The battery issue with smartwatches drives me nuts. My Citizen uses a solar panel, and it's been ticking for years. It should last about 20 without needing a change of battery/capacitor.
Apple Watch Series 5
441–450 of 491 posts
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#442While I am looking to upgrade to the Series 5 from a Series 1, I'm disappointed in the lack of native sleep tracking functionality... it's a glaring hole in the concept of overall health tracking. Similarly, I'd hoped they would announce some standardization to weightlifting in HealthKit. The watch and iphone health options are very cardio-centric, and every weightlifting app has implemented their own internal 1RM tr…
Not a native feature, but SleepWatch is fantastic.
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#443While I am looking to upgrade to the Series 5 from a Series 1, I'm disappointed in the lack of native sleep tracking functionality... it's a glaring hole in the concept of overall health tracking. Similarly, I'd hoped they would announce some standardization to weightlifting in HealthKit. The watch and iphone health options are very cardio-centric, and every weightlifting app has implemented their own internal 1RM tr…
Native sleep tracking would mean increasing the guaranteed battery life to multiple days, or make charging a lot faster.
You turn off the wireless and screen activation at night, it hardly uses any power. It takes about 20 minutes (aka your get dressed & shower time) to recover all that power and more.
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
While sleep tracking is possible the single most useful thing I could get out of a wearable, I just have never been able to sleep with a watch or band on. Until there's something as low profile as a reminder band (think Livestrong), I'm not sure if I'll be able to get sleep tracking (the Oura ring is promising, but the price point is too high for its limited applications to me).
I don't mean to be sarcastic - but how is sleep tracking useful? What practical benefit do you get out of knowing how long/how you sleep?
For me, it helps figure out if my sleep apnea is getting worse and I need to talk to somebody about my CPAP machine or not.
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. I will keep using my Pebble. Whilst it still works. I just can't get past the 18ish hours battery. I know when I possible eventually actually own and use an Apple Watch, I am sure some of the features trigger the "once you go x you can't go back" type thing, but until then, nope. Though my Pebble is, unfortunately, starting to creak a little, some notifications are not always shown etc, so a Fitbit may be more…
I don't know what I'll do after my Pebble Time Steel dies (hopefully a few years from now). It's so un-intrusive and I want E-ink (reflective LCD) screens on everything. I even wrote a little JS app for it to pull down transit in real time - I know Apple Watches have Citymapper etc but there's something about being able to hack it on the fly.
You can make/Hack your own Apple Watch apps with Xcode..
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
And all of that is available to tens of millions of people for a meager price.
I don't really care if it costs $1, it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
> it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
Or so a person in Hong Kong can say I love you to their grandmother about to pass away in a hospital.
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think all day depends on the specific device. For example, I would accept a 10 hr battery life for a laptop or wireless headphones as "all-day" because that will cover a full work day and people aren't expected to use those devices 24/7. 18 hours for "all-day" on a wearable seems reasonable if the expectation is that it will be used only when the user is awake. A complicating factor is that Watch OS 6 is supposed t…
I have a Watch 4, and contrary to how battery expectations usually go, the life on it is actually really solid. I’ve gotten close to 2 days on it before. I often wear it overnight, then put it on charge when I first wake up, it’s usually close/if not fully charge by the time I head to work.
Same here with my Series 4 Apple Watch. I can push close to 2 days between charges, which I think is great. It was frustrating having to charge my Series 1 watch at odd times every day.
Given that sleep tracking is one of the prime uses of my Apple Watch, I prefer to have it on my wrist all night, and charge during the late mornings usually, at me desk when I am in the middle of a block of coding.
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe this is a cultural difference between here (Frankfurt) Considering all of the luxury retailers I've seen in Frankfurt, and all of the branded soccer jerseys I've seen so many people wearing in Frankfurt, and all of the non-generic everything I've seen in Frankfurt, I think it's disingenuous to frame this as a geographic issue. Perhaps if you define your geography as whatever seat you currently occupy, your argu…
BTW: There's more than one Frankfurt in Germany.
FUCK YOU HACKER NEWS!
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
I quite like the idea of a smart watch, but having to charge it every day is much less appealing.
I thought the same, but after I got one, I really haven't minded. To be fair, I've never been able to sleep with a watch on, so putting it on its charger has just reduced the likelihood I forget where I put it down in the morning.
Never used Apple Watch, my GF had v3 for a long time. I ordered a Withings sport a while back and when she saw that it tracks pretty much the same stuff, has notifications and doesn't need to be charged for 20+ days she got one in a week. I remember a couple of instances where she would forget to charge it and didn't have the charging cable with her - probably less of an issue with newer models and wireless charging, but anyway she said it was annoying to keep track of another battery.
People are saying "charge it during showers" - IMO that's just too much inconvenience for no benefit - I shower in the gym - do I go and charge it then ? Or when I'm tired and want to go to bed - another thing I can easily forget. I like the idea of a smartwatch - would be nice to have a better screen and more rich interface than my Withings - but sub 3-4 days battery is a no-go for me. I've seen some smartwatches that fit that criteria tho - so will need to do some shopping around and see the tradeoffs
Re: Apple Watch Series 5
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a third party app called Apollo for the Apple Watch. It used the cellular or Wifi connection of the watch to stream directly from the Spotify API. Spotify issued a cease and desist within days. I still have it installed on my phone and watch - it's a long way short of perfect (when it loses its connection it hangs and there's no easy way to reset it) - but it does work. So it's not Apple stopping the releas…
why would spotify issue a cease and desist to an app that keeps people from abandoning their service?
No idea, the developer said he was told they were violating the terms of the Spotify API agreement by using non-standard hardware. The only thing I can think of is Spotify had/has one of their own lined up and haven't released it.
I assume this is all tied up with their campaign about unfair treatment on the App Store, but it still makes little sense to me. Apollo was written by a single developer in their spare time, it works (although not perfectly - still good given it's a 1.0 and they were working alone with no support) and has been released for almost a year.