What is the point in smartwatches?

The Pebble smart-watch

Smartwatches are a new piece of technology which started emerging at the end of 2013 and they have been all the trend at CES 2014. They are middlemen for your notifications - a device that sits between your phone and you.

The best smartwatches out at the moment are the crowd funded Pebble watch and the Samsung Galaxy Gear which are both reasonably trendy but have limited functionality and therefore not very practical. They don't look very good, they are frustrating to use because of the small screens and they are ridiculously overpriced.

Also, I thought the whole point of mobile smartphones was to reduce the amount of devices you need so you can do everything in one place. For example, the smartphone replaced watches, alarm clocks, calculators, catalogues, calendars, letters, board games, newspapers and many more things which you use every day. So isn't having a smart-watch a step backwards? If we are getting these devices back after they were replaced by smartphones can we expect to see a boom of smart alarm clocks next?