Gadget Watch Searches for a Wrist

Stock quotes in this article: HYMTF  

It's a phone. It's a multimedia player. It's a camera. It's a calculator. It's a watch?

The concept is nothing new to the tech world. For years, innovative companies have tried to produce the smallest, coolest, best personal computer and entertainment unit for your wrist.

The CellWatch M500 is the world's smallest mobile watch with the biggest price tag of $900. The Phenom watch phone markets to kids and sells from $195 to $300, and even car company Hyundai(HYMTF Quote) makes a wrist phone, the W-100, although it's not available in the U.S.

Undeterred by stiff competition, Neutrano unveiled its version of the Dick Tracy watch at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year. The company has been making electronic watches for 25 years, turning out products like the WristFoto and WristMusic. Neutrano hopes its expertise in the field will help squash the competition.

The WristFone is amazing. It's a watch equipped with a phone and three hours of talk time as well as a 2 megapixel camera. Aside from those two main features, the gadget comes with everything but the kitchen sink. It has a phonebook, calculator, touch screen, pointer pen, headphone jack, USB port, Bluetooth, and Internet and video capabilities. You can play music, listen to FM radio and use a Webcam. LG also introduced its own watch phone at CES this year, which is touted as the slickest around.

The WristFone highlights another important trend at CES this year: marketing electronic gadgets to women. The watch comes in the bulky standard black and brown style, but the company also produced a more stylish and curvy version in white with either a black or pink face.

The WristFone will go on sale in April at Neutrano.com for $299, making it competitive with other watch phones. But the same problem remains: Who will wear it? Tech companies have been trying to make a watch phone stick with consumers for years, with no luck.

TheStreet.com's senior technology reporter, Gary Krakow, says that, aside from the fact that having all those radio receivers next to your body is just unhealthy, no one wears watches anymore. People are throwing out their watches for iPhones and BlackBerrys, not the other way around. So although products like the WristFone look cool, consumers might not shell out hundreds of dollars to look like Dick Tracy.

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Alix Steel joined TheStreet.com TV in February 2007. Previously, she held positions in film and theater production, management, and legal administration. Alix has a degree in communications and theater from Northwestern University.

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