Sony Smart Watch

Last week, Sony announced the Smartwatch 2, a follow-up to last year's rightfully maligned Smartwatch. As unimaginative in concept and execution as it was in name, the watch was the abject failure it deserved to be. Using the thing was awful.This year's iteration boasts a waterproof housing, a few extra pixels in a slightly larger display, and NFC (near-field communication) 

 
functionality, but the basic concept is unchanged from the last generation. Sony (SNE) expects us to interact with its smartwatches as though they were dumbed-down smartphones.It's an idea that will immediately resonate with the masses. It triggers those childhood sci-fi fantasies. But it's also certain to frustrate and confuse, because it's not how wearable tech should be implemented. 

We've seen demos of flexible touchpanels and contextually aware components, but we're still hung up on trying to mount tiny, self-contained displays on a technologically inert band. 

Just as early tablets were hell-bent on trying to wholly replicate the function of a desktop PC, most current smartwatches are caught up trying to mimic the UX and UI of a smartphone. That's an ugly solution. 

Consider Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500)'s patent application for a smartwatch-type device, or the recent product concept sketched out by Frog Design: their hypothetical products bear little resemblance to a conventional watch. These are just rough, early ideas, but they at least offer insight into how some of the world's best tech companies and designers are thinking about this space.
The concepts have information displayed across the wrist in non-traditional but potentially more efficient manners. They recognize that there's a better way to convey data than working within the confines of a small rectangle.
Corporate partnerships notwithstanding, there's a good reason why Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly professed his love for his Nike+ FuelBand fitness tracker: It's not trying to be a watch. It's not pretending to be a watch. It wants to be new.