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Pixel Watch 5

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Re: Pixel Watch 5

#131

Post by Zigurd »

SirMaster wrote: post #36

Interesting they are still going with round. Most of the UI shots look awkward on a round screen with anything not in the very center getting cut off a bunch.

In some basement at Google there's a group of traumatized engineers who were flogged mercilessly until they made a smart watch UI work on a round watch face because...??? I've developed Wear OS apps in the amount of effort that it must've taken to get to a sort of alright implementation of a UI that still depends on a lot of lists of things seems crazy to me.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#132

Post by wlesieutre »

maccard wrote: post #101
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 Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly. I don’t care…

I found it was even better to turn off all the notifications entirely, then you don’t get distracted by the watch interrupting you either. There are very few things I actually need to know about right now.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#133

Post by Zigurd »

mvanbaak wrote: post #86
SirMaster wrote: post #36

Interesting they are still going with round. Most of the UI shots look awkward on a round screen with anything not in the very center getting cut off a bunch.

I was discussing this with my wife 10 minutes before I saw this comment. watch / time / clock looks and works so much better on a round interface. notifications / text / buttons look and work so much better on a square interface. So, use a watch on one wrist (round, good looking, etc), and a smartwatch on the other wrist (square, functional, 'computer') There's no way you can mold the two together into one 'have it a…

There are a lot of mechanical watches that have rectangular watch faces, some of them very attractive and expensive.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#134

Post by birdsongs »

lenova wrote: post #125
maccard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly. I don’t care…

> I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I've noticed and interesting social shift in recent years: friends who get distracted mid-sentence by an Apple Watch notification, pause the conversation to check the alert, and then continue the conversation afterwards without realizing they had paused/were momentarily not present. It's fascinating becaus…

I started noticing this with smartwatches in 2019-2020, with my coworkers. They would just stop mid convo, check watch, and resume talking.

It's only about 5 seconds but it feels so weird on the other side. Like, sure, I'll wait for you. But it feels really rude when you do it 3 times in 5 minutes.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#135

Post by astr0n0m3r »

SirMaster wrote: post #36

Interesting they are still going with round. Most of the UI shots look awkward on a round screen with anything not in the very center getting cut off a bunch.

It's disappointing that this is downvoted when the Apple Watch is an obvious example that rectangular works and is winning. When it comes to watches, I have to admit that I don't understand 99% of what is sold.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#136

Post by danilafe »

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.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#137

Post by beart »

colordrops wrote: post #122
Marsymars wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable all the health data stuff.

then what's the point of the watch? Can you see the data without a cloud connection? Can it be uploaded to your phone without going to the cloud?

Yes you can see most of your data without a cloud connection. But some features are limited and require the subscription. A google account is required though to use the app I believe.

Of course, getting more than a snapshot of the data is a bit of a pain. Fitbit has a developer portal and you can create a dev app key to export your data. There is at least one open source project that pulls this data down regularly and feeds it into grafana. I'm not sure if the pixel line of watches provides a similar developer portal.

EDIT: actually, you said cloud connection. I think in this case the data is still being sent to the cloud, hence the API to fetch it. But you don't have to enable sharing with other services or purchase the health subscription. So maybe the answer is still that no, you can't really do much without the cloud connection.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#138

Post by paulgerhardt »

etrautmann wrote: post #126
maccard wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly. I don’t care…

The novelty of Apple Pay on watch wore off? I use this all the time but it’s not noteworthy or interesting, just a great feature that’s seamless and doesn’t require pulling out my phone.

> that’s seamless

I wish it were. The double click to pay is pretty annoying compared to “express mode” Apple Watch apps like Suica and UniFi Touch Pass.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#139

Post by ortusdux »

Zigurd wrote: post #127
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…

Listening to power users is the product management equivalent of armoring the places on the fighter plane where you find bullet holes. You should of course be looking for where the planes that didn't come back have damage. Smart watches become shelfware pretty easily. Especially when you don't have the Apple Watch cachet.

Great analogy - This phenomenon irks me, and I would never have thought of using survivorship bias as an apt description. Some of the most valuable feedback you will ever receive is from people that don't use your product/feature.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#140

Post by shric »

gillesjacobs wrote: post #130
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…

The custom complications on WearOs watch faces do it for me. I can see my investment portfolio value change right from my wrist.

If you need (or want) to see your investment portfolio that often then I don’t think you and I have the same definition of “investment”
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