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I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

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Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#231

Post by mac-attack »

__rito__ wrote: post #28
ofrzeta wrote: post #11

I have an Amazfit smartwatch that gets charged by a simple USB cable with two pins that magnetically attaches to the back of the watch. When I was on vacation and forgot that cable I was able to make my own by cutting a USB cable and attaching the wires to the contacts of the watch with tape. That simplicity is hard to beat. And this watch is water resistant.

I like Amazfit because it can fully function without sending any data whatsoever to a server. I can export data from the app very easily.

I use amazfit w/ gadgetbridge as well

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#232

Post by jama211 »

Aachen wrote: post #151
jama211 wrote: post #77

One thing I wonder though is why they’d need to charge a watch on the bus when battery life on smart watches is typically way more than 1 day and you can charge it overnight? I mean each to their own but I would haaate the hassle of charging anything on a bus…

The post mentions it does sleep tracking

That’s fair I suppose. That being said, modern smart watches charge so fast there’s surely another way. I also just personally use an old smart watch I have lying around for sleep tracking. I’d still rather buy two $16 smart watches than have to charge one on the bus haha.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#233

Post by LarMachinarum »

ustad wrote: post #51

The colmi p8 (p80 i don’t know) can run micropython. https://github.com/wasp-os/wasp-os

The Colmi P8, which is older, long replaced by myriads of newer china watches and now hard to even find, was one of the last cheap smartwatches to be based on the nRF52832 microcontroller/SOC which had the advantage (for that purpose) of being both well documented and yet not locked down. The successor SOC, the nRF52840, already had a flash securing feature that (except for devices that wouldn't use it or that would have exploitable vulns) made it easy for the manufacturer to lock the device down and to prevent the install of alternative firmwares. Also about that time, cheaper chinese SOCs came out and cheapo china smartwatches switched to using those instead of nRF. Trouble being: most of those chinese SOCs for smartwatches, aside from probably also having the lockdown problem, don't have much in terms of openly accessible documentation or developer tools.

Consequently, pretty much all open source projects for cheapo china smartwatches apparently only support devices that are so old that you don't even find them anymore on aliexpress or other such shops.

I'd be interested to know for what currently easily available cheap (i.e. not in a much higher price category) china smart watches there is an open source alternative firmware that does not miss half of the features.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#234

Post by 1dom »

microtonal wrote: post #107
1dom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been dying to ask about this somewhere where I might get a really informed response: What's the deal with Amazfit? I have an Amazfit GTR and it's been rock solid for a couple of years. Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could…

Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could do was 24 - 48 hours, and it did it for like £60 instead of £200. It still works too! I don't know about Amazfit, but I have a Garmin that also lasts weeks. There are some differences: Wear…

> Watches with weeks-long battery life typically use something that is more akin to a powerful microcontroller with operating systems tailored to such low-end hardware.

This is what I'd assumed. But then I also assumed that's actually an exceptionally expensive and high resource approach to take compared to using higher level smartphone chips. By using lower level hardware, they're having to do more bespoke hardware design, and more bespoke low-level firmware and software creation, and also support all of that extra creation. This seems like the super expensive, heavy, slow way of building a smartwatch.

So I guess the "what's the deal" what's trying to understand how some random knockoff looking company ("Amazfit" in 2016) took the super expensive, heavy, slow way of building a smartwatch, and got better results than some of the largest most notorious software/hardware companies on the planet.

Ultimately, they took the pebble approach, and pebble also got a huge amount of backing and extra funding, time, support etc. and seemed to commercially fail. But Amazfit is still going strong.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#235

Post by 1dom »

hopelite wrote: post #97
1dom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been dying to ask about this somewhere where I might get a really informed response: What's the deal with Amazfit? I have an Amazfit GTR and it's been rock solid for a couple of years. Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could…

Your question is “what is the deal with Amazfit?” There is an implied question there, but you may want to get a bit more specific. The deal seems to be that you get a really good fitness watch for a fraction of the cost of Android and Apple offerings, if your statement and my first review of their website is accurate.

> The deal seems to be that you get a really good fitness watch for a fraction of the cost of Android and Apple offerings

Fair point, I elaborated a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854032

You're right in your assessment. My "what's the deal" was more asking "how did such a small unknown-to-me company do this with similar or better results to the worlds largest hardware/software companies (Apple/Google) in 2015/2016?" It sounds like they did it with even more specific and low level hardware and software, which makes it even more impressive.

Like I said, my bip did GPS, bluetooth notifications, hardrate tracking and most of the other things an iWatch did, but it had 20x the battery life and cost 1/5 of the price. I find this an unbelievable achievement that I don't understand, and it's rarely talked about.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#236

Post by tomhow »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #170
jgalt212 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Care to be more specific with the examples from history you mean, with you being so smart and all? @dang, since when it's allowed on HN to insult users without getting flagged?

The comment is flagged and killed and I'm now posting them a warning, but you should email us, not tag. You should also avoid swipes like "The mental gymnastics i read on HN is mind boggling stupid", which was obviously an attack on the parent commenter and the broader community, if you want to demonstrate that you care about the guidelines.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#237

Post by tomhow »

jgalt212 wrote: post #147
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please avoid swipes on HN, even if others have posted hostile comments. Flag the comment instead, and if you like, email us so we can take action.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#238

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

oezi wrote: post #123
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an American. I'd trust the CCP a million times more than Google or Apple.

Trust with what? Why would you trust any government except your own to look out for you?

Trust with my personal data.

Re: I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C

#239

Post by SR2Z »

Yeul wrote: post #203
OJFord wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are high-end brands that spec products to a high standard and have them made (to that standard) in China. But I agree, GP is confusing high-price with high-end. That said, thermometry is pretty easy and well understood and you don't need crazy accuracy for cooking, so 'low-end' is fine really, just don't pay high-price for it.

The year is 2025 not 1985. If you pay them the Chinese can make you anything you want. The thing is that there are lot of dollar stores in the West that want cheap shit for the paupers. And that is were the bad reputation comes from.

I think there's a (wrong) expectation that an American manufacturer would idiot-proof their products and not do anything dumb like double the voltage while keeping the connector the same.

The number of times I've heard people complain about "cursed" M-M 3 prong AC power cables suggests that there is no amount of idiot-proof proofing that will keep a determined American safe from themselves.

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