The chief project evangelist discussed the past, present, and future of smartwatches at Wearable Tech Expo, held here July 22 through 24.

“Other than Pebble and Moto 360, I don’t think we have a smartwatch that looks good. More than ever with wearables, it’s super personal. You want this thing to reflect who you are. Customization is super important with gorgeous designs, choices of materials, shapes, and sizes,” Joire said in her keynote speech.

While Pebble and Android Wear-based Moto 360 take the cake for best smartwatches in a burgeoning field, both smartwatches are battling charging, display, and usability challenges. Chief among these issues is battery life, and Pebble’s original 130 milliamp battery is sucked dry in a day. The company is not happy with a 50-minute charging period for its watches, which need to last longer and charge faster.

“[Battery] dictates a whole bunch of technology. If you want to make a wearable device, your software and your hardware need to be super efficient -- that means picking the right display, the right processor, picking the right radio communication,” she said. “That also means your OS needs to be lightweight. Android, Tizen is not going to cut it, they’re heavy OSes based on Linux. You need a real-time OS based on a Cortex M3 or M4.”

She said charging methods are another hurdle to widespread smartwatch adoption, pointing to wireless charging as a near-term alternative to using micro USB connectors that take up valuable real estate. She called out AT&T as a supplier of wireless charging devices and encouraged the company to stick with one wire-based standard to grow the wearable industry.

“What we’re trying to do now is to rally a whole bunch of the other manufacturers to get them on board with a standardized connector that’s waterproof and low profile,” she said. “But making a watch waterproof and wireless-charging capable is difficult because of the size of the coil.”

Battery life in smartwatches -- and most mobile devices, for that matter -- are often compromised by display. Joire said displays in the smartwatch market were a “pick your poison” situation where users can opt for a daytime-readable display in black-and-white, or a more draining high-resolution color display.