In the humming, silent heart of a smartwatch factory, there was a graveyard of good ideas. Failed prototypes lay in a clear plastic bin, their screens cracked, their batteries flat. But the strangest failure was the BM05E-V2.01.

It was a "Frankenstein" chip. Manufactured by a now-defunct Shenzhen subcontractor in the early 2000s, it wasn't actually Bluetooth 2.0, nor was it 1.1. It was a hacked firmware that claimed to be both, depending on how the wind blew. It was notorious for eating headphones and corrupting file transfers.