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Pixel Watch 3

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Re: Pixel Watch 3

#31

Post by losvedir »

Huh, just yesterday I started setting up and getting used to my new (to me) Apple Watch Series 6, after having used a Pixel Watch 2 for several months.

I'm surprised to find myself somewhat disappointed, and preferring my Pixel Watch, though I'm still giving myself some time in case it's just familiarity. But a few things:

* The available watch faces are pretty underwhelming, particularly digital ones. There's only a single one that actually includes the seconds, as far as I can tell. And the only one with lots of complications is Modular, which sticks the time in the corner, and has a big unwieldy complication in the center. My kingdom for Pixel Watch's Utility.

* No watch face store!?

* I can't seem to set up a minimal all-red face for night time, like I had on the Pixel Watch.

* The heart rate complication is just a picture of a heart that I click and it takes me to a widget that measures my heart rate. I had a real time glance on Pixel Watch, right in the complication, always up to date.

* The sleep tracking is weird and confusing. I need to set up schedules and such? On the Pixel Watch, it just tracks my sleep automatically.

* Subjective, but I still like the size and shape (round) of the Pixel Watch more than this Apple Watch, for now.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#32

Post by r00fus »

paxys wrote: post #18

I'm too locked in to the Apple ecosystem to switch, but I really wish they made a round watch. This one looks so good compared to whatever Apple puts out every year. A round watch face just makes so much aesthetic sense.

I could never give up those corner complications. Round looks better if you're only interested in the clock aspect, but for text display, a rectangle is incredibly more functional and with rounded rect shape, it's good enough for me.

You would need to refactor the entire UI interaction model to properly take advantage of a circular face.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#33

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #30
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #27

"fine-tuned for fitness" the product presentation page scrupulously avoids talking about sport and systematically uses "fitness" instead. Anyone who has ever tried to use Fibit + Google Health for their training knows that it's going to be a disaster. This product seems destined for those who like something big and bright on their wrist. In principle, this watch has no built-in GPS. One day's autonomy is therefore we…

seriously? no GPS?

No reference is ever made to a positioning system, whether GPS, Galileo, GNSS or Glosnav.

DC Rainmaker confirms in its test that this watch is not equipped with a GPS chip. "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. "

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/08/google-pixel-watch-3-han...

It's not clear whether the watch has a single-band GPS or no GPS at all. The fact that they don't communicate one it is not encouraging.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#34

Post by plorg »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #30
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #27

"fine-tuned for fitness" the product presentation page scrupulously avoids talking about sport and systematically uses "fitness" instead. Anyone who has ever tried to use Fibit + Google Health for their training knows that it's going to be a disaster. This product seems destined for those who like something big and bright on their wrist. In principle, this watch has no built-in GPS. One day's autonomy is therefore we…

seriously? no GPS?

Parent is wrong. It includes GPS.

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_watch_3_specs

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#35

Post by zukzuk »

paxys wrote: post #18

I'm too locked in to the Apple ecosystem to switch, but I really wish they made a round watch. This one looks so good compared to whatever Apple puts out every year. A round watch face just makes so much aesthetic sense.

Have you considered a Garmin watch? It works well enough (for me anyway) for showing and dismissing notifications from my iPhone. The battery lasts well over a week, and the biometrics and fitness/training stuff is way ahead of anything Apple has to offer. And most of the Garmin watches are indeed round.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#36

Post by mattnewton »

modeless wrote: post #14

My Pixel Watch sucks and it's not because the screen isn't big or bright enough. The implementation of notifications is awful. It's actually faster and easier in many cases to whip out my phone to see a notification than to see it on the watch. Why? Because notifications are not shown by default. The watch vibrates but nothing is there on the screen but the watch face. To trigger a notification to actually show, you…

When I worked at Google I got re-orged into the same division as pixel / android.

My director wore an Apple Watch and had an iPhone for personal use, and I am pretty sure I saw an Apple Watch on my VP too. Nobody was expected to eat the dog food and so few did. This was crazy to me coming from Apple- I remember several internal sites would ask you to file a radar (bug report) on why you switched to chrome from safari if you opened them in chrome. So many crazy issues I saw and reported didn’t actually matter to many high ranking members of the pixel team because they didn’t use the devices after 5pm.

There is a lot of incredible talent in that team but I think Google needs a minor culture shift to compete with Apple here.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#37

Post by spywaregorilla »

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #33
laweijfmvo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seriously? no GPS?

No reference is ever made to a positioning system, whether GPS, Galileo, GNSS or Glosnav. DC Rainmaker confirms in its test that this watch is not equipped with a GPS chip. "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. " https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/08/google-pixel-watch-3-han... It's not clear whether the watch has a single-band GPS or no GPS at all. The fact that they don't comm…

> "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS."

That doesn't mean "no GPS"

Weird cherry pick from a larger quote that clearly implies it has GPS:

> Again, this is an area I’ll dive into during my in-depth review down the road, looking at both the heart rate accuracy in running, as well as various changes they’ve made around GPS/GNSS accuracy. Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. However, as I’ve constantly said: I don’t care how a company arrives hardware-wise at an accurate GPS track, as long as they do so. We’ve seen companies with multiband implementations do worse than other companies without multiband. So as long as Google can deliver accurate GPS tracks, I’m happy.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#38

Post by maxglute »

drewg123 wrote: post #2

" all-day battery life " Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.

Was hoping needle move to all-week within a few iterations but not even close.

Still enjoying my glorified fitness band watch with 2-3 week battery life.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#39

Post by nkozyra »

sva_ wrote: post #12
taeric wrote: post #5

Similar to my comment in the phone thread, a focus on "bigger" makes me sad. Kind of hilarious to pair that with bragging rights on "all-day battery life."

> a focus on "bigger" makes me sad I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time. My Galaxy S23 Ultra weighs almost 300g with the case. I recently got wrist pain and some radiating pain in my pinky and ring finger. First I thought I'm getting carpal tunnel but that is quite literally the other tunnel in the wrist. Took me a while to figure this out, but turns out holding a heavy phone in one hand, propping it up wi…

> I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time.

The standard Pixel a line is relatively small, ~6", but perhaps you're talking about going back to the under-6" range.

I definitely find the move to larger phones somewhat perplexing because even as a 6'4" guy it's pretty difficult to navigate that much screen space with one hand.

Re: Pixel Watch 3

#40

Post by stronglikedan »

modeless wrote: post #14

My Pixel Watch sucks and it's not because the screen isn't big or bright enough. The implementation of notifications is awful. It's actually faster and easier in many cases to whip out my phone to see a notification than to see it on the watch. Why? Because notifications are not shown by default. The watch vibrates but nothing is there on the screen but the watch face. To trigger a notification to actually show, you…

With the original Wear OS, you could check your notifications at any time and even scroll through them, all without touching the watch. The gestures were amazing. They eventually took them away, for reasons that I cannot comprehend.
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