The market for wearables is clearly divided. Smartwatches have lined the upper end of the spectrum with Samsung’s Gear line of devices and now Android Wear based watches being the most prominent ones. The other end of the spectrum includes the standalone fitness focussed wearables. These wearables are then focussed on tracking your fitness related activities and include basic time keeping functionality. Due to the price, functionality divide between the categories, neither of them really have the potential to democratize wearables. And so step in indigenous manufacturers that try to bridge that gap by introducing a device that cherry picks features from higher end smartwatches and makes them available at a very accessible price point. Today we take a look at the Spice Smart Pulse, a device pegged as a smartwatch for the masses by the company. Worth it? Read on to find out.
Box Contents
- Spice Smart Pule M-9010 Smartwatch
- Extra watch bands (Blue, Yellow)
- Bluetooth headset
- Data cable & Travel charger
- Micro USB earphones
- 420 mAh battery
- User guide, Warranty card
Hardware
The Spice Smart Pulse is pegged as a phone and a watch and as such there are limits to the form factor. On the face of it, the Spice Smart Pulse looks like any other smartwatch. It would be remiss of us if we did not mention that the Galaxy Gear is a major source of inspiration for the Spice Smart Pulse.
Up front is a square display, 1.6 inches in width. Surrounding it is a black bezel. Three capacitive buttons are placed below the screen. The buttons correspond to menu, home and back as is the case on Android phones. An Android phone however this is not. More on that in the software section.
The rest of the hardware is glossy silver with faux torx screw markings around the borders to give it an industrial design language. Unfortunately it comes off as fairly gaudy and we’re not big fans of the hyper gloss finish either. A single hardware button and micro USB slot is located on the left side of the watch while the right side sports the VGA camera as well as a single LED flash.
Over at the back of the watch, you once again get glossy black plastic which is quite soft to touch. This back cover is removable and under it you’ll find the SIM card slots and also the battery slot. The watch bands are standard bands that can be replaced albeit not easily. The Spice Smart Pulse ships with two replacement bands in a rather gaudy shade of blue and yellow and we doubt many users would be keen on switching away from black.
There’s little here that separates the hardware or should we say design of the phone from most of the competition. From afar, the watch is nigh identical to the Galaxy Gear and might we say it was intentionally done so by the company to ride the competitor’s recognition? Either ways, what you gain in design language, you lose in quality as the Spice Smart Pulse is but a shadow of the Galaxy Gear’s hardware quality. The cheap looking fake metal and average plastics leave much to be desired. Then again, you get what you pay for and it would be foolhardy to demand a full metal design at this price point. Just be sure to temper your expectations if you’re in the market for the Smart Pulse M-9010. The watch weighs 54grams and is about 13mm thick, well beyond modern phones.
Software
Before we dive into the software section, let it be known that this is anything but a smartwatch. All the functionality you’ll possibly get from the Spice Smart Pulse is already baked in and there’s no opportunity here to expand on said functionality. On a macro level, the smart component is just the ability to mirror notifications from your phone and to make calls over bluetooth using your handset.
Let’s start with the interface. You’ll need to press the button on the side to activate the display. Pressing for anything over a second or two switches off the watch so you’ll need to be a bit cautious. The interface is reminiscent of Java based phones from years gone by. On the “homescreen”, you’ll get notifiers for the two built in SIM card slots if you’ve placed them in. Below which are the date and time. Four icons linking to the dialer, phonebook, Bluetooth pairing and music player are placed at the bottom. Text above it shows you which handset you are connected to.
Diving into the menu, there are three pages of 2×2 icons. The iconography and text below is self explanatory for the functionality that they provide. We’ll list out all the ‘apps’ and the functionality that they provide below.
- Messaging: It is possible to send text messages from either of the built in SIM cards. The tiny keyboard however proves to be an exercise in frustration. The T9 mode is better but only slightly.
- Call Center: As the name suggests, you can see your call history and settings from here.
- BT Dialer: Let’s you connect and disconnect from bluetooth device.
- Phonebook: You can switch between local and bluetooth phonebooks. Basic search functionality is also provided so that you can place calls from your wrist.
- Multimedia: This is where you land up to activate the awkwardly placed side facing camera. The image viewer, video recorder, player and audio player also reside here. Additionally, there’s an FM radio built into the watch and you can use USB earphones to listen.
- Settings: The settings sub menu offers granular control over phone functionality as well as the connectivity options.
- File Manager: Users can access all open directories on the watch or microSD card slot from here. There is an option to format storage as well. 145K of storage is all you get on the watch itself.
- Remote Capture: Very cool in theory but less so in practise, the Remote Capture application lets you take photographs from your cellphone camera. You can set up your phone on a tripod and then tap the button on the watch to take an image. It is virtually impossible to frame the image on the watch due to the miniscule windowed image that you get. Additionally, there is no way to set a timer or adjust anything else for that matter.
