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Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

reuters.com

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Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#461

Post by nradov »

saimiam wrote: post #459
thevagrant wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Garmin only needs to be charged about once a week. If I'm using it a lot for fitness then twice a week. Once I traveled and forgot the charger, I managed to eek nearly two weeks out of the thing. I find this much better than daily charging and have steered away from watches that need to be charged daily.

Which Garmin model? I'm in the market for a running watch and/or a fitness tracker and want to buy a decent Garmin. Most online reviews seem all over the place.

Read reviews on DC Rainmaker. I've purchased several devices based on reviews there. They're very detailed and accurate in my experience.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews/garmin

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#462

Post by koiz »

harikb wrote: post #344
fragmede wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with nicer battery life Don't discount this feature on a fitness tracker. The most recent Apple Watches are better in this respect compared to the first one, but the battery life is still measured in hours, rather than days. The UX for a Fitbit as a smartwatch is honestly horrible. The Pebble acquihire prioritized watch apps, in (what I see as) a belief that watch apps are necessary to compete with Apple. Resources…

A watch that needs to be charged once in a few days is actually worse than one that could use a charge every night. Charge at night is a habit that can easily be adjusted to our daily schedule. btw Apple watch does last a full day (I meant 16+ hrs) with decent use, unless you are playing music out of it all the time or obsessively checking time/calendar. Only advantage of fitbit is that some models are easier to wear…

Oh come on, I get a little email about the battery life of of my versa when the battery life gets low reminding me to charge it.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#463

Post by nradov »

agloeregrets wrote: post #197
darkwater wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because all I see out in the real world are Apple watches and Fit Bits. Which world? USA? Apple Watch doesn't work outside the Apple ecosystem, and Apple doesn't own the majority of the smartphone market. Stats for Europe, 2019 https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/10/21/smart-wearables-market... Apple was pretty stable, Fitbit lost half its market share (to Garmin, looks like), the rest was more or less stable.

I think they mean in the US (which obviously is not the whole world) Here in the US the iPhone is more than 50% market share (likely much higher, if you were to count hours of use rather than just raw devices. Many mid-range android users own one simply because it’s what the company told them to buy and they “just wanted a phone” while low end android devices lack battery life.) In the wearables market in the US, Gar…

In the US, iPhone market share is 41%.

Garmin sells a wide range of fitness trackers, only some of which are targeted to hardcore athletes. They have other models for casual users or those who care more about style.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#464

Post by manojlds »

toasterlovin wrote: post #102
ignoramous wrote: post #16

> Fitbits’ stock shot up almost 30 percent after the first rumors surfaced. In recent months, the company’s stock often traded below $3, down from close to $48 shortly after its IPO in 2015. Today, after the announcement, it went up to around $5.20. Good lord, must the acquisition offer feel like a relief? Surely, Fitbit wouldn't do a Groupon now. The article fails to mention Fossil, but Google recently did acquire t…

> Xiaomi, Huawei, and Huami have really taken the wearables market by storm You link to a press release. Are there actual sales numbers to back that claim up? Because all I see out in the real world are Apple watches and Fit Bits. > I hope the rumoured Pixel Wearable isn't comically expensive like its Phone counterparts. The Apple Watch Series 3 is available on apple.com for $199.

Real world? I hope you are not ignoring markets like India and China where anyone I see wears a Mi Band or similar.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#465

Post by manojlds »

hannasanarion wrote: post #298
akhilcacharya wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mi Band 4 has watch faces and recent update brings always on screen. Has weather and can control music on phone. But yeah Mi Bands are fitness trackers with some additional features, but it does work very well for that use case with extremely good battery life.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#466

Post by abawany »

krick wrote: post #405

Ok, are there any wearables left that can be trusted with personal data? I want to use it to track my own activity/heartrate, not to be used and tracked by somebody else for their shady purposes.

I won't blame you if you call me a Garmin shill but the fact that it is a European company subject to GDPR was a big factor in my picking it over Fitbit when I was making my decision about two years ago. Edit: also I read on HN that Garmin can be used with open source sync solutions and thus not locked to the vendor for data storage was another big reason why I picked it.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#469

Post by abawany »

jjoonathan wrote: post #293
wrkronmiller wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Another vote for Garmin warranty: my strap catch broke (the little loop that holds the long end of the strap down). I chatted online with them and they shipped me the 50c catch in what appeared to be a large box that must have cost at least $4 to ship. A bit overkill but that's how you retain customers I guess.

Re: Alphabet in bid to buy Fitbit

#470

Post by nhumrich »

sulam wrote: post #435
amatecha wrote: post #411

Still bitter that Fitbit bought Pebble and did apparently nothing worthwhile with the tech or the team they acquired. I loved my Pebble OG and kept searching for a nice secondhand Pebble Time Steel to upgrade to -- until the Fitbit acquisition where we learned the Pebble ecosystem was unfortunately doomed. I've since "upgraded" to an Apple Watch S4, but to be honest it's really just a "side-grade" as there are major…

At the risk of sounding contradictory — the latest Fitbit watch has AOD, more than 7 days of battery life (at least for me — half that if I turn AOD on), and a button. It also uses that Pebble tech to power their third party app ecosystem.

I had the versa (v1) and it didnt have AOD, but you would install watch faces that allowed it and battery was like half a day, if that. So while I dont doubt your claims, I gave up on Fitbit before the versa 2. The buttons also dont do much, sadly.
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