Sony SmartWatch 2 -- was one of the most promising models in 2013. Now it is discontinued but remains compartative with smartwatches in $100 price range.  The main competition now is  LG G Watch

Three days battery life (which can be extended to a week, if you switch watches off for the night), good form facor, good combination of features (and first of all no camera of mike which is a huge plus ;-). 

It is a MENS sized watch. Women may find it a bit large. The Sony watch does not run Android native. It utilizes the android ADK concept (accessory development kit) so the Sony watch is more like a remote display to your phone.

It has a passive transflective screen which displays 100% of the time, even without backlight. The Sony sw2 screen when it is "dark" (no backlight) can be read with normal indoor lighting. Battery life is ~3-4 days

The watch vibrates when it loses connection with the phone and vibrates again when in range. If you can't find the phone once it is connected a find phone free app can be used on the watch to make the phone play a tune.

It is not without problems:

• Inability to function other then watch without connection to cell phone. For example you can't create and read a local note or have a local phone book (function available in $35 Casio Databank)
• Bad visibility at bright sunlight.
• More expensive then it should be at $160 with metal band and 135 or so with plastic band
• Supports only Android, no Windows phones support (windows phones are standrd company phones in many large European companies)
• Has natural preference toward Sony smartphones (you can answer calls if you use Sony smartphone).

Some useful quotes from Amazon reviews:

...Considering the smart watches available at this time and in the forseeable near future (Pebble, Kreyos, Galaxy Gear, Vachen, Qualcomm Toq, and others), I believe the Sony Smartwatch 2 is absolutely the best purchase. It really has the best combination of specs, looks, (and even value, as if that is a concern for you, considering you are looking at purchasing a smartwatch to begin with). I have no doubt the software will rapidly improve due to the popularity of this product.

===

... the bluetooth range is limited to about 25-30 feet   So if you live in a bigger home then expect your watch to drop in and out of connection frequently.

===

When they wouldn't connect at all I found that they would often reconnect if I turned off the watch, rebooted the phone, and then turned the watch on again. This is a nuisance, but not as bad as re-pairing and reinstalling everything to the watch. The last time this happened, instead of rebooting the phone, I turned Bluetooth off and then on again. It worked that time and I will have to see if this works consistently.

===

I've found the watch to also be of greater value now with programs which send notifications for multiple programs. This both reduces the number of programs you need running and provides notifications for every program you want shown on the watch regardless of whether there is a smartwatch app. For example, if your phone has notifications for Facebook and Twitter you can have these relayed to the smartwatch without having to run separate programs to monitor Facebook and Twitter. I like WatchIt! the best of programs of this type which I have tried, and it is free. Augmented Smartwatch Pro is an interesting paid app. I don't like it for replacing most notification apps as it is intended, but it does so much that even though I don't use it for notifications it still replaces several other apps such as missed call notification, battery meter, weather (but only gives weather for the current day), rain alerts, phone signal strength, and control of music apps (for pausing and starting, but without volume control).

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20131202 : Sony Smart Watch SW2 for Android Phones ( Sony Smart Watch SW2 for Android Phones, Dec 02, 2013 )

Old News ;-)

[Dec 02, 2013] Sony Smart Watch SW2 for Android Phones

3.0 out of 5 stars Blu Tooth Issues resolved - Updated, October 3, 2013

By

V. K. Balasubramanian "Nikon D700 Rocks!" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Sony Smart Watch SW2 for Android Phones (Wireless Phone Accessory)

Bought this device as second Android screen for my Samsung Galaxy S4 smart phone. Got with the black strap. So far it is working ok. There were some initial troubles in pairing this device with my phone via NFC. After several attempts, gave up on NFC pairing and went with blu tooth pairing. Blu tooth pairing is holding good till now. I have moved this watch away from the phone by significant distance and did not face any re-pairing type annoyances yet.

The watch face is wider than the length by few mm. I went with this watch instead of Samsung gear because I have small hands and I thought this will fit better than Samsung gear. The Gear is longer and narrower than Sony SW2. This watch sits perfect on my hand with no constant sliding in any direction. I have to use the last hole on the strap though.

I did not go with Samsung Gear because, as of now it will not work with my S4. I was also not keen on camera, extra cost and non-replaceable straps.

The resolution on SW2 is decent, but Samsung Gear resolution is much better. I did not compare them side by side, but I am fine with Sony SW2 resolution. I purchased one app so far to enable me to dial numbers from the phone (just for coolness factor).

The SW2 has one button on the side (like a regular watch) and it has 3 soft buttons (back, home and apps type button - still trying to figure this one out). You cannot press the soft buttons directly without pressing side button first. One the other side, there is a micro usb port to charge the watch.

Sony SW2 Smart Connect Liveware is the software that need to be installed on the phone first. It happens when the watch is paired with phone. One can also download the s/w from google play store directly as well. Once the Liveware s/w is installed the watch comes to life. The liveware s/w gives options to installs apps on the watch directly. There are few to select from.

The screen response is decent. It is not blazing fast, but generally responsive. I have installed Gmail, Messages, phone app, dial pad so far. They all work fine. The gmail app shows the gmail on your watch, messages shows texts on watch on so on. The dialpad allowed me to dial a number from the watch.

My biggest complaint about this watch is its standby brightness. It is very low and it is difficult to read the time without pushing the side button. The black watch face (shown in some pictures) is absolutely not readable. I have switched to white background, which made it marginally better. Pushing the side button, brightens up the screen and makes the time very readable. I think this is a big miss for Sony SW2. The watch should always tell time clearly without the need to push additional buttons. Hopefully this will get fixed via s/w update in near future.

My second issue is that there are no apps to allow multiple timezones to be displayed on the watch. As a watch linked to smartphone, I think this should have been made available out of the box. It should have allowed the travelers to switch timezones with a simple swipe action. This would have made it really useful for people traveling in multiple time zones regularly. I hope an app gets released by Sony or some third party to address this gap. There is a timezone app in the market, which allows to set a single timezone.

I will keep testing and post any updates.

Pros:

- fits on my small hand
- looks good
- wide and flexible strap
- Decent resolution
- Some useful apps

Cons:

- Standby display brightness is very low making it very difficult to tell time without pushing the side button
- Cannot pair via NFC (may be it is a galaxy s4 issue)
- Very few free apps. Most of the apps are at least 0.99
- No hotmail app
- Mail app listed by liveware is not compatible with the watch
- No world clock app yet
- Watch froze once so far, Had to reset (by pushing and holding power button for 15 second)

Update : 10/4/2013

The device is always paired over blu tooth. As some else pointed out, NFC is just for easier pairing. I think the issue was, when I tried pair it by NFC tapping, it did not download the liveware software. However when I paired it using blu tooth manually, it started downloading liveware software. I stand corrected on the NFC pairing. Thanks for pointing it out. However, theI am downgrading it 1 star because this device impacts the call quality on my blu tooth paired car phone system (honda odyssey). When this device is paired, the phone calls have become scratchy, barely audible over the other blu tooth paired headset.

Update : 10/11/2013

The blue tooth issue has been resolved after taking to an android expert. Basically on the phone I have to turn off sending Media Audio over BT, but only send Call Audio over BT. This resolved the call quality issues I had with Odyssey Handsfree Link BT.

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 12, 2019