The Proximity can only really do one thing other than tell the time, and that's vibrate. It can vibrate when you get a phone call; when you get an email; when you have a calendar alert; and when it loses connection. You can't set it to vibrate differently for each thing, so the watch uses its ticking secondhand to tell you why it's buzzing. When you get an alert, the hand stops ticking and sweeps quickly to 9, 10, or 11 o'clock to let you know what just happened.

No text message alerts, and there's really no way to add them



9 is LL, which means the watch has lost connection with your phone — this happens a lot, often seemingly for no reason, so even though it makes your wrist jitter too often it's probably a good thing to have. Even if connection isn't spotty, the watch automatically disconnects after six hours to save battery, but luckily it's just a press of the watch's top button to sync it back up.

The hand at 10 means you have an email. The watch can check any IMAP account, and they're easy to set up within the Citizen app, but it doesn't sync with any other apps on your phone, and only checks for new mail every five minutes. That meant I often got a buzz on my phone for an email, and a few minutes later my watch would vibrate with the same thing. When the hand is at 11, it means you're getting a call — it vibrates once when you get a call, and again if you miss it.

The biggest and most obvious thing missing is text message notifications, which would be really handy, but not only is that not available now, it probably never will be — it's not like Citizen can remotely update the big metal thing on my wrist so 7 o'clock says "TXT."

Since it's connected to your phone, there are a couple of other handy things that they can do together. My favorite: the watch syncs the time with your phone. That means your date will always be right, unlike my Seiko watch, which likes to think there are 31 days in each and every month. It also means you'll always have the right time zone, and never have to worry about winding your watch — it's an awesome mix of analog and the internet. If you press and hold both buttons on the watch, it triggers a loud noise on your phone so you can find it — it helped me out a few times, but the connection is so finicky and Bluetooth's range so small that I don't suggest just cavalierly tossing your phone into corners and crevices.