This concept from designer Alexey Chugunnikov is a combination time-telling device and telephone, doing both things in unexpected, futuristic ways. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie, yet it’s gloriously within reach. And you want one.

It’s called the Rollerphone, and in its dormant mode, it’s a wrist band that projects the current time between its two ends. Like so:

Then, the phone part of it rings. What do you do? How do you answer this wearable piece of sexy chrome? On the underside of your wrist, you grab a slender piece of retracted metal and pull. Out slides something that would make Steve Jobs drool: a flexible, transparent touchscreen.

Sitting cozy in the palm of your hand, this screen is configurable to include smartphone features like apps, videos, music, texting, as well as a standard number pad for dialing.

Once you’ve tapped the “Answer” button, you just hold your wrist up to your face, and talk.

The projection part could probably be done today, though it would be wildly expensive. But technology like the flexible, retractable touchscreen is years away, even though scientists and engineers are already working on it. So there’s nothing here that’s outside the realm of possibility. Give it another ten years or so, and everybody could be using a Rollerphone.

At Tokyo Flash Japan, you can find a host of watches that are not your run-of-the-mill watches. Check out the Kisai Joypad LED Watch, for example.

And how the heck can you tell the time? You need to touch the upper right button for the “numbers” to display the time. The hours are placed in the same manner as a regular watch and are displayed as numbers. The minutes are displayed in the inner ring, in groups of five minutes, and single minutes are also displayed in the center column. Here is the diagram to help you.

The Kisai Satellite Black LED Watch is sleeker in design, but no less interesting.

This display is a tad easier to read. The largest circle reflect the hours. The circle at the lower left shows minutes in groups of five, and the lower right circle shows four single minutes. Here’s a sample time reading.

Here’s the last of my pick – the RPM LED Watch. It is the simplest of the three, and I think the most striking as well.

As with the other watches, the display is divided into three zones – the hours, minutes in groups of five, and single minutes. Check out the diagram for a sample.

The coolest thing about these watches is this: if you buy from now till tomorrow (March 24), 100% of the purchase value will be given to the Tokyo Flash Tsunami Relief Fund! If you’re into quirky watches (and even if you’re not, really), you might as well get one today from this store and contribute to something worthwhile! Check out the other watches at the Tokyo Flash web site.

Also, you can still donate to the fundraising drive that Splashpress Media is carrying out. Visit our Japan Blog for more details.

Dubbed 7R0N (or s2v2n-R-z2ro-N), the design was dreamt up by a guy named Scott from the UK.  Anyone who has seen the host of TRON: Legacy posts that we’ve shared in this site will not fail to see where the inspiration comes from.  Here, take a look at them and tell me if they are not drool-worthy.

So how do you figure out what time it is?  I honestly think that you all have figured that out by now, but just in case, here’s how you do it:

Before you start to frantically click looking for “how to buy” these watches, let me just drag you back to earth – this is merely a concept for now.  So, hold your horses, and just hope that someone actually grabs the design and makes the watches. (I call dibs on the red one!)

For those who have a geekier side, however, I am pretty sure that the “Ever Increasing Watch” will prove to be more appealing than any of the watches produced by the manufacturers mentioned above. One look at the Ever Increasing Watch will make your curiosity rise like the water in a river after the rain.

Designed by EleeNo, the watch does tell time, albeit in a non-conventional manner. Graph-loving people will be delighted at the line graphs that take the place of the traditional hands of a clock. Instead of the hour hand, you get the blue line graph. Each dot represents the hour. In lieu of the minute hand, you get the yellow and red line graphs. The yellow graph represents the minutes in 10s, while the red graph represents each minute. It’s that simple, and I love the idea!

For people who want to be able to tell time in an easier manner, the makers of the Ever Increasing Watch incorporated a small number under the most recent dots in the three graphs. I think they should just have left that number out. It kinda takes the fun out of figuring out the time, don’t you think? Oh, and yeah, they could have thought of a more creative name!

For $179, you can play with the Ever Increasing Watch.

Some offer more precision that others, and some are easier to read, but all are definitely not your average analog or digital watch.

1. Fraction Clock

Granted, this is a simple digital watch so it’s not hard to see what time it is.

However, what this watch will do is to chime once in each one hour period — not necessarily on the hour but based on the associated fraction for that hour.

The minutes and seconds are calculated from the rounded decimal equivalents of each fraction.

So, where hour one is 1/1 or simply 1am/1pm, the seventh hour is 1/7 or 07:14:29.

Interesting that the sixth hour becomes 06:17:07 because there would be no such time as 06:16:67.

2. Rainbow watch

The inner circle, divided into four sections, denotes the hour.

Colours red through indigo (no violet) denote hours 1-6, 7-12, 13-18 or (without indigo) 19-23, with the colour appearing in the appropriate section – top right is the first six hours, bottom right is the next six hours, and so on.

The outer circle, divided into ten sections, denotes the minutes.

The ‘tens of minutes’ are denoted by colours — red = 0, orange = 1, yellow = 2, green = 3, blue = 4, indigo = 5 — while the units are represented by the position – zero at top right and then incrementing clockwise.

Times from 00:00 to 00:59 have no colour displayed in the inner circle.

3. Periodic Table Watch

This is a very simple clock to read. The white illuminated element denotes the hour while the yellow illuminated element denotes the minute.

If the hour and minute are the same, the element is divided equally. If one or other colour is not present, it denotes a zero.

