The phone has become an integral if not an indispensable part of our lives. We use it for almost everything – communication, planning, information and entertainment. But something else is stealthily happening. Gradually, the wrist watch is giving way to the ‘phone watch.’

After buying a phone the first thing you will have to do is set the time, then the date which automatically sets the calendar. So, when the date and time are correct then you don’t have to go through the financial strain of keeping a wristwatch.

With almost everyone having a phone, when you ask the closest person for the time, they reach into their pockets and instead of a watch it’s a phone that emerges.

Shadia Saidi, an employee of Midcom, a phone company, finds it unnecessary to have both a phone and wrist watch.

"I don’t have a watch because I can tell time by a phone. And because I have a phone I don’t need a watch,” she said. Even with her love for luxurious looks, Shadia says she can’t buy a watch.

Kabatsi Atanasi a Boutique Authetique owner in Kigali who sells watches among other thing states that the demand for watches has diminished.

It has become a reflex action to check the phone instead of the watch. But just like Saidi, Kabatsi says that expensive watches are still in demand despite the noticeable decrease.

They are however sought after for aesthetic rather functional purposes. An added advantage of a phone watch is that you don’t have to struggle to read it in the dark.

"At night one can easily read the time unlike with the watch that doesn’t have light,” she says.

Apart from calling purposes, the phone presents a package of other functions similar to the watch like provide the option of alarm.

Therefore, gone are the days when we would reach for that alarm clock on the side bed drawer and set it for next day’s early birding.

With the arrival of the ‘city clock’ concept, the wristwatch may indeed be an artefact of the past.

Ends