NEW YORK: People who like watches tend to really like their watches. That means most aren’t giving up their hard-won collections in favour of something digital. Smartwatches aren’t just up for debate — they’re not even part of the conversation. The Chronos device is one of the best attempts yet at addressing this gap.
Chronos is a small metal disc that turns any watch into a smartwatch. It’s just 33mm across and 2.5mm thick and weighs next to nothing. It’s waterproof, and a microsuction surface on the back lets it adhere to the underneath of a watch, situating it between the mechanism and your wrist. Inside the Chronos is an array of sensors, a few LEDs, a vibration engine, and a battery, letting it add sort of ad-hoc smartwatch functionality to watches you already wear.
I’ve spent a week with a prototype, and the experience has been pretty good so far. Attaching it to the watch is as easy as putting on a sticker, and it pops right off when you get a fingernail under the edge. The seal is water resistant, and I didn’t once worry about it coming off accidentally. The Chronos comes with a charging pad and should get about 36 hours of juice on a three-hour charge. Chronos says nothing in the device or the charger will magnetise your watch, so you don’t have to remove the disc from your timepiece for charging.
I tried it on a few watches and found it most comfortable on those with flat casebacks and leather or fabric straps. Already domed or curved backs end up looking and feeling extra bubble-like with this on the back. Metal bracelets need to be adjusted to accommodate the extra girth. This won’t be a huge deal if you wear the Chronos every day, but it would quickly get annoying for an occasional wearer.
The Chronos app is straightforward and the set-up process really easy. It prompts you to pair with the device and pulls in your health data from iOS’s HealthKit (it will also work with your favourite fitness apps on Android). Steps, distance, active calories burned, and flights of stairs climbed are the main categories, and the interface is clean and easy to read, showing activity across the day in a ring. There will be some proprietary fitness tracking down the line, but for now it works seamlessly with existing ones.
The other big function of Chronos is notifications. Each type of notification can be assigned one of eight vibration patterns and one of six colours of LED flashes (or no lights at all). There are two tiers of notifications: person-specific and app-specific. For the former, you can assign a contact her own combination and get that vibration and flash whenever she contacts you, whether it’s through a phone call, an e-mail, or a WhatsApp message. Apps can also get their own patterns, which will be the default unless a contact has a special pattern assigned. The breadth of natively integrated apps is great, including Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter all from launch.
