Fossil Abacus Wrist PDA review

For over 20 years, Casio Databank watches have made it possible for people to keep their address book on their wrist, but entering data using tiny buttons is tricky.

Fossil's Abacus Wrist PDA is best described as a Palm PDA with a strap on it, and combines the ease of use of a touch screen with the flexible data handling of the Palm OS.

The Abacus is slightly larger than a chunky sports watch and fairly heavy. The strap is made of hard rubber, so it's not the most comfortable watch to wear. There are some neat design touches, though, such as the stylus, which fits unobtrusively into the strap's buckle, and all the PDA's functions can be accessed using the short cut buttons on both sides of the watch.

The Wrist PDA runs Palm OS 4.1, which, although an older version, still has fairly powerful contacts and calendar applications. The watch connects to your PC using a USB cable, and can synchronise with Outlook using the supplied HotSync software. The PDA has 8MB of internal memory of which around 7.7MB is available, This is enough for a substantial address book and busy diary. The OS also supports third-party applications that are compatible with Palm OS 4.1, and a few games are supplied on the installation CD.

Despite its small size, the Abacus's screen has a high 160x160 pixel resolution, so text is clear and easy to read. The watch's 66MHz processor also has enough power to run the OS smoothly with little slowdown or lag. It's easier to use the watch's short cut buttons to scroll through the OS's functions, as the touch screen isn't very accurate and you need to press down hard with the stylus before the watch responds.

Entering text is easier. You can choose between the standard Palm OS Graffiti handwriting-recognition software or the preinstalled Jot application. If you're used to the Graffiti style of letters it makes writing faster, but the Jot software is very good at recognising letters and numbers. There isn't room for a dedicated text-entry box, so you scribble anywhere on the screen to enter text.

PDA functions aside, the Abacus works reasonably well as a watch. The screen can display a number of different analogue and digital styles in watch mode, and there is a backlight so you can see the watch face in the dark. The main problem is the battery life: the watch lasts for only two or three days with light PDA use, which is very poor compared to the five to 10 years you will get from a normal digital watch.

Fossil's Abacus Wrist PDA is a novel idea that is fairly well executed. Battery life and weight aside, it works well as a watch and as a basic PDA. However, the watch offers few functions that a modern smartphone does not, so we can't help but feel this is one gadget too many to carry around.