I actually had one of these, a rescued castoff from my early-adopter-syndrome father. Its ability to download phone numbers and appointments from an animated barcode was rarely, if ever, useful. Being a teenager at the time, I did note that the function to store a block of text could possibly be used to cheat at exams; I never needed it.
Its greatest virtue, though, was that it was a tank - a big block of milled steel with a nigh-unscratchable face. I wore that watch on archaeological digs and, later, while doing stonemasonry; it survived trips into the River Thames, two feet of thick mud filled with rusty iron scrap, a bucket of lime putty, photographic chemicals. You'd barely know what it's been through just by looking. Never before or since has so little processing power been protected by so much heavy armour.
In the end I decided I needed something more elegant. The visible clockwork of a pocket watch may be less tough, but it is exposed to far fewer dangers.