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Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#11
How about "I have no idea what I want"?

Is there a killer feature that a smartwatch would have over my phone which I'm unaware of aside from form factor?

I'd like there to be a reason to buy one, because I like shiny tech things, but I'm not sure I even have a use case.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#12
If they made a smart watch that could do time/calendar, phone calls, text messages, emails, and turn-by-turn navigation - all without requiring tethering to a smartphone - I would buy one and probably not even have a smartphone.

I know I'm an anomaly, but I only use my phone to remain contactable and for GPS navigation until I get back to my desktop. A smartphone that didn't have to tether would suit me well, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there like that.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#13
So much. Motorola had me literally, physically on the edge of my seat when they announced 360.

I fully realise that there probably is no reason to have one. Especially in the beginning when they're still figuring it out but there may never be one. It is such a cool gadget though. And the round screen with the ambient dial totally sells it.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#14
I had a "smart watch" at one point...a Fossil Abacus WristPDA, which actually ran Palm OS 4.0 and had 8 Mb of storage, a fair amount for a Palm device. It was cool, but certainly not as usable as a regular Palm PDA...but you can probably guess what its main issue was: Battery life. The thing sucked down energy like an eight-armed alcoholic, and had to be plugged into the charger every night to avoid dying and completely losing the current time (something you never want to have happen in a watch, and which brings to mind the "You had ONE JOB" meme). And the only way to charge it was with its special USB cable that had an add-on wall wart power supply.

(It also had one of those black rubber watchbands, custom-designed for the watch, with storage for its tiny stylus in the buckle. And, when the band cracked and broke, as those kind of bands inevitably do for me, there was no way to replace it.)

When I got my first iPhone, that watch was one of the three gadgets it replaced. I'm not convinced its modern-day counterparts would work out any better.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#15
I almost wonder if Apple already did the market research on smart watches and realized nobody really wants one, and then they did a head fake and convinced all their competitors that they were going into development on this product with all their might. Competitors tie up engineering talent and resources producing a device to compete with something that Apple has zero plans of actually manufacturing. It would be an evil genius move.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#16
Its mankind alone who measures the time, and he is the only being experiencing that one fear: the fear of time running out

-- freely quoted from somewhere

That how i feel about watches, so i don't have any. Phone is enough if i have to catch a Train or wake up for work.

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#17
post #11

How about "I have no idea what I want"? Is there a killer feature that a smartwatch would have over my phone which I'm unaware of aside from form factor? I'd like there to be a reason to buy one, because I like shiny tech things, but I'm not sure I even have a use case.

> How about "I have no idea what I want"?

Guess what the late Steve Jobs said about this? "People don't know what they want until we show it to them."

Re: Poll: Do you want a smart watch?

#19
Yes, I do. I want one so that I don't need to look at my phone every time I want to see if I have any notifications. Especially as an Android user, it can be a pain in the butt to see them and seems like a waste. Getting your phone out constantly is generally seen as rude, and it can be distracting, and I'd like my phone to have less of a stranglehold over my attention.*

The Moto 360 looks great. The only issue I have with smart watches is battery life. It does seem pretty crap to have to charge a watch.

* EDIT: Yes, I could just ignore notifications more, or turn them off, but generally I've configured it so that the notifications I get are ones that I actually want.

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