Sony SmartWatch could use a little more time in development

— -- Back in 2004, Microsoft asked : "Pardon me, do you have the weather?"

It was a clever ad campaign for MSN Direct wristwatches based on Microsoft's "Smart Personal Objects Technology," or SPOT for short. The watches could indeed deliver the local forecast to your wrist, along with such things as news headlines, stock quotes and, oh, yeah, the time.

Only the timepieces never struck gold, despite being produced by watchmakers Fossil, Suunto, Tissot, Citizen and Swatch. Microsoft eventually let the clock run out on SPOT.

Fast-forward to the present, and "smart watches" are back in play, if not yet in vogue. The promising, but ultimately flawed $149.99 SmartWatch arrives from Sony as a Bluetooth wireless companion for an Android smartphone.

I tested SmartWatch with a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G handset from AT&T. But theoretically, the watch is compatible with any number of smartphones running Android version 2.1 or later.

How does a smart watch complement a smartphone? One way is by letting you wirelessly control the music playing on the phone by tapping the watch face. You can adjust the volume and swipe to advance or repeat tracks.

You can glance at timely information on the watch face, too — tweets, texts, e-mails or Facebook updates — sent from the phone to the watch. With Facebook, you can tap the watch face to indicate you "like" what you read, but you can't view links that accompany posts.

A tap on the watch face can open apps. One gives you the current temperature and forecast for the next few days; another sounds a ringtone to help you find a missing phone that may have fallen under the couch or got caught between cushions. Coming soon: an app that lets you remotely control the camera, Sony says.

The apps themselves are actually managed in software on the phone, where they're downloaded from Google Play. About 30 apps, mostly free, are available from Sony or outside developers, and range from fitness to mapping. Sony promises double that number soon.

Encased in plastic and aluminum, the 0.30-inch-thick watch is squarish with curvy corners. It may not win any fashion awards, but it's no eyesore. The dustproof and splash-resistant (but not waterproof) watch snaps onto a standard black rubber band or one of five optional color straps. You can also clip it to a custom wristband or a belt. On my test unit, the spring that clips the watch came loose, but I fixed it.

Unfortunately, using the SmartWatch was often an exercise in frustration. For now, you can't change from the digital clock that's displayed into an analog clock. Sony says that's coming. The interface is crude; the small screen requires the "New Event" icon to be labeled "New Even." You're meant to navigate the watch through touch-screen gestures: swiping left and right or up and down to move between widgets, apps and icons. If you tap the display with two fingers, you can retreat to the home screen.

The required actions aren't always intuitive, and the touch-screen wasn't always responsive. The watch sometimes crashed or lost the Bluetooth connection, even when the phone was next to the timepiece. (Bluetooth range is about 30 feet.) Before I realized that you have to pinch an app on the watch face to close it, I twice inadvertently swiped the screen and retweeted Twitter posts with a canned "nice."