Will they work? Watch this space...
The future direction of the mobile phone market became a hot topic this week as pundits speculated which products would be the successes and flops of this year and whether the winners are already in the market or yet to come.
The joker in the pack was entertainer and innovator Will.i.am, who indulged in some shameless advertising on the Beeb by hijacking the final of the voice to make a call on air with his new smartwatch.
The previous evening he had also show it off on Alan Carr's Channel 4 chat show, and was more forthcoming there about its features and it’s planned launch in the summer.
This combined phone, timepiece, music player and web interface for the wrist has been financed by Will.i.am himself and will be produced by his own company.
In the world of grown-up phones, however, the talk is that the era of the 2K resolution phone is about to dawn with the forthcoming LG G3 model promising 2560 x 1440 pixel display.
Just how will a small screen on the rest compete with that? With an iPhone 6 and Galaxy Note 4, maybe also a Google Nexus 7, to come and bring as yet undisclosed new features with them, the competition looks stiffer than ever.
Meanwhile, HTC has stolen a march by getting a new headline model, the M8, into the shops already. Its predecessor, the HTC One, was named by some as the phone of 2013, and the M8 is set to improve on that.
Can our Will really compete in the marketplace already overcrowded with the big hitters and will smartwatch phones ever take off at all?
