Its been over two years since the Abacus Mobilewear Bluetooth Watch hit the market.  I remember seeing it at COMPUSA selling for $250.  For the longest time, the Abacus website said it would support Sony Ericsson phones and that Symbian support was coming soon.  Soon never happened.

A couple of months ago, Sic! released an application called Sic! BT-Watch.  Symbian-Guru reviewed the application with a Sony Ericsson MBW-150 back in September and gave it a positive review.   Abacus is a sub company of Fossil, who partnered with Sony-Ericsson to make bluetooth watches. I scoured over many forums and blogs to find out if the Abacus branded watch would work, but didn’t find anything conclusive.  Thus, I got one myself.

It arrived shortly before Thanksgiving and I’ve been giving it the rounds since.  The OLED screen works fine indoors, but is completely useless in daylight.  I have the rubber strap version.  It broke after 3 days of use.  I had to use super glue to get it back together.

The watch is very large and heavy.  It uses a custom USB cable for charging and comes with a variety of wall plugs.  It is waterproof for 3 ATM.  That’s good enough for rain, but don’t stick it underwater.  The hands of the watch glow in the dark.  The bottom button scrolls through the menu.  The top button will display the date and time and function as select.  The crown only adjusts the analog clock.

I’ve been testing out the SIC! BT-Watch software with the Nokia N78 and it does work!   When receiving a call, the watch vibrates.  Via caller ID, the watch reads the phone number and the name if its in the contacts.  The software can also read text messages.  When e-mail arrives, it reads the subject.  Since I have my phone in my pocket all the time, this is pretty useful.

I have run into a few bugs in the software.  The main problem was just getting it to work.  I had a hard time getting a consistent connection.  A lot of the time, the watch would maintain a bluetooth connection, but the software would not work.  This was a major problem on the N78, but doesn’t seem to be a problem with my N82.  This major frustration and might be due to the differences in Feature Pack 1 and 2.

The software feeds the watch the date and time.  I prefer my date to be in YEAR-MO-DY format.  The watch will read this as 20DY-MO-YR.  That’s annoying and can be fixed in software if there’s an update.  The analog clock and the digital time are independent from each other.  The analog watch will typically fall behind after a while, so you should use the digital time to correct it.

One minor gripe is for alarms.  The watch will vibrate during alarm events, but it will say WAKE UP! instead of reading the name of the alarm you may have set.

Another problem is that call handling does not work on the N78.  You should be able to press a button to mute or reject calls.  This does work on the N82 and could be another problem with Feature Pack 2.

Without the Sic! BT-Watch software, the watch will still pair.  On the N78, the watch will vibrate during calls and not much else.  I couldn’t get it to work without the software on the N82.

Battery life has been inconsistent.  Sometimes it would work for 3 days straight.  Sometimes it would make it to the end of the day.  When the watch runs out of juice, it unpairs itself.  Sometimes it would become entirely unresponsive and the only way to wake it up would be to plug in the wall charger.

Would I recommend this watch?  It’s hard to say.  The build quality in the rubber strap version is suspect.  It takes a ton of patience to put up with the watch when it doesn’t work.  When it does work, its exceptional.  I certainly enjoy mine and don’t regret the $50 I paid for it.  Bargain hunters can find it on ebay for as low as $45 and else where for as low as $30.  At that price, it makes a great gift for any S60 enthusiast you might know.