Building a Custom Smartwatch Ecosystem for Kids

About the Project

We helped the client to build a complete smartwatch solution focused on children’s safety and real-time parental control. Our team developed all system apps for the watch from scratch, as well as the parental mobile app and backend services. The project began with a Discovery Phase where we advised on hardware selection, ran extensive battery tests and worked closely with the watch manufacturer.

Business Challenge

The client needed a reliable child smartwatch platform with full parental control and real-time tracking. Key challenges included:

• Developing custom system apps with optimized UI, communication, and safety logic
• Building a highly efficient location engine with minimal battery drain
• Enabling secure, remote configuration of the watch from the parent’s app
• Blocking unknown calls and SMS messages, ensuring trusted-only communication

Contributions

We delivered a complete set of watch system apps, parent control app and real-time backend integrations for the smartwatch platform:

• Built all core apps for the watch, including the custom launcher, dialer, SMS, and SOS apps, designed specifically for kids and their safety
• Developed the React Native parent app that allows parents to track location and remotely manage the watch
• Enabled secure pairing between the smartwatch and parent app
• Implemented smart location tracking that adapts to available networks and sends updates to the backend
• Added features to block unknown callers, filter messages, and manage allowed contact lists securely
• Enabled remote configuration from the parent app, so parents can update settings like safe contacts and tracking intervals in real time
• Added SOS support with live location sharing and ambient audio capture when the child presses the alert button
• Used AWS IoT Core for lightweight, real-time communication between watches, backend services and parental app
• Worked closely with the hardware vendor to embed our apps as part of the watch firmware

Key Expertise

This project shows our ability to build complex, production-ready solutions across hardware, mobile apps, and backend services:

• Experience working with Android AOSP and system-level apps
• Built and integrated custom apps for calling, messaging, SOS, and tracking for safe usage by kids
• Deep knowledge of device communication and real-time data flow, powered by AWS IoT
• Designed a smooth parent-child pairing flow, making it easy to link watches and manage them remotely
• Focused on real-world constraints like battery usage, network quality, and child safety