Looking to get a Bluetooth earpiece without actually upping your tool factor by 40x or so? Good luck. Helium Digital’s so-called alternative (that’d be the HDBT-990 Bluetooth wristband ) was recently reviewed by our iPhone-lovin’ pals in the Great White North, and while they found it to work well when it came to handling calls without actually using the speaker and microphone within the iPhone 3GS, everything else about it was ho hum at best. There’s no inbuilt LCD for watching Caller ID streams, the mini-USB jack was “flimsy,” and there’s still the issue of this unit being at least somewhat unsightly.

We’re not sure why we didn’t hear more about this way back at RIM’s WES conference way back in May, but it was apparently mentioned by VP Antoine Boucher at the time that they’re working on a Bluetooth-enabled watch. Furthermore, it’s said to be more advanced than the models Sony Ericsson has put forth so far, featuring streaming audio (3.5mm jack on the watch, perhaps?) and Twitter / Facebook updates in addition to the usual things like caller ID and text messages. Note that the image floating around today of this thing isn’t real — it’s just a Sony Ericsson MBW-100 with a swapped logo — so it remains to be seen what this magical wrist accessory will look like, assuming it’s real and coming to retail. It seems Boucher also mentioned a high-end Bluetooth headset codenamed “Alpha 1″ that’ll allow you to stream music and get navigation directions through some sort of totally awesome silicone earpiece boasted to possibly be “the best solution on the market.” It’s pretty hard to pique a lot of interest these days with something as vanilla and ubiquitous as a headset, but at any rate, it’s interesting to see the depth of RIM’s apparent commitment to the accessory market right now. [Via techfresh.net ] Filed under: Cellphones , Wearables RIM working on Bluetooth watch, other spellbinding accessories

The AIBATO M Bluetooth watch from Citizen has a close relationship with your cellphone. It can alert you to calls and display caller information, emails and news tickers. It can even remotely operate a camera. Yeah, that last feature sounds a little dubious (like it could be used for evil), but rest assured—the watch will be available in Japan only starting on July 1st and will work with only a select group of phones.