You might not have to trade in your analog watch for a new one just to get notifications on your wrist. Last week, a company called Trivoly launched a Kickstarter campaign for a product that will turn your dumb watch smart.
Trivoly designed its small, plastic self-titled unit to be compatible with any watch. Nestled between the watch back and your wrist, the little plastic disc provides notifications from your favorite apps via vibrations and a blinking LED light. So, even without a bona fide smartwatch, you can still follow, and even interact with, apps such as Facebook, Spotify, Gmail and Uber.
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Its retail price eventually will be $119. But right now, for a $99 pledge to the Kickstarter campaign, you could score a unit that will ship in February.
Trivoly is more than halfway toward its campaign goal of $100,000, with a little more than three weeks left to go. Trivoly says that, if it reaches that goal, its supporters could have the products they pledged for by February 2016. In the box, supporters can expect a USB charger and the 3-millimeter-thick, water-resistant Trivoly unit, which the company says lasts four days on a full battery.
In addition to receiving notifications from your apps, Trivoly acts as a step counter and a remote control for your music apps and phone camera. With a tap of your wristwatch, you can dial the volume of your tunes up or down, or snap a photo from up to 25 feet away from your phone.
For a $129 Kickstarter pledge (and, eventually, $149 retail price), Trivoly offers the Trivoly 2, which does everything the baseline Trivoly does but also adds full fitness-tracker functionality. The Trivoly 2 uses an optical heart rate sensor to monitor your body and is compatible with popular fitness apps such as Google Fit and Apple Health.
Trivoly isn't the first crowdfunded project of its kind. Last summer, Kiwi launched a Kickstarter campaign for Glance, a display that connects to your phone and tucks into your watchband. However, Kiwi's project raised only $69,000 toward its goal of $150,000. In a week, Trivoly has raked in more than $56,000, and it still has three more weeks left in its campaign.
If Trivoly ends up going the way of Glance, there might be another option for upping your watch's IQ in 2016. Chronos is a small, disc-shaped add-on that is very similar to Trivoly. It's available for preorder now for $99 (retail price will be $129) and will go on sale in 2016.
