Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pixel Watch 5

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 401 posts

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#291

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

There is IMO a design flaw that tanked adoption of not just Alexa, but also on-phone voice assistants.

People would want to use reliable equivalent of "computer, play music" or any kind of "computer, do X". But what is on offer by all major companies is, "${brand name}, do X on ${brand name} with ${brand name}". No thanks.

More broadly, I think this is rarely noted explicitly - user interfaces are ultimate marketing platforms, because you get to inject your marketing literally between the user and the task they're doing. Whether purposefully or intuitively, companies understand that, and the UX goes to shit as they design the product to also be a marketing platform.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#292

Post by nextstep »

Google had a town hall a few years ago. The Pixel Watch (4?) had just launched and supposedly fixed a bunch of bugs like apparently you could not reliably record a run with the previous generation without that app crashing and losing the workout. Someone in the audience asked about this, and the PM who responded was wearing an Apple Watch. Apparently everyone on that team at the meeting was wearing Apple Watches or a dumb watch

They know this product is garbage

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#293

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

kurthr wrote: post #150
etrautmann wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know the other killer feature of the Apple Watch? Find my phone! See someone with an Apple Watch on frantically looking for something, just say "Hey you know your watch knows where it is". Just press the button, DING.

As a Fitbit user, I would agree. Sleep tracking and heartrate monitoring are ok, but what's really cool are Tap to pay and Find my phone.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#294

Post by XCSme »

Why do I feel like there haven't been any hardware releases since the Macbook Neo? Market is so slow, probably due to the DRAM shortages.

No new GPUs, CPUs, technologies, etc...

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#295

Post by asp_hornet »

moleperson wrote: post #16
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!

Daily charging for normal use isn't so much an issue once it becomes a habit, but battery life during extremely long (24+ hour) activities is pretty much a make-or-break feature for me. I've done some 50ks and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life, choosing a device that can't almost feels like admitting defeat. It's kind of stupid but I know I'm not alone in that thought proce…

> and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life

Hell yeah! Don’t let dreams be dream

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#296

Post by regularfry »

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 got a pixel 4 after some surgery basically for the fall detection. Otherwise it's mainly doing what the Fitbit I had 8(?) years ago did for me, with added GPS. Pulse, steps.

As an ADHD-haver it's good to get notifications to the watch so that I can avoid unlocking the phone and risk falling down a rabbit-hole. I think that's under-sold.

What I want is a decent (by which I mean SIMPLE) pomodoro app for it, and I'll probably have to write that myself. Does that make me a power user? I was surprised that finding such a thing would be difficult.

I tend not to use it for payment because the ergonomics are terrible. Someone needs to tell that team that having the face on the inside of your wrist is entirely valid (especially if you don't want to be whacking your shiny watch face into every passing door handle), but that makes you do contortions if you want to get it close to a card reader. Not only that but the way screen locking works is ungainly enough that the fact you need to use it more with the face towards your body makes it a constant annoyance. I've unknowingly reorganised my widget order far too often because of this.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#297

Post by rf15 »

mminer237 wrote: post #96
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!

Yeah, I bought a Pebble Time 2, and I can't imagine buying any other watch now. Having a 3+ week battery life is a game-changer. Plus its screen is practically always-on, I've never seen any lag, it's half the price, and I have yet to feel like I'm missing any features over Wear watches.

If you disable heart/pulse tracking, it's 6+ weeks for me, just in case people are wondering.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#298

Post by rf15 »

I think I keep my 6+-week lasting Pebble Time 2, thank you. It already does everything I could ever wish for.

For people who want all the niceties of detailed health tracking with good battery life already (should) have a suitable Garmin for them.

This watch isn't even part of the horse race.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#299

Post by greatgib »

floppydive wrote: post #115
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS and a Garmin that I never connected to a Garmin account. I use https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge instead (then synced to my computer with syncthing), and I don't miss anything from Garmin. I'm 100% Google free, and far happier with tech that I ever was.

Gadgetbridge is great and can even recover a pretty good experience from the touch oriented watches/bands that look deceptively like smartphone equivalents.. But I think the actual smart OS level watches would need a replacement firmware first and the an implementation for talking to gadgetbridge.

Gadgetbridge is pissing me off because there have a forced always on non dismissible notification message that I can't get ride off. For example when no watch associated. So I have to manually kill the app.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#300

Post by wkjagt »

I have been wearing my Casio F91W for so long I can't even remember buying it, and I'm not even a power user of this watch (never use the alarm or stop watch). I wouldn't even know what to do with a smart watch. I'm sure people do more with their smart watches but I have a hard time imagining they actually do a lot with them. Unless I've really been living under a rock?
Post reply on HN