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Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

jefftk.com

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Re: Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

#13

Post by sulam »

derefr wrote: post #9
bombcar wrote: post #4

Cell phone enabled watches are a pile of hacks sitting on top of hacks on top of a system pretending to be a telephone switch board from the 1940s. It’s surprising any of it works.

In what way are watches with SIMs (or eSIMs) not just tiny cell phones? Or is you meaning that the modern smartphone is itself a “pile of hacks sitting on top of hacks”?

The main way is that literally zero of these watches actually meet the standards that the cell networks require of a cell phone. Every single one of them has a carrier exemption or a lower standard to adhere to, because it turns out that putting a cell phone's RF package into a watch is super hard, both because of size and the various negative effects of the human body on radio signals. This affects cell phones too of course, but less so (remember the iPhone 4 and how we were "holding it wrong"?).

Another way is that watch chipsets are distinct from cell phone chipsets in that they make a variety of compromises unique to wearable requirements. Apple may be an exception here, you can't get a spec sheet for their chip, but for the other providers their wearable chipsets are generations behind anything they sell for a cell phone and are compromised in terms of power. Interestingly even watches (Apple, Samsung soon) that support 5G are running a dumbed down version of 5G that was created specifically to support the wearables and IoT market.

It gets even stranger in software. A text showing up on your watch might have arrived two completely different ways depending on whether it's an iMessage or a regular text and you can't tell which. The watch often doesn't even have its own number -- it's borrowing your phone's. IOW, it's not a tiny phone doing phone things, it's a companion device trying to fake it.

Re: Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

#16

Post by anonymars »

fragmede wrote: post #3

Choosing a carrier device without being on that carrier for the rest of your devices would seem to be the first mistake. Treating the carrier as anything other than dumb pipe seems like the issue here. Going with the Pixel Watch LTE and then doing same custom app development might make more sense for the described use case, but I haven't explored the author's use case thoroughly.

So you blame the victim and also admit you haven't explored the author's use case. Very helpful

Re: Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

#18

Post by kmbfjr »

nxm wrote: post #14
motbus3 wrote: post #11

Since beginning of 2025 big corps turned to be each time more anti consumer. They feel quite comfortable. I wonder what happened for them to feel like that.

Any actual evidence to backup this claim?

Are you serious?

Only in the last week we have Sony deleting paid-for movies. That is pretty anti-consumer.

I realize all of this is empirical, but the term enshitification just didn’t form out of thin air.

Re: Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

#19

Post by teliskr »

I have a verizon watch only account. I was able to get the new app working, but it was a struggle. I think it worked on the 3rd or 4th attempt. I had to start over and lost all of the contacts that were connected to the watch. Fortunately, there were only a few.

Overall, the Gizmo watch has been nice to have, but it leaves a lot to be desired. It's surprising that there are not better products in this market segment.

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