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Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

reuters.com

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Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#291

Post by standardUser »

bovermyer wrote: post #14
MaximumMadness wrote: post #3

Every person I've talked to over at Fitbit (pre-this news) has been down on the company. Sounds like they've had trouble effectively scaling software/new hardware to the level of success that the initial device had. While this could easily be another money sink for Google as they attempt to figure out some sort of Android wearable, it also has the potential to be an Instagram level-acquisition. Non-Apple wearables se…

My Charge 3 has been really solid since I got it back in February. Other than having to restart it once or twice to fix the display not working, I haven't had any issues with it.

My Charge 3 has been nothing but problems. Freezing, blank screens, faulty readings. The proprietary charger and inability to reset when not connected the the charger have compounded the problems. I'm also on my third band.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#292

Post by wlesieutre »

seltzered_ wrote: post #285
wlesieutre wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have a Pebble and being able to do music control with hardware buttons was great. I could push those buttons through my coat sleeve while wearing gloves.

I still use a pebble 2 se, and notably the pairing of music controls and shortcuts is amazing. Without having to look at the screen, sleeves still covering the device, you can: - Hit the back button a couple times to make sure I'm back on the watchface/home screen - Hold down a button to shortcut into an app (e.g. music controls, music boss) - Play/pause, control volume, go forwards/backwards (or 30sec skip in some p…

Yeah I had press and hold on the lower button to launch music app, then IIRC the same button was skip track (or hold to fast forward).

I like my Apple Watch too, but I miss the hardware buttons and being able to do stuff without looking at it.

Apple's take is that I should talk to Siri instead of using buttons, but the 8 year wait for them to support 3rd party audio apps kept me from building any habits with that. I'll probably get used to it.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#293

Post by jjoonathan »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #277
jjoonathan wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out My Fitbit Ionic stopped working 6 months into the 12 month warranty and they flaked on the warranty anyway. Many Ionics were secretly sold without the manufacturer's warranty. The problem turned out to be a shorted capacitor. My secretly-warranty-less ionic was sold during the Great Capacitor Shortage. Coincidence? Maybe. I d…

How can a device be sold to an end-user without a warranty? Was the device sold by a third party or something?

Yep, I bought it new in a sealed box from an Amazon third party store with prime shipping a week or two after product launch.

Fitbit said they "had" to refuse my warranty on account of having purchased the watch from an "unauthorized re-seller" because of clones, but their software already checks serial numbers for duplicates and rejects clones, so that sounds like an excuse.

Incidentally, my next watch was a Garmin, and while I tried to buy it from the official Garmin store on Amazon I found a 3rd party store on the receipt, so I contacted Garmin and ask them if this would invalidate my warranty. They said it would not. They made good on that promise two weeks ago when a fatigue crack showed up in the plastic frame.

tl;dr Fuck Fitbit, Go Garmin!

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#294

Post by mypalmike »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
MaximumMadness wrote: post #3

Every person I've talked to over at Fitbit (pre-this news) has been down on the company. Sounds like they've had trouble effectively scaling software/new hardware to the level of success that the initial device had. While this could easily be another money sink for Google as they attempt to figure out some sort of Android wearable, it also has the potential to be an Instagram level-acquisition. Non-Apple wearables se…

My wife and I both blew through multiple Fitbit replacements each, and we're not enormously active people. Build quality was abysmal.

Yeah I went through 3 Charges in a year. Lower quality than the cheapest no-name electronics I've ever had, but at a price premium. It's like they were manufactured to be disposable.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#295

Post by Oblouk »

It will be interesting to see how Google uses the fitbit data. I could see them synchronizing a user's searches with their heartbeat information to try to gauge emotional response to topics.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#296

Post by drinchev »

not2b wrote: post #91

Very bad news for anyone who has a Fitbit device. Google tends to destroy any "smart" devices they acquire; first they tie it more closely to their ecosystem, too much for comfort, then they remove features, then they get bored and neglect it, then you have a brick.

My 5 cents. Fitbit discontinued one of their best products Fitbit Flex 2, which I'm still using. It's a 50 bucks rubber band with 1 week battery life that tracks sleep & steps.

I don't really know why they cancelled it but I'm wearing Fitbit flex and later flex 2 since they entered the market and it's a divice that I'm used to wear and forget even when I'm asleep ( compared to the Apple Watch, which nevertheless needs daily charge and is simply too bulky to wear in bed ). I haven't found any decent competitors on that part and I'm honestly afraid of the wasted hours when I have to decide what to use as a replacement.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#298

Post by hannasanarion »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #77
modeless wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pebble hardware could never run Android Wear. It has 256 kilobytes of RAM! Android Wear requires two thousand times more RAM than that. That's the really impressive achievement of Pebble. They built a smartwatch software platform that was orders of magnitude more efficient than Apple or Google, but still a joy to use. That efficiency gave them the flexibility to make hardware design choices (e.g. 7 day battery or 7.5…

The Pebble ran on a Cortex M3. These days the new Mi Bands offer somewhat equivalent specs for $40 with 15 day battery life on color displays with heart rate monitors. I'd be really excited to see something similar in a more traditional watch form factor.

Mi bands don't support always-on-screens, third party apps, watchfaces, or integrations with apps outside their tightly controlled ecosystem. From my pebble I could get the weather at a glance, control my smartlights, pick the music to play on spotify, reply to messages, surreptitiously browse reddit, control my camera, and track my sleep with Sleep as Android. You can't use Mi to do any of those things.

That was the magic of Pebble: fitting an honest-to-god smartwatch on the hardware of a fitness tracker.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#299

Post by vanous »

colechristensen wrote: post #238

Is anyone aware of body-metric-tracking devices that natively allow you to collect your own data directly from the device? (i.e. no clouds, subscriptions, or preferably smartphone apps)

Look at Gadgetbridge and supported devices. I just also posted a link to the new relase... please see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21381818

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#300

Post by papito »

hanniabu wrote: post #208
puranjay wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even understand how they're able to charge as much as they do. I've owned 3 Fitbit devices and they perform uniformly worse than a cheap as dirt Xiaomi Mi Band I received as a free prize. Their battery life tops out at 2 days max and the sync feature is broken. Heck, they don't even look good

> I've owned 3 Fitbit devices There's your answer right there. If people keep buying then why would they charge less?

Because the name has a ring to it and brand lock-in is very powerful?
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