- Remote Notifier: All your bluetooth notifications sent over from the phone get aggregated here and you can go back to check the last five. It is not possible to swipe between notifications though. You’ll have to delete them one by one to go back in your notification history. A very poor implementation indeed.
- Tools: The tools sub menu includes a range of additional features that you might find handy. This includes a calendar function, alarms and world clocks amongst others. Nifty to have but hard to reach being burried under several sub menu options.
- Services & Games: Rounding up the app offerings are the Services and Games sub menus. While the former offers an internet settings option that doesn’t do anything at all, the latter has a single game built in. Called Magic Sushi, it is a play on the popular lining up blocks genre and is a chore to play on the tiny display.
As we said below, the Spice Smart Pule M-9010 is a feature watch at best and the above mentioned functionality is all that you’ll get with it. We found the software to be half baked and thoroughly unintuitive. The touch targets too are incredibly small for the size of the display on hand.
Display
The 1.6 inch screen has a resolution of 320×240 pixels. This is in the same league as Android Wear watches but the quality leaves a bit to be desired. Being a capacitive panel, swiping through panes is effortless but touch targets as we mentioned above are incredibly small. Typing on the keyboard and dialer in particular are a big hassle.
The pedestrian viewing angles and color rendition is understandable till the time you try and use the watch outdoors. The watch is absolutely washed out when viewed outdoors to the point that it is completely impossible to use. You cannot even view the time and this is in moderately hazy conditions. The display which is amongst the most vital components of a smartwatch seems to have been the last thing on the product developers’ minds.
Battery Life & Performance
The battery is a 420mAh pack. Given the nature of the product, your mileage will vary drastically. We got anywhere between 8 hours to a little over 24 hours of usage from the Spice Smart Pulse. Phone calls definitely place a massive drain on resources. Since there’s not much that you can do with the watch, basic reception of notifications should let you stretch usability to almost a day.
There’s not much to talk about on the performance front of the Spice Smart Pulse. The company has not divulged details about the internals of the watch and given the locked down nature of the operating system, it is hard to ascertain what makes the watch tick. That said, performance is generally good enough with page transitions activating half a second late but still smoothly enough. Since the capabilities of the device are limited, you won’t really run into performance constraints here.
Phone & Notifications
Using the Spice Smart Pulse as a phone isn’t something that we’d call as mainstream usage but you do get full fledged dual SIM functionality here. You can make calls from either SIM card or from a phone connected via Bluetooth. For what its worth, there’s an earphone and mic built into the watch directly so you can just hold it up to your ear and make a call as usual. We’re not to be blamed if you get a LOT of strange looks from people around you though! Call quality is decent, there’s no noise cancellation so talking in traffic or outdoors might be a bit of a hassle. All said and done, much as it tickles our Dick Tracy fantasies, we’re not entirely sure that people want to strap a dual SIM phone to their wrist.
The other aspect of the watch’s connectivity feature is the ability to mirror notifications. You’ll need to install an application on your phone to facilitate this. Not only is the functionality half baked but also proves to be a bit of a battery hog as the wearable does not support Bluetooth LE. Notifications from the phone pop right up on your display no matter where you are in the sub menus. The only option really is to dismiss it as most interactions cannot be interacted with.
Camera
Yes, the Spice Smart Pulse M-9010 comes with a camera around its side. It even has a single LED flash. No, don’t even bother with it. The camera is not only particularly bad, it is also incredibly hard to frame a shot given the poor UI in the camera app.
In all likelihood your attempts to take a straight shot with the Spice Smart Pulse will be in vain as you’re required to press a microscopic button on the screen. Keep in mind, this screen is completely invisible in day light. The above shot represents our best attempt. Also, don’t bother with taking low light shots with this watch.
Conclusion
While the definition of a smartwatch is still up in the air, one thing is for sure. The Spice Smart Pulse is far from one. Who is it for then? If you’re itching for an affordable new toy to mess around with, go for it. If you really want to mirror your notifications to your wrist on the cheap, we’d still recommend ponying up for the Pebble but you could take a look at the Spice Smart Pulse. If you’re amongst the five people out there who actually want a dual SIM phone on their wrist, then you’re definitely in luck. For the rest of you? Don’t bother with the Spice Smart Pulse M-9010.
Not only is the device lacking in hardware quality, something which can be forgiven given the price, it provides an astonishingly bad end user experience. The display completely washes out once you’re outdoors making it little more than a paperweight on your wrist. Our advice? Step up to a Pebble or perhaps get an Android Wear device. The Spice Smart Pulse is available for Rs. 3,999.
Pros
- Cheap
- Dual SIM phone
Cons
- Lacks functionality
- Poor display