Toshiba Smartwatch tracks health, location, and passive-aggressive mail

Toshiba just wants to know you're fit, healthy, and eating well, and if its new smartwatch prototype can help you with your email, calls, and messages too, that's all the better. The company is showing off a new concept watch with a 1.7-inch color OLED display, capable not only of hooking up wirelessly to your smartphone so as to ping over reminders, alerts, message previews, and other notifications, but of tracking your pulse from your wrist and keeping a fitness record. It even uses biometrics for security.

The display runs at 200 x 320 resolution, which is sufficient for multiple lines of text, with simple controls to navigate through the menus and options. As well as messages and calls, it will offer directions pulled from your iOS or Android smartphone, together with news headlines and weather forecasts.

The ECG sensor tracks heart-rate and can keep a record of your fitness, but Toshiba also expects to use it for security: if the smartwatch doesn't recognize your usual pulse, it won't unlock. Toshiba also envisages a download store for alternative watch faces and apps.

What most struck us, though, was the content of Toshiba's looping demo, which included choice messages like "I get so emotional when your [sic] not around. I think the emotion is called happiness." There's no telling whether the watch and its charging cradle will actually make it to market, but Toshiba would probably need to slim down the design before that could happen since it's a chunky block right now.