THE war to make the best smartphone may be old but the battle to make the best smart wristwatch has just begun.

Google has already come up with the Glass computer that looks like lens-less spectacles. But smaller companies are circling the battlefield with hungry eyes over the watch equivalent.

One of them makes a thing called Pebble (getpebble.com), which is a smart wristwatch. The screen is made of stuff called e-paper, and looks a bit like the one you might find on an e-book reader.

The Pebble is smart because it talks to your phone – either iPhone or Android. So if an email or text message arrives, you can see it on your wrist, without all that tedious business of pulling your phone from the pocket or bag you left it in.

It can do other things too. Control your music, track your run, all sorts of things.

Thanks to the e-paper screen, the watch face can even be customised. You can have a different one every day if you like – see mypebblefaces.com Sounds like a geeky luxury, doesn’t it?

It is one, but it’s also a fascinating starting point.

Remember, mobile phones were pretty clunky and seemed like a geeky luxury when they first appeared.

The next Pebble, and its successors, will be thinner and smarter. The inevitable march of technological progress will see to that.

Whether Pebble itself lasts and becomes the next tech giant remains to be seen, but remember it in 15 years from now, when you casually check your social network messages on a super-slim screen dangling from your wrist. Pebble will be its ancestor.