Devon Watch - What do you think?
Discussion
Urwerk are still resolutely mechanical, no?
Devon aren't trying to be mechanical, the belts are run by motors so it's a battery-powered gadget. Basically they've managed to build some very low power stepper motors or some very high capacity batteries (I'd guess the former - the latter would have a seriously immense market outside of $15k watches…) and then bunged a few in a box with some thin belts and a custom ASIC with some fancy programming.
The belts and programming doesn't impress me to the tune of $15k. The motors do - if you can play with the watch like in the video a few times a day and not need to replace the batteries every week, then that's a serious step (heh) forward. However it's more about fancy *display* of time, rather than horology itself - the time signal for the Devon watch could be as inaccurate as my iPhone when it's off a network, for all I know. It may be even as inaccurate as a mechanical watch
But the clever mechanicals aren't there to measure time, are they? They're there to *display* the time and to perform tricks. Which isn't the same as a complicated mechanical movement IMO - the difference may be very subtle to a non-watch-geek but I think it's critical.
Hence no - the iPhone is a more impressive and important gadget of our time, and never cost more than £1000 (well I never paid more than a grand for one)
Devon aren't trying to be mechanical, the belts are run by motors so it's a battery-powered gadget. Basically they've managed to build some very low power stepper motors or some very high capacity batteries (I'd guess the former - the latter would have a seriously immense market outside of $15k watches…) and then bunged a few in a box with some thin belts and a custom ASIC with some fancy programming.
The belts and programming doesn't impress me to the tune of $15k. The motors do - if you can play with the watch like in the video a few times a day and not need to replace the batteries every week, then that's a serious step (heh) forward. However it's more about fancy *display* of time, rather than horology itself - the time signal for the Devon watch could be as inaccurate as my iPhone when it's off a network, for all I know. It may be even as inaccurate as a mechanical watch
But the clever mechanicals aren't there to measure time, are they? They're there to *display* the time and to perform tricks. Which isn't the same as a complicated mechanical movement IMO - the difference may be very subtle to a non-watch-geek but I think it's critical.
Hence no - the iPhone is a more impressive and important gadget of our time, and never cost more than £1000 (well I never paid more than a grand for one)
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