I wrote earlier about the bluetooth vibrator watch. I pushed this in part to promote the idea that phones should (almost) never ring. That ringing is rude to others and violates your own privacy, too.

Sony, Citizen and some others are now releasing bluetooth watches that go beyond this. Your watch should become a very small control station for your larger PDA/phone. Of course digital watches have a small screen, and there are also some nice analog watches where the background of the watch is secretly a screen. This should become cheaper with time.

As before, when a call comes in, your watch should gently vibrate or even just tingle your skin with a small charge. On the screen should be the caller-ID, and the buttons should be marked with choices, such as rejecting the call or accepting it. (These features will be in some of the upcoming bluetooth watches) If you accept it, the caller would hear you saying that you are getting out your real headset/handset and will talk to them in a few seconds. If you were in a meeting, they might be told it will be more than a few seconds, as you must excuse yourself from the room.

Your watch of course knows if it is on your wrist in many ways, including temperature, so the phone can know to actually ring if you've taken the watch off -- for example when going to bed, if you want it to ring when you're in bed, that is.

As the screens increase in resolution, they could also show things like the subject of emails and pages. No more pulling out the blackberry or cell phone -- just a subtle glance at your watch when it tingles. Be nice if you can set your presence on your watch so that all calls go to voice mail, too.

Most flip phones have a 2nd small screen on them so you can see the time and caller-id when the phone is closed. This would not be needed if you use a watch like this, so the cost of the phone can be reduced to make up for the more expensive watch.

Your watch could also bind to your desk phone at the office. And the phone would also know if you are in the office or not.

Imagine a world of peace where you're never hearing phones going off, and you aren't seeing people constantly pulling out phones and blackberries to check calls and messages. Imagine a world where people no longer wear cell phones on their belts, either.

The watch could have a small headset in it too, but that would add bulk, and I think it's better to pull out a dedicated one.

The only real downside to this -- you would probably have to charge your watch once a week. This might not easily fit in with the smaller ladies' watch designs. It should be possible in any larger design. E-ink technology, which takes no power to run a display, could also make a great material for the background of your watch dial, or even display a tolerable virtual watch dial for the many who prefer an analog set of hands. It might be necessary to design a protocol even lower power than bluetooth to give the watches even better battery life, and of course a standard charging interface found in hotels and offices would be great.

I think once this happens it will be hard to imagine how we tolerated it any other way. Yes, people get fun and status from their ringtones, but I think we can handle sacrificing that.

The watch could also be a mini-screen for a few other PDA and phone functions. For example, if you use a bluetooth earpiece, you can keep your phone in your pocket or purse, which is really nice, but sometimes you want a bit of display, for example to assist with voice command mode.

(Of course if you know about Voxable, you know I believe phone calls should simply not happen at all at the wrong times, but that's a different leap.)