Now that I’ve nearly abandoned my collection of watches thanks to the evil Apple Watch, I’m starting to miss the staid, steady ticking of a good mechanical. But how can I be endlessly bothered by a little electronic thing and still celebrate the artistry of the fine watchmaker? Chronos!
Chronos is a little disk that fits on the bottom of your fancy watch with “micro-suction” and offers notifications in the form of little blinking LEDs and vibrations. You can even tap your watch face to activate the device, allowing you to silence incoming calls or control music playback. Like the Kisai Link, the Chronos is supremely limited in its interface options makes it extremely compelling for folks who want to wear nice watches and not get bogged down by notifications.
I was hard on these things early on and I still think they are a niche market. However, given the investment some people have made into nice watches they can’t be expected to swap out a JLC for an Apple Watch, even if it’s made of gold. To that end devices like the Chronos make a lot of sense.
The CTO for the project, Luke Fromowitz, worked with Samsung Electronics’ Product Innovation Team and they completed a run with Highway 1 to help build out the company. They’ve launched a sign-up page so far and there is no pricing but we’ll keep our eye on these little disks. Maybe it will let me pull my Speedmaster Mark II off the winder sooner than I thought.