The following times are shown for 00:20, 11:23, 15:15 and 23:00:

4. Letter Watch

Letters replace digits on this watch.

For the hours, the letters ‘a’ through ‘x’ represent digits 0 through 23.

For the tens of minutes, the space is a hyphen for zero, and then one of the five vowels for 1-5 — i.e. a = 1, e = 2, i = 3, o = 4, u = 5.

The units of minutes are represented by the letters ‘a’ through ‘z’, and change approximately every 23 seconds (23 x 26 = 598 seconds).

The following is what would be displayed for times 05:24:25, 12:09:01 and 22:57:59.

5. Planet Watch

The eight planets of the solar system are used to show the time.

The top row denotes the hours, with planets from left to right (distance from sun) representing the digits 1-8. Each planet can have up to three red dots beneath, representing an hour multiplied by either one, two or three.

The bottom row denotes the minutes: a new planet will appear, from left to right, every 7.5 minutes.

The faces below represent 08:19, 15:32 and 21:56.

What do you think? Would you wear a watch that told you the time like this?

I must admit I’m a watch geek (more on this later). I’m mostly fond of mechanical watches and chronographs. But here’s something that would surely fancy the mind of anyone interested in timepieces: a human powered clock.

Part of Marteen Baas’ Real Time project, the clock shows you a human hand erasing and redrawing the clock’s hands every minute. In the case of digital clocks, the person draws each digit as minutes and hours pass by.

I would surely want a clock as novel as having an actual human turning the hands every minute of the day. Forget manually winding your watch every morning. How about manually changing the minute minute hand every 60 seconds?

How long would you last if you were to draw and redraw a clock manually?

[via Make Magazine]

Only $18.

Though I don’t need half the functions on the cool watches I’m showing off here (it’s a simple left turn from my bedroom to my computer room, after all, so getting back must be a right turn…) there’s still something makes me want to wear them. Not both at the same time obviously…

Anyway, these beauties are from Casio. First up is the PRW-1500-1VER. Not a good name at all, but cut it some slack for the feature list is fairly impressive.

First up, it’s made from Mineral Glass Hard glass which keeps it scratch free, is water resistant to 200 metres and temperature resistant to -10?C, features a solar rechargeable power cell, and has an electro-luminescent backlight with afterglow.

Other functions include barometer, compass, altimeter and thermometer. It can handle the time of 30 cities in 29 time zones, has numerous alarms and stopwatch functions, plus moon phase and tide graphs.

There’s a choice, though, because next up is the EQW-M1000. Yeah, the name’s only marginally better – actually, no, it’s just as bad – but it’s still a great watch.

It uses Casio’s Wave Captor technology – in other words, it updates itself up to six times a day for precise timekeeping. This one is a watch, pure and simple, without all the additional features of the PRW-15… the first watch, but it’s got a classy look.

More info on these from Casio

I already had my rant about the LG wrist wratch phone, but this concept design of a wrist wratch Bluetooth phone (Try saying that 10 times without stuttering!), I must admit looks cool.

Designer Pedro Gomez calls it _technically_ a bracelet with watch and phone. When someone calls, the bracelet rings and/or vibrates. The entire face pops out as a wireless headset without sacrificing a screen since there’s a secondary LCD. Both LCDs are touch enabled.

The ON AIR Wrist Watch, designed by Turkey designer Iskender Asanaliev, only has one hand, the hour hand. Additionally the hour hand also indicates the minutes in numbers.

I love both concept and ultra-slick design of the watch.
Another novelty of the watch is how to set the time: push the button for 5 seconds and the LED will start flashing. Now you push upper and/or lower corner to set time.

Probably I am the only who thinks this way but the LG Wrist Watch Phone is totally retarded, although cool. Retarded because imagine being in a restaurant and speaking to your watch. WTF! Unless you’re Dick Tracey the watch/phone will make you look like a retard.

I had the awesomest watches, even a Swatch The Beep but I do not get the LG Wrist Watch Phone hype. Especially not if the rumored 1000GBP become reality.

If you want something really cool and *spy alike*, get this multimedia watch with MP3 player, camera, external amplifier, 1.8″ inch color screen and 4GB data storage.

Read more specs and get yours here.

Dubbed the Casio G-Shock MTG-1500, the wristwatch is no ordinary gadget. Coming from the tried and tested line of G-Shock watches, one can expect the usual toughness. Even my lately unusually clumsy partner can bang this watch on a daily basis – against metal, concrete, or marble – and it wouldn’t matter. That’s what G-Shock watches are known for.

Yet the things that make this watch more geeky than “jocky” (if there is even such a word) are these: one, it is solar powered and two, it can be set to atomic precision.

Casio is probably not the first watch maker to come up with a solar powered wrist watch but the MTG-1500 beats them all with up to 6 months of no charging needed; that is, if you fully charge the batteries. This would surely come in handy in case you find yourself buried in your basement (for what reason? You tell me!) for months.

On the atomic end, it is the ultimate gadget for people with a thing for precision. Although the MTG-1500 does not have a mini atomic reactor or whatnot inside of it, there is a receiver installed that will synchronize the watch to the nearest atomic timekeeping station, of which there are only 5 in the world.

How much will this set you back? A hefty $500, sad to say. If I had this extra cash, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it. After all, what other watch gives you the bragging rights to use “atomic” and “solar” in one go?