Wickedleak Alpha review: A fantastic entry-level smartwatch at Rs 6990

In the world of smartwatches, the Wickedleak Alpha, it’s safe to say, is a tricycle in the field of 20-gear racing bikes. While other smartwatches — to stretch this analogy a little further — are optimising high-speed handling in slick conditions, the Alpha is focused on getting from A to B. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Far from it.  Sporting a smooth plastic body with a rectangular design and rounded edges, a CNC steel frame and a 1.54-inch 240x240 pixel curved touchscreen, the 48-gram watch is pleasing on the eye when unboxed and viewed from above. The screen as you’ll come to realise when walking past people, brushing against doors or even slipping your hand into your bag, is thankfully scratch-resistant.  Upon powering it up, problems of aesthetics pop up. First, when you pick up the Alpha to switch it on, you’ll notice it’s slightly unwieldy thickness (10.9 mm to be precise, which increases your chances of bumping or grazing it against rough surfaces; good thing it’s scratch-resistant), rendering it slightly bulky-looking, particularly on a thin wrist. Second, the large bezel leaves you with a deceptively smaller screen than expected. The default watch strap is comfortable enough, but it’s easily changeable if customisation is what you’re after.  Under the proverbial hood is a MediaTek MT2502 processor coupled with a frighteningly low-capacity 280 mAh Li-Polymer battery. The good news is that this combo is still capable of providing over two days worth of battery life with medium to heavy use. Getting down to brass tacks: What does it do? Well, before you can get it to do much beyond show the time, you will need to install the dedicated app for iOS and Android (compatible with iOS 8.0 and above, and Android 4.4 Kitkat and above), which can be downloaded from the link encoded in a QR code on the packaging, and on one of the apps on the watch. The Alpha runs on a custom OS, which as you’ll discover, has its advantages — primarily that it’s light and helps conserve battery — and limitations — on-screen presentation is rough around the edges and there is a lack of any third party apps on offer .  Connectivity comes in the form of Bluetooth 4.0, and synchronising it with a compatible smartphone is a cinch. This unlocks a whole host of functions, the first of which is notifications.  Upon connecting it with your smartphone, notifications will rain in, from emails and SMS notifications to WhatsApp messages and battery statuses. Unfortunately, the notifications do only that: Notify you that you have an email. There is no way to read your emails or longer SMS and WhatsApp messages on the Alpha. You’ll simply have to switch on your phone to read them. Apps are arranged either in panels of four or single apps per frame, as per your choice, which is a nice slice of customisability. In terms of the health-related apps, the Alpha boasts a pedometer, a sleep monitor, a sedentary reminder — an alarm that reminds you every so often to get up and walk around, and a heart monitor. The first three of these are fairly standard issue, except for the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any way of graphically mapping sleep patterns the way most fitness bands or other smartwatches allow.  That said, it’s the heart monitor that is truly unique. With a sensor that sits above the wrist and not below like most others, it’s some innovative technology on display that allows it to capture fairly accurate readings. Using a green LED, the sensor taps into the concept of photoplethysmography, aka optical heart rate monitoring — measuring changes in light absorption — to calculate heart rate. But once again, there’s no way of mapping heart rates graphically. Moving on, another interesting feature is the ability to make and receive calls on the Alpha. With a tiny built-in speaker and microphone, you can feasibly drive a car, work at a computer or sit at an armchair and have a conversation. Provided your surroundings are not too loud — which puts a train, bus or autorickshaw straight out of contention as my own tests showed, the quality of sound (both on the Alpha and the other person’s end) is both clear and audible. The stopwatch, calculator and calendar are fairly de rigueur. But it’s the Du-Voice that caught my eye, and sadly flattered only to deceive. The premise of this particular feature is unknown, although it hinted at being some sort of simplified Cortana or Siri equivalent. But its inability to respond to commands in the form of requests, orders, commands and threats was a disappointment. Perhaps this is a work-in-progress placeholder that Wickedleak plans to incorporate into the Alpha in the future. A feature of note is the remote capture. Very simply, this admirably responsive feature allows you to remotely use your smartphone camera. Think of it as a wireless selfie-stick, which enables large-scale quasi-panoramic selfies and massive groupfies. A cautionary note: This feature obviously lends itself to abuse, but the people at Wickedleak trust in your good judgment and decency. What’s missing is some sort of map function or app that utilises the smartphone’s own GPS coordinates. This is a standard feature on most smartwatches including the humble Pebble, and is quite an oversight. So too is the limited availability of apps, as alluded to earlier. After updating the Alpha app and downloading all the available add-ons (read: Yahoo! Weather app). In time, perhaps, Wickedleak will roll out a fuller update, but the inability to download apps like Evernote, Foursquare or those that provide news updates and sports scores is a limitation.  From functions, let’s move to behaviour. The Alpha is by-and-large responsive and quick. However, don’t you dare wander out of Bluetooth range. The instant the watch senses that you are out of range, your wrist will vibrate and tinkle with a message saying, “Phone is missing Watch”. At first, this is endearing, perhaps even cute, but in time (as little as a few hours in my experience), this tinkling turns into cloying, irritating and extremely needy jangling. And by default, these messages of ‘missing’ pop up every 10 seconds. Fortunately (and saving you the distaste of reading a sexist analogy from me), there is a way to reduce the frequency or disable these alerts entirely.  Overall, while there are a few gaps yet to be filled by manufacturer — exploring the possibility of creating a sleeker build — and developers — more apps, starting with maps — alike, the Wickedleak Alpha is a fantastic entry-level smartwatch, particularly at its near-throwaway price: Rs 6,990. Additionally, the Alpha is proof that when going from A to B, not everybody really needs a 20-gear racing bike. Sometimes, a tricycle is more than enough.