I am sorry but I don't get this thing. You have to keep your phone in your pocket anyway to make calls. Why does anyone need it? It doesn't matter if it looks cool or not, there needs to be some functionality on it that makes it worthwhile to spend R4k+.
I have the Sony Smartwatch 2 (which works with any Android phone, costs +- R1700 ) and here is what i do with it:
1. Notifications (Calls,Emails,Whatsapps, Facebook etc). It's got full colour screen so you see full emails, full photos etc. I can also respond to the notifications on the watch itself (although not something i do often).
2. Fitness Tracking. This is probably where i think the biggest market shakeup will occur with the Apple Watch. All these Fitbit, Garmin, TomTom, Nike stuff you get these days. Both Android and Apple smartwatches is going to kill it. I had a Garmin GPS watch with which i run,cycle and track all my speeds/cadence/heartrate/distance with. Now i use my smartwatch to do all of that AND use my favorite tracking services (i.e. Strava/Endomondo etc) AND have it do live tracking via Phone AND display whatever i want it to display on my watch (i.e. my current distance + speed + altitude, all coming from my phone of course).
Ironically the price of the top end Garmin GPS watches are easily R5k+ , yet it does less than a standard smartwatch + phone combo with the right combination of apps.
3. Controlling various apps. I use streaming music services and audible audio books while driving, which is not always controllable with bluetooth handsfree kits. I can now control them from my watch in various ways. I can control my camera on my phone too, and can redefine the term "selfie" ;-) . I can also use navigation via the smartwatch , there is a map app , but getting text notifications from Google Maps to turn left/right works quite well too.
4. And probably most important of all : See the time,date,weather and whatever else i want to see with customizable watch faces. It's amusing that even though we all have this on our phones, you don't end up looking at it if you have to fish out your phone out of your pocket everytime.
I'd say if you got one of these phablet phones or even just a pretty big phone or tablet, the watch can solve alot of the discomfort
Anyway, initially i also went "this was rather silly to get, i don't think i will use this as much as i thought" . Now i am getting wayeee to used to simply lifting my hand to check a new whatsapp/email and ignoring it
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It also comes in handy in meetings when you don't want to look too obvious about reading things on your phone (can for example read Reddit RSS etc posts on the watch).
My watch lasts about 3 days before i need to charge. It's water resistant and display works quite well in bright sunlight.
So i don't expect anything less from Apple's Watch. Since all these watches are OS locked, except i think the Pebble, the Apple Watch will probably take the entire iphone market...which is a big market to have such exclusivity in. Apple is going to make money out of this either way.
