SonyEricsson’s LiveView is largely a wrist watch that displays information from your phone. The concept is not new, but Sony Ericsson’s Live View takes it a bit further, and above all it’s considerably less expensive than the previous variants.SonyEricsson has already launched something similar to this – a regular watch with Bluetooth that worked as an extended display for your phone. It was pretty expensive and intended to replace your watch. The new LiveView is both cheaper and does much more than that.

Attractive Price Point

The most attractive feature of Sony Ericsson LiveView is actually the great price. For about $100 you get the unit and a Velcro strap. The display is a 1.3-inch OLED variant that is not pressure sensitive as we are accustomed to. Instead it has four dots on the edges that you use for navigation, and two physical buttons on top of the unit.

Using the Live View

In addition to using the Velcro strap to use it as a wrist watch, you can attach it with a little clip wherever you want. Put it on a sleeve, use it as a tie-pin or whatever you can imagine. It hooks up to your smartphone via bluetooth, and here comes the interesting part: you don’t need a SonyEricsson phone to use the LiveView. All it requires is an Android phone with version 2.1 or higher, then you just download the LiveView app from Android market and pair it with the device.

Features

The most fundamental feature is of course that LiveView gets the time from your phone and displays it on the screen. The fact of the matter is that all of the information is fetched from the phone and nothing is stored locally. The app makes sure that the device receives the right information from the phone, and a positive aspect is that other apps can plug themselves in as well, including third-party apps.

Among the built-in functions we find basic features such as text messeging and number retrieval for incoming calls, as well as the option to mute the ringer when you receive a call. Facebook also works in the sense that you see your friend’s status updates. Twitter and music you can also be remote controlled from the LiveView.

In addition, you can get RSS feeds directly into the unit, but with regard to text in general the screen is limited in size and it is not always easy to read. Another handy feature for those of us who tend to misplace our phones is that it lets you trigger a beep on your phone from your LiveView.

Pros and Cons

You control it by pressing the edges of the unit or using the physical buttons. It works well and it is an easy to use gadget when it is configured properly. Otherwise you don’t interact that much with LiveView. You look at the information that pops up and that’s about it. Still, it’s a fun gadget and it’s fairly inexpensive.

On the downside, you must have bluetooth running, which consumes some extra battery power. If you already have poor battery life, the LiveView will not improve it. You also still have to pick up the phone to recieve a call, although you do get some information on the calls and can easily ignore unwanted ones.

Nevertheless, it’s a neat and relatively cheap little gadget and I’m keeping this one – we’ll see how long it takes before the novelty factor wears off.

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