It’s been a year and a half since Rufus Labs launched a crowdfunding campaign for a wrist computer that puts a 3.2 inch touchscreen on your arm. Now the company says it’s getting ready to ship the Rufus Cuff in early 2016.
This week USA Today went wrist-on with the largest smartwatch you’ve ever seen.
Update: Make that 2020.Â
The Rufus Cuff is basically a smartphone that you can strap to your wrist. It offers more screen real estate than a typical smartwatch, which lets you do things like type with an on-screen keyboard reasonably comfortably. And since it runs the full Android operating system instead of Android Wear, it supports hundreds of thousands of apps.
While that might not make the Rufus Cuff useful enough as a consumer device to justify just how awkward and geeky it looks, there may be another usage scenario: the company recently put out a demo video showing how the device could be used in industrial settings where a wearable display that you can operate with one hand and hold without any hands might be useful.
The Rufus Cuff supports WiFi and Bluetooth but lacks cellular connectivity. So while it’s kind of billed as a device that replace a traditional watch and phone, that’s only true if you don’t need to make calls or use it on the go without tethering to a watch.
While there’s really not much else like the Rufus Cuff on the market, the specs still seem kind of dated for a product that’s going to launch in 2016. It has a TI OMAP 4 ARM Cortex-A9 processor and Android 4.4 KitKat software.
Other features include an 1175 mAH battery, a TFT capacitive toucshcreen display, 16GB to 64GB of storage, GPS, a speaker, dual microphones, a front-facing camera, and a splash-resistant design.
You can pre-order a Rufus Cuff for $249 and up.
via The Verge
I fail to see how this is better than simply strapping my smartphone to my wrist. Doing so would allow me a much better device than this. This is probably the worst specced device ive seen in the past 3 years.
TFT = FAIL
There is nothing wrong with a large screen cuff as a smart wearable, but could they at least put a little effort in making it not look like a smartphone strapped onto your wrist? At $250, at least make it thinner and with a curved screen. Compared to this, an $80 Android phone tied to your wrist with Velcro is more innovative.
Unless your name is Leela you probably do not want this.
My industrial robots have no use for this. Plus they will never join a Union. So stop wasting your time on stuff like this and succumb.
Different is good. On the other hand, I’m struggling to see what this can do that an ipod touch with a wrist strap couldn’t.
In terms of form factor, I’d prefer to take a hit on performance in order to slim it down. Way too chunky out if the box, and comical with the ruggedized case.
I’m also wondering how usable this will be outdoors given that it’s a standard lcd screen rather than epaper or something similar. If the screen isn’t visible in direct sunlight, then that hurts its viability as a runner’s audible/music player, which kills its main use case IMO.
Still, it was funded, right? We know there’s at least an initial market for it.
That’s a start. Market lacks the in-between now.
Couldn’t someone just strap their smartphone to their arm with Velcro material? It’s sounds so simple that there must be a product out there already.
The benefit of the velcro strap for a smartphone is that the phone can make calls, txt and use data networks (unlike the Dufus Cuff).