sleeker than the current chunky plastic. The LiveView retails for about 70 euro; stay tuned for a full review in the near future.
Nice; looking forward to this….1st!!!
I have been wondering when they were going to release this in the states.
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It looks very promising.
5 Stars for Geekiness, im in…
€70 is a rip-off.
i found it for €38 at amazon.de a while ago.
I was interested in this when it came out, but the reviews (and to an extent the price) steered me well clear. The concept needs fully realising (most urgently with an actual touchscreen) and there are apparently looooooads of connectivity issues, mostly with non-SE devices but still a few with SE devices. It’s a great, great idea and the modular plugin system is such an award-winningly simple idea that I can’t believe it came from modern-day Sony Ericsson. But check the reviews out and think twice. Somebody needs to take this idea and run with it. HTC, maybe?
Uh oh. Politicians will soon draft a bill that forbids anyone to look at their watch at a stoplight.
I bought this piece of crap when it was first released. It was horrible back then, and even with the recent update, it’s still as broken as ever.
The watch ‘unsyncs’, so you have to click the ‘sync’ button every 10-50 minutes just to make sure it’ll vibrate when you get an email or call.
I have buyers remorse. I’m warning you too
i picked one up on ebay for 50 bucks so if it doesn’t work out, oh well, but i’m excited. there have been some work going on over at xda trying to solve these issues. the update seems to help and with the work arounds over at xda it should be ok
once it reaches the states i think a lot more dev will go into it and a lot more plugins will emerge.
After the update, can it now show the time and date without being pared to a phone?
No time to watch video right now. How about NFC on this device? So you can leave your phone pocketed, so it will not be taken from you by a smartass at the subway entry. Killerapp IMHO.
@pie-eater
what?…
@Nushio
Do you get 30 feet away from your phone? It said it has a range of 10 meters and I would expect that if you leave that range you would need to re-sync.
I have one…..it is very unstable and uses all of the battery within a half day of use. Not really good for a watch you would want to wear all day long. It is quite easy to make apps for but the possibilities are somewhat limited.
It looses the connection a lot which is probably the most annoying problem…especially as it has a tendency to lock up when you try to reconnect it once again.
Not a bad “first try” for such a device but it will not be public usable before second generation.
Got one of these recently and it’s a piece of junk. Doesn’t connect to my phone with any reliability, impossible to fix. Sony should be ashamed of themselves of putting out a product this bad.
want
Too bad reviews arent too kind too it. i think its a great idea but it would be nice to handle in a store before actually buying
perfect companion for dell streak 5 or any Android tab, i which it had a mic/speaker
Reviews of the European product have been poor. Lots of dropped connections and reboots. Hopefully these were software bugs that will be fixed before the US release.
I love the idea but the reviews here and elsewhere plus just how SE has been doing with their hardware lately, can’t say I’ll be buying. I miss the w810 and K750 days.
Sony has been shipping second rate equipment for some years now. This is no surprise. It is disappointing though.