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Dick Tracey phones...finally


In the first edition of Idealog we were going to make a photographic spread representing the end of the wristwatch and the rise of all sorts of other ways of telling time. The feature fell on the cutting room floor. My favourite time-piece is the microwave oven readout, with my cellphone a close second.

The watch's demise has seemed inevitable for years, but still it hangs in there. In something of a backflip here is an idea that loops back to the old Dick Tracey idea of the watch phone.

With the current trend for fetishistically large wristwatches it maybe an ideas whose time has finally come. I don't like wondering where my phone is - I always pat myself down before leaving a location - phone, keys, wallet... It was comfortably and fashionable attached to my wrist I would have one less thing to worry about. Except, perhaps, looking like a Dick (Tracey).

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