Those things look huge. Until "smart watches" can be made smaller and lighter, the adoption rate will be abysmal.
Seriously, those things are electric hockey pucks with straps.
Android coming to wearables
21–30 of 206 posts
Re: Android coming to wearables
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moore's Law will eventually catch up. The Pebble is currently the PalmPilot of smartwatches; perfectly suited to the current state of the art. However, progress being what it is, eventually the technology will be good enough that Android (or iOS) on a smartwatch will become the better solution.
Moore's law is about transistor count; what does that have to do with battery life?
More efficient computing requires less battery power
Re: Android coming to wearables
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moore's Law will eventually catch up. The Pebble is currently the PalmPilot of smartwatches; perfectly suited to the current state of the art. However, progress being what it is, eventually the technology will be good enough that Android (or iOS) on a smartwatch will become the better solution.
Moore's law is about transistor count; what does that have to do with battery life?
I think at this point "Moore's Law" is just used as shorthand for "technology will solve technology's problems given enough time"
Re: Android coming to wearables
#24It'll be a cold day in hell before I let Google have an always-on device attached to my person, wearable or otherwise. These folks have proven--proven!--that they are unable to protect their infrastructure from state actors, that they do not care about individual customers, and that they will hijack our services on a whim to try and raise money. Fuck that noise. Any wearables need to be completely open-source, and wi…
I feel your pain. Out of curiosity, do you carry a mobile phone?
Re: Android coming to wearables
#25I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service to humanity: for e.g. wearing devices that can keep us reminded of our meds or monitor sugar levels, to talk just about the possibilities in healthcare. Then I think of Edward Snowden and I now know that what Google knows, maybe America/Russia/China/WhatHaveYou…
I find myself also questioning this often. It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. Ideally I would like privacy but I think as we go forward keeping privacy would leave you in the same kind of position someone like RMS is in by sticking to his Free Software philosophy so strongly. I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Face…
> I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Facebook set to public - especially considering what they post.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they are set to public by default... in fact, IIRC they even reset everyone to public when they released that "feature" a couple of years ago.
> When I tell them they don't care. I think the majority of people want some semblance of privacy but they are willing to give up a lot for the efficiency these new products, that require us to give up privacy, provide.
Sure, and smokers are willing to risk a slow painful death to forgo the pain of quitting. Humans are short-term thinkers.
Re: Android coming to wearables
#26The key to the success of these things will be the ability to get information from the display without having to touch it. At first I figured this would mean an always-on display (so, e-ink, I guess), but this clearly isn't that, and yet they don't seem to turn the displays on in the videos (though I'm sure they're all fake).
I wonder if you could do something with the accelerometer that would be good enough? Like, if your arm orientation changes to look-at-your-watch position, the display turns on, and it turns off again when your arm goes back down to your side.
Re: Android coming to wearables
#27I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service to humanity: for e.g. wearing devices that can keep us reminded of our meds or monitor sugar levels, to talk just about the possibilities in healthcare. Then I think of Edward Snowden and I now know that what Google knows, maybe America/Russia/China/WhatHaveYou…
I find myself also questioning this often. It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. Ideally I would like privacy but I think as we go forward keeping privacy would leave you in the same kind of position someone like RMS is in by sticking to his Free Software philosophy so strongly. I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Face…
> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services.
The difference between Apple and Google has recently occurred to me: with Apple, their secrets are in jeopardy. With Google, yours are.
Re: Android coming to wearables
#28I'm more interested in the watches that were shown on the video. I realize I might be confused, are the watches in the video just placeholders/random design concepts to get the idea across? Still, I'm wondering what devices will eventually support this SDK.
They appear to be the LG G Watch [1] and Moto 360 [2], which were announced at the same time.
Re: Android coming to wearables
#29The commerical, PoC is great. But its idea has the same flaw as Facebook Paper (https://www.facebook.com/paper).
I can check the weather, get alert and listen to my music from my smartphone. I can enjoy some home automation with Canary (http://canary.is/). If I have free time I can design my own app and integrate a speech recognition to open the door (I am sure there are companies selling this too).
What unique "innovations" - conveniences will Google wearable (which at this stage seems to be just a watch) offer?
I say it has the same flaw as Facebook Paper because Paper 's success is based on rich, beautiful, poetic content. If your circle is casual writer, Paper will look lame to you. I love Google Glass because I can take pictures and record the world from a first-person view attached to my head. I don't plan on making a phone call directly from Google Glass yet - that's kind of weird.
So what else can Google watch do? I just can't see it.
The ability to better monitor your health and fitness.
You see, I can still get away with it with other accessory. I will give Google credit and say this is useful, but other than that, I really don't see it.
You know what is unique? What I want to see?
Iron Man computer screen + Iron Man interactive airtouch computer system.... That's what we are lacking. I want to be able to swipe through contents, web pages from thin air with gesture. We can do some of that already. Push it forward!
edit:
I will say this is useful as assistive technology. People who are visually impaired or motion disable can benefit from it. Just put it on wrist and good to go. But other than that, I just don't see it.
Re: Android coming to wearables
#30I think they should focus on bettering battery life on Android because it's honestly despicable.