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The history of Casio watches

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Re: The history of Casio watches

#111

Post by raffael_de »

smackeyacky wrote: post #63

It’s a shame that Casio are relentlessly pushing the g-shock watches upmarket. Part of their appeal was that they were affordable and tough. I still put on a g-shock if I absolutely have to know the time and couldn’t be faffed winding an automatic. The GB-800 is pretty cool, has a step counter and the time can be kept by using the g-shock app including adjusting for daylight saving. The 5600 is my favourite though.

What's the appeal of a step counter in a Casio? For me this is just highlighting their utter lack of meaning- and useful innovation.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#112

Post by smackeyacky »

raffael_de wrote: post #111
smackeyacky wrote: post #63

It’s a shame that Casio are relentlessly pushing the g-shock watches upmarket. Part of their appeal was that they were affordable and tough. I still put on a g-shock if I absolutely have to know the time and couldn’t be faffed winding an automatic. The GB-800 is pretty cool, has a step counter and the time can be kept by using the g-shock app including adjusting for daylight saving. The 5600 is my favourite though.

What's the appeal of a step counter in a Casio? For me this is just highlighting their utter lack of meaning- and useful innovation.

It was unexpected I guess. I bought that watch second hand and didn’t realise it had that function. I like it a lot better than a smart watch.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#113

Post by discreteevent »

function_seven wrote: post #22

I was really surprised to find out that the F-91W was first released in 1989. I had assumed it was even older than that! I wasn't too surprised to see their blurb leave out it's other (alleged!) known use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism

FYI Casio recently brought out a minimalist series of the F-91W (same watch - just a bit less chrome on the face) e.g. https://www.casio.com/europe/watches/casio/product.F-91WB-1A

Re: The history of Casio watches

#114

Post by numpad0 »

7thaccount wrote: post #75
rvba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tiles UI was simply not good. The phones themselves were very good. I have a functional Windows phone in a drawer, that I sometimes charge (and it still works!), but after playing with the tile UI for few minutes... eww

Absolutely LOVED the tiles UI and so did everyone I know that gave Windows phone a shot. By far the best mobile experience I've had outside of a few apps I wanted missing. I really miss the OS. I think in general though the other commenters were correct that there was already too much market share coming from iOS and Android.

As an absolute harbinger customer, I wholeheartedly agree. I also think iPhone Air doesn't look so bad.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#115

Post by palmotea »

Pfiffer wrote: post #16
rdtsc wrote: post #11

Some of cool and the wild ones: > The TM-100 was a highly unique wristwatch with the ability to transmit speech via radio. Outfitted with an FM transmitter and microphone, the watch allowed users to wirelessly broadcast their voice to a radio tuned to the right frequency simply by speaking toward the watch > The unique CMD-10 delivered remote control functionality for TVs and VCRs. Its function-minded layout of large…

This one too: > Simply holding the watch’s built-in speaker up to the receiver of a push-button telephone allowed users to place calls to stored numbers

>> Simply holding the watch’s built-in speaker up to the receiver of a push-button telephone allowed users to place calls to stored numbers

So a miniaturized version of one of this (which I totally uselessly had as a kid): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z438yRW0rGQ.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#117

Post by mmsimanga »

rvba wrote: post #50
pixelatedindex wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think about the way the CEO of Nokia back in 2010 describing what it would be like for them to abandon their in-house OS for Android: "Peeing yourself to stay warm" This has intrigued me because eventually that’s what they ended up doing - although with two major caveats. Firstly, the mobile space did not have room for 3 players - MS tried very hard and their Nokia phones were pretty good. But it was just o…

The tiles UI was simply not good. The phones themselves were very good. I have a functional Windows phone in a drawer, that I sometimes charge (and it still works!), but after playing with the tile UI for few minutes... eww

I absolutely loved the tiles interface and held onto my Windows phone for as long as I could. I eventually had to switch to Android when apps I depended stopped working on Windows phone.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#118

Post by mrweasel »

aidenn0 wrote: post #106
mrweasel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-91W is such a fun watch. Super functional, you're not scared of damaging it, because A) You can't and B) it's like $25. The backlight is my absolute favorit feature. It's completely pointless. It can barely light up the hours, and only the left most digit and Casio never bothered to fix it. Absolutely delightful.

I strongly prefer the WS1400H; it's only about $10 more and your wrist won't accidentally bump the stopwatch buttons.

I always bump the 24H button on the F-91W, I'm not entirely sure why Casio felt like you should be able to switch between 12h and 24h at the push of a button. My assumption is that most people stick to either of the two formats, jumping between them seems like a edge case.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#119

Post by majormajor »

legitster wrote: post #29

> 2016 - First Casio outdoor watch to run Android Wear OS Could you imagine the situation they were in as the most high-tech watch company in the world? For mainstream relevance you now have to anchor yourself to a smartphone platform that is either a) hostile to your very existence or b) completely abandons their platform and leaves you and your customers out to dry. I know people complain about car manufacturers be…

> I know people complain about car manufacturers being hostile to CarPlay and Android Auto. But I think in the long run, the executives are being smart. Looking down the history of other companies that turned over responsibility of their user experience to tech companies - there's not a good track record of long-term successes.

No car manufacturer suffered that badly from using standard-sized single-DIN/double-DIN radios for a couple of decades. CarPlay/Android Auto are just software versions of those. It's a way to let your car stay more relevant 3, 5, 10 years down the line.

But that conflicts with short-term revenue optimization, data gathering, advertising, etc.

Re: The history of Casio watches

#120

Post by oriolid »

nradov wrote: post #84
legitster wrote: post #29

> 2016 - First Casio outdoor watch to run Android Wear OS Could you imagine the situation they were in as the most high-tech watch company in the world? For mainstream relevance you now have to anchor yourself to a smartphone platform that is either a) hostile to your very existence or b) completely abandons their platform and leaves you and your customers out to dry. I know people complain about car manufacturers be…

By 2016, Garmin was already building smart watches using their own proprietary OS that wasn't anchored to any smartphone platform. Casio could have done the same.

Suunto, Polar and probably a lot of others were doing the same. Android was attractive because it would be a huge saving on software development costs, have maps out of the box and allow third-party apps.

At least Polar had a watch that would run in low-power mode by default and had a separate CPU that could run Android Watch when needed but that would drain the battery quickly. They had the sense to not make it the flagship model and it looks like the current models don't have anything like that.

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