Hey Guys/Gals, I talked to a really "high class" jeweler yesterday,and while he demonstrated his latest "toy" which was a computerized watch timer,which automaticly checked the watch timing,and also automaticly rotated it to all the various positions,while giving a readout of the performance on a computer screen of the watch in all the positions. Pretty neat,but he told me that there is now an app for smartphones that will check the performance of a watch,when it is laid on the phone. Anyone ever hear about his app,or was he just shucking an old hick? I tend to lean toward it being true,because he was much to professional to have a sense of humor. He told me about his training for 10 years in Switzerland,and that now he was a CW21,which is I suppose a Super Watchmaker,even though his business seemed to be mostly changing watch batteries in high end watches. He had no interest in antique or any other mechanical watches.

I have looked every now & again to see if there are any applications for the phones in regards to watches.

One that I have seen but have not tried so I can not tell you if it works is for the Iphone or Ipod. It is called Kello, it supposedly does what you mentioned but again I have never tried it, it is not a free app.

Tom

I'm curious, so I just downloaded Kello to give it a try. It's $9, so it's not exactly a bargain, but if it performs as advertised it might be worth the scratch. I'll play with it and let you know what I find out...

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He had no interest in antique or any other mechanical watches.
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Hey Cecil, I wonder then, why does he have this device you described as a 'Toy'....

Regards,

Jerry

Kello is basically useless. Don't waste your money. I tried it on a number of watches whose variation I know and it returned results that have nothing to do with reality. Cool idea, but the software simply isn't accurate enough to have any practical application IMO.

Hey Jerry, He took off his Rolex and put it on the machine to demonstrate it,and as the machine worked,he explained about the high end watches that had to be perfectly timed for his customers. About watches that cannot lose or gain a second in a year.
Please do not think I was demeaning the machine,or the man by calling his timer a "toy". All mechanical tools are "toys" to me. This guy was just so serious about "perfect time" that I thought he was kinda funny. But then I find most fanatics amusing.
His training and even his timing machine are so far beyond me,he might as well have been from another planet.
Still,he seemed like a nice guy,and I did think it was strange that he spent so much time explaining about his years of training,and his skill to a cowboy hat,blue jean wearing obvious redneck like me.

No mechanical watch can be made accurate to within a second per year.

Perhaps that's why the young jeweler didn't like mechanical watches. I really don't care for the new mechanical ones,but that Sturhling Tourbillion is kinda nice. The balance wheel is in front,and the whole assembly rotates,as the balance wheel turns. I wonder just how accurate these new mechanical watches can be made,and how long it will maintain that time.

Some modern mechanicals are nice, IMO. I have a healthy collection of wrist watches, most with ETA movements. Several ETA 7750 chronos and a few manual wind ETA 2824-2s, most notably a Stowa Antea KS that I really love. But my favorite modern mechanical is my Omega Planet Ocean. It's the Omega modified 2500C movement and it's excellent. Loses about 1/2 second per day. Just a wonderful watch by any measure.

Kello sounds kind of neat but I wouldn't expect too much since the phone lacks the high quality, low noise, high gain audio amplification circuitry which is a key component in any good stand alone timing machine. Oh well, with Kello at least now we can do watch repairs and drive at the same time!

That's exactly it. The mic on the iPhone headset is not high resolution so it's difficult to get a good signal. Additionally, Kello's system for adjusting the input volume is horrible, so it's impossible to tweak the levels to get a clean sample.