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The quest for a simple smartwatch

binarymoon.co.uk

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Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#161

Post by taylodl »

rollcat wrote: post #71
profsummergig wrote: post #18

Was talking to an older lady the other day. Very non-tech. Only uses an iPhone and an Apple watch. No laptop or tablet/iPad. Gets a surprisingly large quantity of things done via her phone. My phone is an Android. She shared 2 things her iPhone can do that I don't think my phone (OnePlus 7 pro) and watch (Amazfit T-Rex 2) combination can do: - she can always find out where she parked her car - her watch buzzes to war…

I feel AW is underrated as an everyday tool, especially when it comes to being mindful about contemporary attention sinks. You can do almost anything from it that doesn't require a larger screen or a keyboard, and the kinds of activities the larger screen enables tend to mostly just waste your time. Take a typical 2007 "dumb" phone - the watch screen is roughly that size. It becomes awkward when you need to find some…

Having just bought my first Apple Watch about four months ago - I've been really surprised at how useful and unobtrusive it is. Hate to admit it, but I should have bought one years ago. Having said that, I'm still not sold on the Apple Vision Pro.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#162

Post by andreiii »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #132
chimprich wrote: post #94

The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging. I use a Garmin smartwatch. One of the surprising things about Garmin is that they don't have a proper app store. They have an app where you can load apps into your watch, but it's rather crippled by having no…

For me GPS is a must-have. I want the tracking of my walks/rides. Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.

most Garmin watches give you at least 1 week of battery life with 7-8h of GPS activity during that week. if you do less than 8h, you can get 1.5 weeks of battery life.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#163

Post by maratc »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #144
maratc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of mechanical watches that are neither Rolex nor Nomos. Seiko 5s are excellent and can be had at below $100. No batteries need to be changed.

Sure, but that begs the question of "why a mechanical watch"? A simple quartz watch doesn't need to replace batteries for years, is very accurate and much cheaper still. For many people it boils down to "I like the mechanical engineering aspect and want to show that" (status and signalling) or as a fashion item. Of course, that is a different signal than the rolex "I am rich", but it is a signal. Which is perfectly f…

As GP noted,

> an example of reliable manufacturing

A mechanical watch doesn't need any intrusion and can work for years if not decades, and if it needs a service there are a lot of qualified people who can do it, including full disassembly and assembly. From that point of view, it can be a "lifetime" device.

Any smartwatch, no matter how expensive, will reliably and predictably turn into a paperweight when it stops being supported by the manufacturer. Many smartwatches will do it sooner — when their non-replaceable battery is out of juice.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#164

Post by 1ko »

JoachimS wrote: post #111
gbtw wrote: post #41

The new Casio DW-H5600 has solar charging and amazingly long battery life. I was pretty anti-smartwatch but i like g-shock squares and ended up getting it been surprisingly good.

I bought one of these for the solar charging, great battery life. And that works. But it is really hard to read the LCD. The automatic lightning works quite unreliably, and even when it works the tiny screen is hard to read. At least with my old man eyes.

The latest casio lcd screens are amazing in terms of readability. They don't have the digits shadow problem anymore (this was especially plaguing the negative displays). It's really night and day.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#165

Post by izacus »

kaba0 wrote: post #137
izacus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely isn't the same as Apple Watch, not sure what you've been looking at. Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode). Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.

Hours?! That’s definitely not true, I am by no means a Marathon runner, but mine has definitely managed to track quite long distances. Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.

Apple Watch Ultra has juice for about 10-13 hours of active GPS activity tracking time. Non-Ultra Apple Watch does less. My Garmin Epix2 can do about 24 hours with full battery, Fenix series does a bit more.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#166

Post by silveira »

pyr0hu wrote: post #17
goda90 wrote: post #4

I want to see more wearable tech besides watches. I've never been a fan of things on my wrist, but I have a problem of missing calls from my wife when my phone is on vibrate. I don't need a screen, just something that is close enough to my body to always vibrate noticeably without being uncomfortable.

I think Sony had one of the few smart wristbands for analogue watches but IIRC its japan only. I found the idea quite nice, a small led row display to show whos calling for example and the wristband looked like a normal band for the watch. Havent found anything like that since that Sony one

Sony Wena, if anyone is searching too.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#168

Post by infthi »

pzo wrote: post #122
mdrzn wrote: post #45

I stopped using a smartwatch once I started wearing a MiBand. They're too good.

I use those too - they are super cheap. I mostly need smartwatch/smartband for: 1. push notifications (I keep my phone on silent) 2. show time, date, weather 3. change music volumes 4. remote camera trigger 5. sleep tracking / step counter Things I like about miband: - dirty cheap - 2weeks+ battery - waterproof (I just go to swim with it or take shower and had no issues) Things I don't like in miband though: - screen…

> bands are of poor quality

A month ago I found out there exist metal bracelets for mibands. Bought one and probably will not have problems with bands anymore. Also they look much better.

> they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one

5, 6 and 7 definitely had interchangeable chargers.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#169

Post by soylentcola »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #40

I had a moto360, first version, when it was released. Well, it was pretty cool. The battery could almost last all day if I didn't use the watch for anything.

Same. I got mine for $149 (down from $199) thanks to some discount deal they were running at Staples of all places. Looked nice, did all the basics (notifications, nav for when I was riding my motorcycle, quick replies, could install or create any watch face I wanted), and the battery lasted long enough that I only needed to charge for 30min in the evening if I was going out somewhere after work.

Eventually the battery died and I failed miserably at replacing it so it was toast. I figured there would be something new available in the few years since I'd bought it - maybe improved battery or a fix for the "flat tire" at the bottom of the display. But when I searched, all I found were either ugly plastic "omg sportz@!" designs or classier stuff for 2-3x the price.

Still haven't purchased another smart watch. It was bad enough dropping a couple hundred bucks for ~3 years of use. I can't imagine spending $400-600 for (at best) minor incremental updates.

Re: The quest for a simple smartwatch

#170

Post by hnbad »

brookst wrote: post #146
b112 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is a bit baffling to me. I'm guessing pebble watches didn't geolocate you, and report your position, and probably didn't record everything said around you then "anonymize" it, so it was likely deemed useless by VCs, and thus died? No wonder there's no replacement! To all VCs, my startup sells geolocated tools, and also orders screws and nails, automatically, by selling special nails, with an rfid tag build in!…

Consumers decide product success, not VCs. If there is demand, the product will succeed. See: all the companies that came from bootstrapped startups. If there is no demand, no amount of VC money will make a successful company. See: Magic Leap.

Not really. VCs want growth, consumers want stability. A company can be profitable and stable and still die because VCs want ROI and hence growth and the growth potential of the existing market has been depleted.

Arguably, Pebble was an example of this. They initially presented the smartwatch as a productivity tool and many users loved it. But the productivity market was much smaller than the fitness market so they kept adding fitness related features. This eventually enabled them to be bought out by Fitbit (for a good exit) who saw no further use in the brand and killed it.

Another example is planned obsolescence: there's very little money in producing a product that has few returning customers because it continues to work fine for decades.

Saying "consumers" or "demand" or "your wallet" implies a level of agency and democratic control that isn't really there in practice. Consumers don't decide product success, profit and growth does. And consumers certainly don't get to make any direct decisions, they just get to pick through what has already been preselected for them.

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