Mobvoi: gadgets to replace your smartphone for your own good
Mobvoi: the company that wants to improve your personal well-being by moving you away from your smartphone. How does it intend to do this? With a series of accessories and replacement devices (some already on the market and others coming soon), the company aims to reduce smartphone use to improve people's so-called Digital Wellbeing.
Mobvoi is not a newcomer
The name Mobvoi on its own will not mean much to most of you, perhaps. The brand has put on the international market many well-known and talked about devices thanks to an excellent value for money and a careful design. TicWatch, TicHome, TicPods and TicBand are definitely more familiar names.
Founded in 2012, the Chinese company immediately focused on the interaction between man and machine, especially through voice commands. In 2015, they started their direct collaboration with Google, which is now one of Mobvoi's investors. This collaboration has enabled the software team to work closely with Google's engineers and create valuable, complete products such as TicHome and TicWatch.
The company has a strong foothold in China and has its own apps and proprietary OSs that are widespread in the Asian country. It's nothing new that Google is not very welcome in China. Outside of China, the collaboration with Google is very strong, so strong that Mobvoi's products use WearOS (for smartwatches) or the Google Home system compatible with Assistant (on TicHome).
Reducing the use of your smartphone is easy, just concentrate elsewhere
But how does Mobvoi want to decrease the use of smartphones if one of its main businesses is the sale of accessories for smartphones? The answer is simple, the company wants you to interact with these other devices as much as possible, keeping your attention on the world around you while the smartphone remains in your pocket.
For example, thanks to TicWatch you can have all your notifications and key information you need at your fingertips without having to reach your smartphone. According to Google, the average interaction time with a smartwatch is about 5 seconds, which leaves much more free time to immerse yourself in the surrounding world than a smartphone that will be used only when really necessary.
TicPods also follow the same philosophy with touch gesture support for music, volume and voice assistant control from Mobvoi VPA (China) or Google (the rest of the world).
And it is always according to this philosophy that the company is preparing to launch the second generation of its smartwatches on the market soon. We have not been given any further information about this, but we have been told to be ready.
Are you curious to see what this company is about to reveal to the public?
Ticwatch are crap. From start to finish the product is cheap and does not perform well. The low quality ensure the items break and fail and support is non existant. Exchanges; and ive had THREE; Take months and constant emailing and bad service. A brand to avoid.
Ticwatch/ Mobvoi is a shitty brand with a non-existing/shitty customer support. They won't survive long.
I'd say I'm more interested in something like ZTE's Nubia bracelet, that seems to make much better use of wrist real estate for more functionality than phone-linked gadgets - will look for serious reviews of that. I've been surprised at sales of phone peripherals that pricey in themselves, need the phone to work, and then require separate charging and maintenance.
Considering their tools don't do what I want they're not going to be replacing my phone. In just about every way, i prefer my information as text to being spoken or iconized or a video.