Mention a watch phone and many people will say the same thing: “sounds like something out of a James Bond movie.”
So when Woo Paik, president and chief technology officer of LG Electronics, introduced LG’s new wrist-wrapping, touch-screen communications device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, he couldn’t let the moment pass without the obligatory 007 reference.
And it’s true, there was certainly something Bond-ish when Paik lifted his wrist to his mouth and placed a call to someone across the room.
Still, there is considerable question - secret agents notwithstanding - over whether anybody wants to actually buy a watch phone. But that doesn’t take away from the device’s curious appeal. The GD910, which Paik called the world’s smallest 3G-enabled watch phone, has a screen smaller than 1.5 inches, a camera for video calls, Bluetooth, and a music player
It will be available later this year.
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3 comments so far
This guy (Woo Paik) is a genius and isn’t even listed on Wikipedia. He is clearly the father of HDTV, which means without Woo Paik, no one would be watching flat-screen digital TV.
True, he didn’t invent flat screens, but he convinced the world that he could compress video to do what most — if not all — scientists believed was utterly impossible: transmit TV in digital format.
Without Paik there would be no DVDs at all, because they use the video compression algorithms that he pioneered while working on cable encryption years ago.
It’s amazing he’s not even mentioned on Wikipedia. Even my old high school has a page. Even the smallest jerk-water town has a Wikipedia listing. But not Woo Paik. Maybe the PR department at LG is too busy to help out.
- Posted by Doug FergusonThe author(ess) is showing her(his) age, or lack of such.
Dick Tracey (Michael Killian) invented this Many years ago.
- Posted by jhebbardExactly what I was thinking while reading the article. It wasn’t James Bond or Maxwell Smart who came up with the wrist phone. It was plain old street detective Dick Tracy!
- Posted by Bob Rauscher