Scenario:
You're on-call and have the on-call phone. Tonight you're going to a Thing that requires formal dress, and that means... a dress. Which in turn means no pockets, and therefore you'll need to set the on-call phone to an audible alert since there is nowhere to put it where vibrate would be felt. And yet, where you're going needs to have phones turned off. How to you go to the Thing and be responsive to the on-call phone?
In olden days it wouldn't be an on-call phone, it would be a pager and pagers are smaller than phones are now. A pager could be tucked into a bra, an iPhone is too big for most people to fit.
It'd be nice if there was a wearable thing that could act as the phone's remote notifier.
Scenario:
It's your week on-call, and you're going to be in a meeting for the next two hours. Things have been hopping lately, and you're expecting to get buzzed. Company culture frowns on having phones out at meetings, but they're at least accepting of watch-standers getting up in the middle of things to deal with emergencies. You can either ignore your pages, or keep checking your phone and get frowned at by the VIPs at this meeting.
A remote notifier would be nifty.
Technology is coming for you!
Smart Watches
These are getting mixed reviews, but they fill this role. Like the calculator watches of elder years, they're big things that are kinda obvious. These would be just fine for the meeting scenario above, but not so much for the formal event where watches, if worn at all, are expected to be dainty things with tiny little watch-faces. The fact of the matter is that these days watches are jewelry and status-symbols not the utilitarian pieces they were before everyone had a watch in their pocket connected to a wireless network's time provider.
Smart Bracelets
These are somewhat dumber versions of the Smart Watch, but they pass for jewelry a lot better. Which matters. Here are a couple, both in pre-release.
This is a vibrating module that fits into a colorful plastic band that looks a lot like those pink/yellow/blue rubber bands people are wearing these days for things like Livestrong. This works on anything with bluetooth, and they even have an extension thingy that allows it to go around your ankle. Yes, people don't even need to know you're wearing it. The removable module even allows a repeat of the old pager-in-the-bra trick.
This product ups the fashion factor a lot versus the Vybe, and is something you could wear where you wouldn't wear an awareness wristband. This is iPhone only for now, but has the added bonus to allowing the notifier to only buzz when specific contacts are calling; providing a nice way to only get buzzed when the on-call system is calling and to ignore seldom contacted relatives calling at bad times.
I'm thinking real hard about getting something along these lines. Pre-release and works with anything? Pre-release and iOS only? Or released and limited to a certain manufacturer? Don't know yet.