The nice guys over at APUS have kindly sent me an OLED watch for review. This is their Alpha Dark Force, which uses a blue PMOLED (they have other watches that use red or white PMOLEDs). APUS are selling the phones on-line in their web shop. The watches are also available in Amazon.com. The Alpha Dark Force, shown above costs $129.
First impressions
When you first take it out of the box, you notice something strange - the display is off. Then you realize that that's how it's supposed to be - the watch does not display anything until you press a button. Then it shows you the time for a few seconds, and turns off again. APUS say that this is to preserve the battery, which will drain in a couple of days if the display will be always on. More on this later.
The watch itself is very metallic. Kind of an industrial design, with 4 large screws on the top plate. Some people think that these are buttons, but they are not. There are two buttons on the left side. The watch is rather big, but I got used to it very quickly.
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Comments
A few years ago, sub-display in mobile phones had OLED watch. It is not expensive to make since it uses a passive matrix display and there is no graphic. I think that the price of USD 129 is high for such a simple device. The whole mobile phone with OLED sub-display (and LCD main display) sold for about USD 200 at that time.
Yeah, but you mainly pay here for the 'design' and not the materials used. This a watch, a piece of jewelery, mainly...
Agreed. But the picture does not seem to give an impression of a well-designed stylish watch. To me, it rather looked like a crudely put-togeher cheap watch. There are many LCD watches (Casio, for example) with better styles and designs costing around USD30.
In 1974 I had a/an LED Watch. It was a Gruen Pacemaker. Here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, it was the first electronic digital watch one could buy. I paid $300.00 for it. Like the Apus, which is the subject of this commentary, a button had to be pressed to read the time.
I can't tell you how many times people made fun of me for spending so much money on a watch that holds you hosage until you succumb and press a button. They laughingly showed off their mechanical watches that they ecologically soundly wound up each day and had their time displayed continuously.
The $300.00 Canadian, in January of 1974, when I got the watch, would translate into about $4,000.00 in U.S. currency today.
I cannot imagine doing something like that now.