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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

#71

Post by 1dom »

albatrosstrophy wrote: post #24
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.

The battery is the single reason why I got the Amazfit. I use as a dumb health tracker and occasional GPS running. It easily lasts 4 weeks on a single charge. That's one less proprietary charging cable to bring on a trip.

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 do was 24 - 48 hours, and it did it for like £60 instead of £200. It still works too!

The Bip in particular seemed so ahead of what the average person expected from a smartwatch due to state of Android and Apple offerings at the time.

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

#72

Post by ccozan »

ofrzeta wrote: post #32
fnands wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an Amazfit too a while back. Decent watch for the price, but battery life absolutely tanked after a year of use. Went from lasting days to lasting hours after one year.

That's strange. I have mine for several years now (I think three) and it still goes at least a week without charging. I can't imagine having to charge my watch ever day.

I can confirm. Almost 3 years with an GTR 3 and I get 10-14 days, depeding if I do outside activities where GPS draws a bit more then normal. Rock solid and waterproof ( perfect for swimming! )

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

#73

Post by rcxdude »

Iulioh wrote: post #61
globular-toast wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the USB committee might be somewhat to blame. When most people think USB-C they're just thinking the cable. Why can't it just do regular slow charging with C to C cable?

It's not the usb c committee problem, the devices you are buying are out of spec This is because the cable is 2 sided so it can't assume polarity So it's a tradeoff for not having to guess how to insert the cable

>This is because the cable is 2 sided so it can't assume polarity

Not really. The USB-C connection pinout is symmetric about a 180 degree rotation, at least as far as power connections go. It's entirely possible (and common, e.g. when using passive converters) to just put power out of it constantly. The main reason for the signaling resistors is to avoid having power presented on the pins when it's not connected, which is more about avoiding corrosion or wear due to small sparks on connection.

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

#74

Post by squarefoot »

fsflover wrote: post #50
dmoreno wrote: post #36

Anybody know if there is some effort for an open source firmware? It would be so cool to have a watch like that with the pinetime firmware...

You may like Pinetime smartwatch, which is cheap and runs free software.

I would totally support the Pine64 folks as I already did with the PineCil (really good iron btw, and I have also Wellers), but the PineTime price going from $26.99 in the US to €66.25 if bought in the EU is simply an invite to shop from Aliexpress.

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

#75

Post by DoctorOetker »

snops wrote: post #62
globular-toast wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the USB committee might be somewhat to blame. When most people think USB-C they're just thinking the cable. Why can't it just do regular slow charging with C to C cable?

It can, it just needs the two resistors, which is the cheapest possible thing the standards committee could have asked manufacturers to do. USB-C gets complicated at the high end, but for basic functionality I think the standards committee did a very good job at making the cheapest way to do it the correct way, e.g. a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adaptor can be entirely passive, it just needs the right resistor in it.

>e.g. a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adaptor can be entirely passive, it just needs the right resistor in it.

How does that work? is each USB-C host port, or downstream USB-C hub port required to contain a stereo DAC? Does the standard impose performance requirements like dynamic range, noise, minimum sample rate,...? Does it also mandate the jack can be used for mic / line-in? Does it similarily stipulate inclusion of an ADC in each port?

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

#76

Post by mystifyingpoi »

xg15 wrote: post #70
ackfoobar wrote: post #5

> The watch is simply missing the two 5.1k resistors connecting the CC1 and CC2 pins of the USB-C connector to ground that are required to indicate to whatever is plugged in that it wants 5v power. This is so annoying. Back when USB-C was less prevalent, I bought a pair of wireless earbuds over another for the same reason as the title - because it used USB-C. But then I cannot charge it with my macbook, unless I add…

Would it be possible to build some kind of adapter or C-to-C cable that just contains the missing resistors? (And also probably would have to block any USB PD communication, in case you plug in any device that actually does try to use PD. So the goal would be that the charger always sees a 5V requesting device without PD support while the device always sees a "dumb" 5V charger - regardless of what capabilities the de…

Sure, just grab a C-to-A adapter and A-to-C cable. Doesn't block communication though, you could block it by using a 2-wire A-to-C cable.

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

#77

Post by jama211 »

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…

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

#78

Post by m4rtink »

maxglute wrote: post #60

Hoping for open source watch OS some day, so many OEM / white label cheap smartwatch/fitness bands. Already exists for cheap cloud cameras. Could be the F91W of our time. Also I'd gladly ditch USB C for a few programmable media buttons. Standardize on some sort of bogo pins and buy 20 adapters or split cables to keep the water proofing.

Pinetime is decent: https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/

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

#79

Post by feistypharit »

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 used to have a bip and loved it. The big thing was battery life and always on screen. It used a reflective LCD screen to do it. No newer amazefits use them.

I’ve since moved to using COROS watches. Not as cheap but really good. Always screen, weeks of battery. Even GPS functions are efficient . Recently did 11 hr hike with GPS and only used about 23% battery.

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