Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pixel Watch 5

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 401 posts

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#211

Post by ValentineC »

edent wrote: post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

> He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?"

If everyone on the Pixel Watch team was like that, that could explain why they haven't found any success breaking out from the crowd. Smart watches should discreetly enhance one's life, not be a list of features to be built and used all the time.

I've been an Apple Watch user since Series 5, and I mostly use the watch as a normal-ish smart watch, with silent alarms, iPhone music control, and two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly as the "power user" features I'd use most often. I barely use any of the apps, and still have trouble navigating the grid.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#212

Post by ValentineC »

armaansarkar wrote: post #187
futureshock wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Totally. I would say I'm quite a power user usually. I very carefully explored every feature my apple watch has and tried to incorporate as many of them as I could. Very, very few features stuck because they were genuinely helpful. Almost everything being pushed is a gimmick or a feature bullet point from some product manager. The actual good stuff: Time Workouts Payments The occasionally useful stuff: Notifica…

Personal favorite: unlocking my laptop

I keep laptop unlock off. Touch ID on the MacBooks more than suffices for this.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#213

Post by subarctic »

danilafe wrote: post #136
ihaveone wrote: post #121

Pebble Time 2 is still miles ahead being a watch, and only a bit behind being a computer. BUT, it has a sunlight readable ALWAYS on display, really good battery life and is open source. I still don't understand people charging their battery every 2 days or less. It's a problem guys. My Wear OS watches, even my fancy 2 screen one that got about 4 days or so, eventually ended up in a drawer. Never to be used again. Not…

For me, the appeal of the smartwatch is more advanced health tracking, custom applications, NFC, and GPS. As far as I know, Pebble lacks most if not all of these features. I really want to want a Pebble, but it's far closer to a customizable watchface than even a Fitbit. On the other hand, daily charging of smart watches is completely outrageous.

I canceled my pebble preorder when I found out it can only record audio for a couple minutes at a time. A big use case for me is to record voice notes without going into the distraction center that is my phone, but often they can be 20+ minutes

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#214

Post by ValentineC »

varispeed wrote: post #90
gavinray wrote: post #8

Most useful bit of the announcement, coming to all Google wearables it seems: Blood pressure, sleep breathing, and insulin sensitivity trends > Built on state-of-the-art Health Foundation Models trained on billions of minutes of sensor data from opted-in users and rigorously validated against gold-standard clinical measurements, these models power three new monthly trend summaries: blood pressure trends, sleep breath…

Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless. I can imagine that would be okay if the watch lasted for a full month, then you could buy two watches and swap them out every now and then.

> Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless.

Seems like it'll work with the Fitbit Air too. That has a 7 day battery life.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#215

Post by xur17 »

tshaddox wrote: post #74
bravura wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like the sales rep at the Apple store. I was perplexed. Meanwhile, I had to wonder how many people take showers that are over half an hour every day.

I'm perplexed how anyone would have trouble charging their smart watch 30-45 minutes per day, unless they have an unusual schedule like (near-constant travel). This is something I almost never think about or have issues with.

For me it's a mix of 2 things:

1. If I do end up traveling, I now have to deal with remembering to charge my watch while sleeping on the airplane or something

2. If I go on a camping trip, extra long hike, etc, I can end up with a dead watch (12 hour hike with navigation, early start, so I don't get my morning charge, etc)

With my Garmin, I just charge it once a week or so, and all is good. I do think it comes down to what you're looking for though - mini phone strapped to your risk vs adventure companion.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#216

Post by hbbio »

varispeed wrote: post #90
gavinray wrote: post #8

Most useful bit of the announcement, coming to all Google wearables it seems: Blood pressure, sleep breathing, and insulin sensitivity trends > Built on state-of-the-art Health Foundation Models trained on billions of minutes of sensor data from opted-in users and rigorously validated against gold-standard clinical measurements, these models power three new monthly trend summaries: blood pressure trends, sleep breath…

Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless. I can imagine that would be okay if the watch lasted for a full month, then you could buy two watches and swap them out every now and then.

This. I don't see the point of using a Pixel Watch or an Apple Watch or any watch that has 1 or 2 days of battery max.

My 3 year old Garmin has 2+ weeks battery life and is tracking activity, ox (ok, it's not medical grade), sleep, etc.

Also it does _not_ have a mic (something we're going to pay extra in a few years the way things go) and is not connected to anything wirelessly. No need for another device to set it up and you decide when you get data out using USB.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#217

Post by MBlume »

anon7000 wrote: post #183

So I kinda hate smart watches, a lot. Mainly because they are about notifications and apps, both of which SUCK to use on my wrist. Notifications are especially horrible (looking at you Apple, not able to disable reaction notifications in iMessage…), distracting, stressful, make it hard to stay present and focused. What I actually want: - sleep tracking - basic health tracking - maybe basic GPS to track hikes/runs etc…

I'm coming around to the possibility that I may want a Fitbit Air on one wrist and a dumb watch on the other.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#218

Post by slopinthebag »

edent wrote: post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

Ahh to be an arrogant Google employee. Must be nice to have such confidence from getting hired for a company which made a good product 25 years ago.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#219

Post by AnonHP »

ValentineC wrote: post #211
edent wrote: post #81

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me? I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. Wh…

> He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?" If everyone on the Pixel Watch team was like that, that could explain why they haven't found any success breaking out from the crowd. Smart watches should discreetly enhance one's life, not be a list of features to be built…

> two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly

What is this “two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly” and how does it work?

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#220

Post by flowardnut »

cyberax wrote: post #191
danilafe wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway Unless you go for a run, for example. > Really the only missing part is NFC payments. And custom applications, not the least of which are navigation tools like Google Maps or Citymapper.

> Unless you go for a run, for example. You can bring your phone with you! Then you can combine its GPS tracks and the information from Pebble. > And custom applications, not the least of which are navigation tools like Google Maps or Citymapper. They won't work without the phone connection because Pebble does not have a cellular modem. But there are mapping apps for the Pebble that use the phone's GPS: https://apps.…

>You can bring your phone with you!

You can, but it's pretty awful. put it in a pocket and it flops around. Wear a band that slides in your phone in and get it soaked (i'm a sweat monster).

I own a pebble, but I'll gladly just run without a phone.

Post reply on HN