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Pixel Watch 5

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Re: Pixel Watch 5

#341

Post by varispeed »

IshKebab wrote: post #339
hbbio wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I don't see the point of using a Pixel Watch or an Apple Watch or any watch that has 1 or 2 days of battery max. My 3 year old Garmin has 2+ weeks battery life and is tracking activity, ox (ok, it's not medical grade), sleep, etc. Also it does _not_ have a mic (something we're going to pay extra in a few years the way things go) and is not connected to anything wirelessly. No need for another device to set it u…

Just charge it at night? I don't see why you need more than 2 days battery life.

How do you track sleep then?

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#342

Post by nomel »

surajrmal wrote: post #236
nomel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be neat to see the power budget breakdown. I suspect power draw is primarily the oled display, with the "more difficult" health sensors being second.

For devices that are entirely controlled via an MCU and lack wireless connectivity, that is probably true. However that's not true for the pixel watch. The cpus and dram take significant power.

Here we go: https://feng-qian.github.io/paper/watchenergy_mobicom16.pdf

If you turn off cellular and WiFi (making it pebble equiv, but not gaining you weeks of battery), it's mostly display and CPU. I'm guessing a good portion of that CPU usage is display related. Pebble uses e-ink.

Maybe there's really that much more going on with Android?

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#343

Post by haskman »

dmantis wrote: post #312
haskman wrote: post #284

If you care about privacy and owning your own data, then don't buy this, buy a watch with gadgetbridge support ( https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ ). I bought an amazfit active 2 a few years ago and it works fantastically with gadgetbridge on grapheneos. Easily gives me 5 days of continuous battery life as well.

I have a good experience with Huawei Band. Huawei doesn't even require to pair the watch with an official app! So I never connected it to the Internet or installed their app, paired directly with gadgetbridge from the first day.

Amazfit required a one time registration to get a one time code to unlock things, but I used a throwaway email id, and then deleted their app immediately. After that point the watch only syncs with gadgetbridge. The best part is that the watch has no internet capabilities, and gadgetbridge itself doesn't have internet permissions either so you know that absolutely no data can leave your device

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#344

Post by sliken »

izacus wrote: post #170
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 don't have a Pixel Watch, but I do have a Garmin one which I use for: - Watch stuff (alarms, etc.) - Health stats tracking (HRV, sleep, steps, training readiness) - Offline navigation when hiking in the mountains (its really nice to have a route available right there on your wrist) - Workout tracking - the watch can receive accurate HR data from my strap during swimming or other activities. - Scuba diving - the Des…

How close does another diver have to be for a message to send/received?

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#345

Post by sliken »

cyberax wrote: post #239
flowardnut wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can bring your phone with you! You can, but it's pretty awful. put it in a pocket and it flops around. Wear a band that slides in your phone in and get it soaked (i'm a sweat monster). I own a pebble, but I'll gladly just run without a phone.

Have you tried one of these upper arm holsters? Actually, you gave me an idea! There are button-sized Bluetooth GPS loggers. They can record a GPS track, and you can later download the data from them. Since it's freaking GPS, it automatically has timestamps, so it's easy to correlate with other activity. As a bonus, I think it should be possible to connect them directly with the phone. BRB, I think I have a ESP-based…

Heh, I used to use bluetooth GPS tracker with my nokia 770. It worked well since I could place the gps where it got the best signal. I could start a track, have it record it, and then check in with the n770 only when I needed to see a map. That way I made the most of my n770's battery life, but still got continuous tracking.

Beware that they take much longer to start since they don't know the GPS coords of the nearest cell tower, nor do they download the GPS almanac over the cell connection. They will however remember the almanac so you can leave it on for 30 minutes and not have to redownload it the next day.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#346

Post by maccard »

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…

Is that really new compared to the friend who will look at their phone every time it pings, or my parents who will stop mid conversation and answer a phone call?

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#347

Post by dmaa »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #248
dmaa wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ Great observation. I have a Garmin Fenix 8, but if it would not have a flashlight, vibration alarm and sleep tracking, I'd happily swap it for a mechanical watch as a daily driver. (obviously still using the Garmin for workouts)

Kinda curious why You didn't go for the Fenix 7 / 7Pro line? AFAIK the "big" addition on the 8 was phonecalls/microphone on the watch and some increased water resistance for diving. All that for maybe 200-300USD price hike.

I actually had Fenix 6 before and did and impulsive upgrade to Fenix 8 while diving on holidays. I'm very happy with it, including the microphone, sometimes even use it to take calls, it is surprisingly handy when e.g. holding a kid in one hand.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#348

Post by maccard »

rootusrootus wrote: post #161
blltprfmnk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved my Apple Watch at first but due to exactly these sort of distractions no longer wear it and have more recently turned off most of the notifications on my phone. I am sick of my attention being stolen away by everything around me.

Why not just turn off the notifications on the watch, so you can enjoy it for what it's good at? I won't give up the functionality, but I am extremely selective about what it notifications it can put in front of me.

Not the person you replied to but - I do my best to disable as many notifications as possible. It’s just DMs, group chats, email and banking.

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#349

Post by breppp »

impulser_ wrote: post #83
breppp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get the people that need to wear it 24/7 for days at a time. I think that's kinda expected when the device itself is supposed to give you the illusion it is always there tracking your health (even when sleeping)

Missing 15min of data isn't going to change anything.

Not tracking every minute of REM sleep isn't going to change either, the unimportance of the data is not what they are selling though

Re: Pixel Watch 5

#350

Post by maccard »

blltprfmnk wrote: post #173
blltprfmnk wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's ultimately not very useful. Sleep tracking - I've become convinced this is actually a bad idea, and since I stopped I stress less about sleep and ultimately sleep better. Step tracking? Phone does that adequately. I do wear it for workouts, but once it's closer to end of life will replace it with something dedicated for workouts like a Garmin that holds a charge for 14+ days.

I’ll add that if you care about working out with a watch to track heart rate, the Apple Watch is pretty dismal. I moved to pairing mine with a Polar H10 strap so that I could get much faster feedback on heart rate recovery post sprint. In addition to using an optical sensor, the Apple Watch may also be doing something to smooth out the signal. I just know that the Polar seems much more responsive and matches how I am…

I’m not using it for live-live data, or for mapping recovery times, I’m just using it to gauge 120 vs 140 vs 175 heart rate while running
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