Gadgetory

hi this is Nathan Ingram of The Verge I'm here today with Ryan from Lakers sports watches they are introducing a new GPS sports watch that's going up on Kickstarter and he's here today to take us through all its features and hardware so Ryan why don't you show us the products absolutely so you know we're really excited to be here to talk about the product today we're blown away with the response we've seen so far on Kickstarter here I've got one of the first devices it's the one that you see in the videos on Kickstarter so here we've got a GPS fix here in Las Vegas here on you can see on the two inch display it's a TFT reflective display so the more like that actually hits this display the better you're going to see that we also has full backlight for our nighttime use so here we have the six different you know areas to see different metrics for when you're working out we have a lot of response for users that actually want to customize this they want to have just one huge display to show their their heart rate or whatever so we're working on actually modifying the software to allow that for future you so you can customize it to meet your needs this is the way it's gonna start the default and we're working hard and diligently on that software to to get that ready you know some of the other key features we have we have this view here so we have onboard OpenStreetMaps so here you can see that we're here at the Las Vegas Convention Center we have a couple zoom levels that we can go into and what this allows you to do is pre map your route that you want to that you want to follow and then track it while you're either running orienteering riding your bike on that long ride from whatever right on Kickstarter sounds like you've got some special GPS technology in here to make it lock on faster can you absolutely so we have a lot of experience from being X no key ins and you know with the GPS so what we've done is we've done a custom GPS antenna okay so instead of using kind of a standard onboard antenna we fine-tuned and specifically tuned an antenna outside of the PW so that it's as finely tuned and gets that GPS signal as fast as possible along with that we're using a GPS so assisted GPS so when you sync it with your computer it'll pull down the Almanac for them for the satellites okay and that just makes getting the the fix that much faster because it knows exactly what to look for in the sky and it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth also absolutely so the connectivity overall is Wi-Fi bluetooth it's gonna be Bluetooth 4.0 and it's going to be amp plus so the Wi-Fi and blue and the Wi-Fi is for connecting with your computer for syncing with your workout so the Bluetooth and AM plus is for syncing with additional accessories okay so we see this really as you know an enabler so we're definitely going to be working to support as many third-party accessories as possible including heart rate monitors cadence monitors there's a there's a huge amount of accessories and it's mark any partnerships you can talk about yet or is this all in the early state this is all in the early stages so I mean we're definitely working through that and we're getting a lot of inbound so we're working through that also but you know our main concern right now is is really getting this device out for the battery and what about the hardware the physical device itself like you know is this thing built to withstand you know some some tumbles or you know falls off the bike early so the way we constructed this this front glass this front area here is Gorilla Glass yep so it's scratch and shock-resistant just like your recent cell phone so the the the resin here is built for durability I would say it's not built for finish as far as you know you know a good paint job or a big coating it's really meant for durability and long lasting life great so why don't you tell us a little bit about how the project started off like how did you guys get together the genesis how did this all come together absolutely so the team started in Copenhagen so the core team is located in the copenhagen all of the founders and members of the team are X Nokia's so there was you know last year the copenhagen R&D site was you know transitioned out so the engineers were we're looking at what to do and the founders were you know enthusiastic triathletes were always in that space and really looked and saw that in the sports watch market the pace of innovation has not really kept up with cell phone innovation so we have this innate experience with the fast pace of cell phones and understand how to do that at a very high level and wanted to bring that to the sports watch market and cause a disruption in that space and so how long has this been under development your Kickstarter started was it last week yeah it started on Wednesday were for four or five days okay and so you tell us a bit about the process that led up step absolutely so the process they've been working we've been working on this product for actually one year so it's it's really been a long it's been a long process but really thought through really thought through the ergonomics thought through the feature sets the technology the board is just amazing it's got hardware for future expandability with software updates so we have an accelerometer compass so which isn't currently enabled but we're definitely getting back down to one absolutely so this is geared for future expandability future software updates are super easy to do well users will be able to do that through the online portal great and you know it's just gonna have it's going to be you know deleting the market can you the big question with most tick stars I think is the production schedule meeting deadlines you know we hear a lot about missed deadlines and yeah things being late so can you tell us about what your what your team is working on to make sure you you know hit your production schedule absolutely and meet the demand and when do you think this watch will make its way into consumer hands perfect so I think that you know one of the key parts is that experience with with the note with Nokia so everyone in the team has experienced launching products they've launched products that have sold over 80 million devices totally so have a lot of experience we have the best for each discipline I would say from the Copenhagen site working on this as far as the manufacturing the manufacturing is done locally in Denmark so a short train ride from the you know from the home base that allows for you know making sure that the production schedule stays on time making sure that the quality is high and up to the liger standards which is very high and you know that you know those major things I think lead to an on-time delivery and we're very I would say we're very we're not trying to be overly optimistic we think we're very in realm with what what we can do so we have you know we have the tooling ready we it's um you know some slight modifications that need to happen to get FCC approval yeah so that's really the main push here on Kickstarter is to get that modification and get the FCC certification and so what's the current estimate for one it'll be available yeah so Kurt estimates yeah yeah yeah first orders for Kickstarter which are going to be the first orders that ship globally will be June 2013 great so Ryan cremes with liker thanks so much for your time absolutely thanks so much