Yesterday, Adidas joined the great smartwatch race to slap computerized contraptions on your wrist and now a new Nokia patent - wait before you groan this time - has surfaced revealing a bracelet concept studded with multiple small touchscreen displays.
Spotted by Engadget, the patent describes a modular wristband that you can attach a variety of displays onto. The idea is each display would be tailored to a specific function like showing your mail, text messages or just a plain ole' watch.
What's more, this smartwatch is a multi-segmented band that can support more than one module at a time. Supposedly, it will be able to detect and activate whichever watch face you're looking at when you turn your wrist.
Is it real?
Most patents usually never become actual products or anything more than a hair-brained idea. But in this case, one of the concept's creators, Kent Lyons of the Nokia Research Center got in touch with Engadget to say it is real. What's more, he says it has a name: Facet.
There's also a research paper and a video showing a prototype in action. The multiple-display system modules can act independently of each other or also share the same applications allowing you to stretch a message of text across multiple displays.
It's pretty neat stuff but it's up to Nokia if we'll actually see something like this come to market. After all, other research arms at companies like Microsoft come up with plenty of great ideas we can't buy all the time.
We've contacted Nokia and its research arm for a comment on Facet and will update this post as we hear more.
