The French Do Things Differently, And Their Smartwatch is No Exception
The French have a history of coming up with some pretty fascinating ideas. Some don’t work out too well. Some are ingeneous. The VEA Buddy watch looks like it fits in the latter category. What makes it different than the deluge of other smartwatches that have recently arrived: It might actually be brilliantly (French word, by the way) practical.
The Buddy is thin (8mm) and sports a touchscreen that looks large enough to be useful, yet small enough that it doesn’t look like a refrigerator attached to a watch strap. The most appealing feature of the Buddy, though, is its interface.
Large icons make it easy to control things like your phone’s mp3 player, and contact information looks easy to read. The watch will even display turn-by-turn directions from your phone’s GPS.
Right now the watch is an Indiegogo project, and as this post goes live they’ve reached about 10 percent of their $320,000 goal, with 38 days left. pledging $150 will bag you a Buddy when (if) they ship in August.
When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Android's test editor-at-large. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of 