Americans check their phones eight billion times a day.
Collectively, not individually. Still, that’s 25 potentially rude gestures per capita.
Given that your smartphone is your daily planner, a few of those glances may be (impolitely) necessary.
Unless you have the Calendar Watch, a handsomely minimalist timepiece with a noble goal: keeping your next 24 hours at arm’s length.
Every single appointment on your digital calendar of choice syncs with the watch so you can reference them at a glance.
The Calendar was created by What? Watch, a consortium of designers from around the globe who already scored one hit with their Stop-the-Time Watch, which let you “mark” important moments in time and pair them with an app.
Their new Kickstarter-backed project was designed to prevent you from missing important events in the most unobtrusive way possible. “I really hope the watch will help the majority of busy people with bad time management,” says What? Watch CEO Igor Basargin.
The watch features a clean, minimalist design with a stainless steel case and a sapphire lens with anti-reflection coating.
And no buttons. “We wanted to make a futuristic product,” says Basargin. “If you look at it from the side on it reminds you of a UFO, and the back part of the watch was created with the idea that it looks like a bank safe door with the round lock — those stainless steel doors in James Bond films come to mind.”
That’s because all the heavy lifting is going on behind the scenes. Tucked within all this analog handsomeness is an e-ink display that syncs with an app and your chosen digital calendar(s) (iCalendar, Google, Outlook, Facebook Events, Yahoo, etc.).
Every appointment from your calendar for the next 12 hours is indicated on the watch (and for times further ahead, at the tap of a button). So you immediately know when you’re available and when you’re needed at a single glance.
Meeting coming up? The watch vibrates and blinks. Again, unobtrusive.
Some nice bonus features here as well: two modes to set your schedule (flexible, where you constantly see the next 12 hours of events, or working, with a fixed starting time), automatic adjustment for different time zones and a battery that lasts for weeks between charges.
The watches are available in Polar White, Aqua Blue, Special Edition Black and — if and when they hit their stretch goal — Verdant Green. Plus, you can swap in different colored lugs and wristbands to create your own unique look.
Preorders available for the next two weeks. Shipping is set for September.
Until then: keep checking back.
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