First dual display smartwatch is here

A team led by a researcher from Dartmouth College in the US has developed Doppio -- a prototype of world's first smartwatch with two touchscreens.

Doppio is a reconfigurable smartwatch with two touch-sensitive displays, one of which detaches from the wrist-bound screen and can be stuck above or to the sides displaying different types of information every time like weather, time and music.

"The orientation of the top relative to the base and how the top is attached to the base create a very large interaction space," said Xing-Dong Yang, assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth.

Using this prototype, the researchers probed how people might use this style of smartwatch interaction. With an instrumented prototype, they conducted a controlled experiment to evaluate the transition times between configurations and subjective preferences.

"Our proof-of-concept hardware prototype demonstrates how Doppio interactions can be used for notifications, private viewing, task switching, temporary information access, application launching, application modes, input and sharing the top," Yang added.

The findings were presented recently at the "CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems" in San Jose, California.