Delphin's dinky wearable Android tablet brings Spotify to swimmers

Runners and cyclists are well catered for when it comes to finding a sports watch that can add some music to training sessions, but for swimmers, it's not quite the same story.

That's why the Delphin by Underwater Audio is going to be music to the ears of pool lovers everywhere. The waterproof wearable Android tablet, which reminds us a little bit of the now-cancelled Pebble Core, lets users access apps available from the Google Play Store including Spotify, Pandora and Audible so you can listen to music while you swim.

Read next: Hitting the pool with the best swim trackers

It's designed to attach to the back of your goggles, swimsuit or shorts with SwimBuds sport headphones included to save you from having to pick up your own waterproof pair. You can navigate through the touchscreen interface and control playback via external buttons, and there's built-in Wi-Fi on board as well making it easier to download apps and store tracks with 8GB and 16GB models set to be available.

Fix your swimming form

Away from music streaming, it also offers offers real-time feedback on your swimming session, to keep you in check on lap counts and lap times. It comes pre-loaded with coaching tracks from Olympic Gold Medalist Rebecca Soni to help swimmers improve their form and technique.

To pick one up, though, you'll have to back Underwater Audio's Kickstarter campaign, which is now live. Early bird pricing starts at $180 (8GB) and offered at $239 (16GB) if you want to upgrade. The most expensive model gets you a Bluetooth keyboard and an 5,000mAh external battery to give the 4-hour battery life a boost. It's already raised more than $15,000 of its $50,000 target and is planning to ship in July 2017 - just in time for those summer swimming sessions.

Crowdfund this?

So that's the big question. We write about a lot of campaigns whether they're on Kickstarter, Indiegogo or any other crowdfunding site. There are plenty of examples of campaigns raising big bucks and delivering the product to backers on time with no issue. There have also been successful campaigns that have suffered countless delays or worse, end up getting cancelled and leaving backers out of pocket.

While we can't guarantee that everything is going to go to plan, we wanted to try get a better idea about how those funds are going to be used and how far away we are from a working product.

We contacted the folks at Underwater Audio to respond to some of those questions, and here's what they told us:

"The Kickstarter funds will contribute to the fulfilment and production of the Delphin. At this point, we have a working Delphin and we have already taken it for a swim! We have been using it to film video requests on the Kickstarter. We have gotten several requests to see apps in use with the Delphin and we have posted those on the Kickstarter."

We're pretty confident that Underwater Audio is in decent shape to make good on its promise. We've featured its SwimBuds Sports Bundle in our rundown of the best headphones for swimming, so it's a company we're familiar with.

We obviously have some reservations about using that touchscreen in the water and seeing how the swim tracking measures up to other dedicated swim trackers. But if it delivers, then this could well make a great pool companion for those times when you want to drown out those big splashers in the other lanes.