Fossil Wrist PDA FX2008

Reviews: Electronics

Digital Cameras | PDAs | Communications

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Bradford Day
Kurtis
Fossil
Apr. 13, 2005

Specifications

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Getting Started

Upon receiving your Wrist PDA, you will need to charge the lithium battery. A shared USB/recharge port can be found on the upper left hand side of the watch casing plugged shut with a rubber grommet. The charging will take a few hours. Once you are at full battery capacity, set to installing the PDA software on your computer and setting the time on your watch. The software is exactly the same stuff used for most Palm PDAs so you can Hotsync and add programs in the same manner you would a normal, full-size unit.

The Wrist PDA will display a standard time telling face at first. Should you want to change the look of the digital clock face, simply flip the rocker switch on the right hand side of the casing. Cycling through the various factory installed watch faces will yield 12 different output designs. This watch is water resistant, but not water-proof. So no deep sea diving whilst entering names into your address book. (Kurtis' Note: You just ruined Fossil's FX2008 for me!) To access the PDA features of the watch just press down on the rocker switch.

Once you've accessed the PDA screen you'll be greeted with a familiar sight. The Palm OS platform is here in its entirety, only on a 26 x 26mm screen. The right side toggle switch let's you navigate through each icon or entry on screen while the upper and lower buttons on the same side act as page up/down keys. The lower left-hand side button acts as a back button returning you to the previously viewed screen. Holding the back button down for 2 seconds will activate the luminescent backlight.

Tapping through the menus takes a little getting used to with the tiny stylus, but everything was straight-forward enough. Anyone accustomed to a PDA should have an easy time familiarizing themselves with the interface. The only things lacking from a full size PDA are the pre-programmed buttons used to access the address book, memo pad, etc! All these programs can be accessed via the touch screen on the Wrist PDA. Tapping the small clock in the upper left-hand side of the PDA home menu screen will take you to the drop down menu for beaming, deleting and PDA preferences. I would suggest setting the icon size to small as it makes it much easier to find the icon you are hunting for!unless you need reading glasses that is. Drawing a large slash with the stylus from the lower left to upper right-hand side of the watch face will take you to the keyboard, find, beam, delete and info menu. You can also access the drop down menu mentioned above from here as well.

Like any Palm PDA, you need to set up the time, date and digitizer before you get started PDAing!if that is a word. I would suggest starting off with the "Jot" tutorial to get used to writing on the watch face. The Jot tutorial will illustrate all the various graffiti actions needed to enter names and numbers into the Wrist PDA. This will also help you get used to the tiny stylus needed to navigate around this micro PDA. I found the stylus interface easy to use, requiring only light pressure to select icons and graffiti words and numbers. The page up/down and back buttons are very handy and will help your navigation skills greatly. I did find the rocker switch a bit cumbersome at times. Getting the button feature of the rocker switch to depress correctly sometimes takes a few tries.

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Page 1: Introduction, Manufacturer Notes & First Looks
Page 2: Getting Started
Page 3: Testing & Conclusion

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1 User Comment

1 - Posted by Guest on April 17, 2005 - 8:10 pm

Wow, this baby is at, or awfully close to, the top of my personal list of things I can do without.

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