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Pixel Watch 5

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Re: Pixel Watch 5

#251

Post by alternatex »

blltprfmnk wrote: post #173
blltprfmnk wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's ultimately not very useful. Sleep tracking - I've become convinced this is actually a bad idea, and since I stopped I stress less about sleep and ultimately sleep better. Step tracking? Phone does that adequately. I do wear it for workouts, but once it's closer to end of life will replace it with something dedicated for workouts like a Garmin that holds a charge for 14+ days.

I’ll add that if you care about working out with a watch to track heart rate, the Apple Watch is pretty dismal. I moved to pairing mine with a Polar H10 strap so that I could get much faster feedback on heart rate recovery post sprint. In addition to using an optical sensor, the Apple Watch may also be doing something to smooth out the signal. I just know that the Polar seems much more responsive and matches how I am…

Chest straps work with ECG, so they're hard to beat for heart rate tracking. That said, Apple watches are some of the best wrist wearables for heart rate tracking. Most other brands aren't as accurate and many don't come even close.

Check out the Quantified Scientist on YouTube, he does some interesting testing on health devices.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#252

Post by cedilla »

semiquaver wrote: post #116
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…

> Alexii Assuming “Alexa” is first declension, plural is “Alexae”

Given the letter X it's probably Greek, so it would be Alexai. Which is coincidentally about pronounced the same.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#253

Post by phazerfamza »

Not sure, when it happened, or why, but, from always buying the latest iphone, and apple watch, tracking my "everything" from steps, to weight, to calroies, slack, mail etc. etc. on my write and phone, I find myself wearing just normal watches (g-shock square in my case), and just not caring about upgraing my iphone, and instead carrying my kobo with me instead of my iphone, paying with...a physical card, instead of apple pay. Don't get me wrong all of the tech is amazing, and I am a geek, but I am so sick and tired of alwayss being connected, and then paying a subscription for every little thing in my life, it's so freeing to disconnect. Been reaching for pen and a notebook more than notion, biggest hurdle there is, my handwriting have really gotten quite bad.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#254

Post by hutattedonmyarm »

cyberax wrote: post #185
danilafe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PebbleTime 2 has a pedometer, HR monitor, and sleep tracking. You can set it to do continuous HR measurements during activities. This covers all the basics. GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway. Really the only missing part is NFC payments.

> GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway.

I leave my phone at home when I go for a run. Connect my headphones to ma watch (which as my podcasts and audiobooks on there), remove the house key from my keychain and carry nothing with me besides key, watch and headphone. Feels so much better than having a phone with me

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#255

Post by timoth3y »

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…

I love my analog watches too dearly to give them up for a smart watch.

However, I just realized that analog watches also have "power users", and I am definitely not one of them.

My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph") has a stopwatch with lap memory, a tachymeter, support for multiple time zones, and a bunch of other features I have not thought about since the week I purchased it.

I don't really know how to use it all. I just like the watch.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#256

Post by hurfdurf »

Rotdhizon wrote: post #7
tuckwat wrote: post #2

30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker. I don't want to charge my watch every day. I've been using the Garmin Forerunner for a few years now and the battery life is 2 weeks!

I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that. I didn't know this going in. I had purchased the Pixel 8 I think it was and saw the watch was heavily discounted if I bundled it in so I did. Will never buy another one. I'm a heavily sleeper and need multiple alarms sometimes to wake up and would often use my watch alarm to supplement my phone. So it became a nightly rou…

  I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that.
Good news: PW2 will reach End of Support come October, perfect time to buy the PW5! /s

https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1279...

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#257

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Spot on, my smart watch is an Amazfit, the built-in apps for sport, driving the music player, and reading msgs are enough.

I agree reply is useless, it isn't even possible on this one, however it is good only as a reminder as sometimes I miss relevant calls or msgs.

I have used smart watches since the Timex and Casio had agendas, or games, never cared for an app ecosystem beyond what was already on the phone.

Also never changed the Amazfit skin since the day I bought it, and settled on a classical analogue view.

Often I rather use a plain mechanical watch, or no watch at all, don't get the app ecosystem on a miniature screen.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#258

Post by knorker »

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…

I don't feel like power users are catered to either. Like if you have a Google workspace account (if you're not a company, that's a power user) then you can't do "remind me to X". That's reserved for non-power users.

... At least last I checked.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#259

Post by toasty228 »

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…

> I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me?

When you're deep in a conversation with someone and suddenly their wrist vibrate, they lift their hand up slightly, tilt their head down, seem to stare in the void and keep saying "uhu, uhu hmm, uhu" while pretending to still listening to you.

That's my experience with smart watches power users

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#260

Post by croemer »

ChemSpider wrote: post #69
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…

"insulin resistance trends" - whaaaaat? how would they do THAT? That would be huge for so many people, including diabetics, obese people or women with PCOS (PCOS alone affects more than 10% of women of reproductive age) Is that measurement accurate? Like, a person starts taking Metformin -> and a few days later the watch detects a drop in insulin resistance?

No, it's not a glucose sensor. Extrapolating from the Google research published in Nature a few months ago on how they estimate insulin sensitivity using wearables (and not just BMI, age, etc): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10179-2

Insulin sensitivity correlates with obesity, activity, sleep, etc. so it's not impossible that a wearable can give some degree of prediction. I guess it's mostly good motivation to support habits that increase sensitivity (physical activity, low stress).

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