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Android coming to wearables

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Re: Android coming to wearables

#91

Post by Kiro »

yeukhon wrote: post #53
Kiro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument against all smartwatches, not just Google. Nevertheless, I think you're wrong. I have a Pebble and it has changed my life. I will never leave the house without a wearable on my arm again.

No one is wrong here. Please don't call people wrong because it doesn't agree with your experience. Saying nevertheless is the same as saying doesn't matter how I put it . Secondly, smartphones don't have the same flaw as Google wearable. Unless you use bluetooth, you can't say phoning someone on a wearable is easier than phoning someone on a mobile phone. Smartphone comes with a large screen and is good for content…

> No one is wrong here. Please don't call people wrong because it doesn't agree with your experience.

I said that I think you're wrong. You claim it has the same flaws as Facebook Paper, which I think is incorrect.

> Secondly, smartphones don't have the same flaw as Google wearable.

I was talking about smartwatches in general (Galaxy Gear, Pebble, Sony SmartWatch etc).

> you can't say phoning someone on a wearable is easier than phoning someone on a mobile phone.

I don't say that.

> Can you read your email from your watch?

Yes and that's with a screen that is even smaller than the competitors'.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#93

Post by jessriedel »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #88

The part of the advert that impressed me most was that Google Now's voice recognition worked well enough to be useful. Something tells me that isn't actually a new feature.

The Google Now voice recognition is incredible. I never search for direction manually, and I use it to compose most of my text messages and all of my reminders.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#94

Post by pilooch »

People wearing this watch do not seem very much interested in news articles ;) More seriously, my fuzzy estimate is that 80% of the time spent on my phone is for reading stuff that is definitely not the departure time of my next flight (that I can memorize five months in advance :) ).

Re: Android coming to wearables

#95

Post by psbp »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #65
wutbrodo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android Is this only because of the app permissions model? AFAIK, other than that, Android per se isn't any less privacy-oriented than iOS. iOS apps also much more commonly retrieve various user data and marginally more often send data around unencrypted.

It's because I find Android works best when using Google's services and as I'm not paying for those (and they are using my info to sell ads) I trust Apple more to protect my data (it's in their interest).

Aren't Google's ad monetization practices fairly transparent? You can see all the data collected in the dashboard, you can see how ads are targeted under the ad settings.

It seems like people are alluding to Google's data usage as some sort of black box where it seems pretty open to me.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#96

Post by devcpp »

IgorPartola wrote: post #36

The thing is, hardware is key here. The OS matters, and I would bet that someone could do way better than running Linux in a watch (something much more low-level on a much weaker processor could extend the battery life significantly). The hardware and sensors is the big problem. Currently, the best smartwatch specs I have seen are the Basis B1. It claims it can monitor your heart rate, track your sleep, etc. But that…

I disagree, we already have watches with weak processors (e.g Pebble) but they lack features. Android can bring those, and ARM processors are powerful enough.

Indeed, the only difference between an Android watch and a full-size smartphone would be the smaller casing. The largest component nowadays is the battery, which can be greatly reduced thanks to the smaller screen.

So, I don't see a major obstacle to an Android watch, and the benefits of it are worth the CPU. Of course temperature will be a concern but I'm sure demand will produce lower-powered CPUs powerful enough to run Android.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#97

Post by itp »

kh_hk wrote: post #72

The last time I used Google Now was too scared to use it ever again. I don't want to report my location, see cool pictures of my surroundings, or know about the events of my city. It's not just only about the surveillance, it's about the future. The connected future, the uninteresting one. The one on which one must "opt-in" or just stay out. Personally, I do not get Google Now cards. When they are relevant, they are…

I want to be careful not to imply that I'm passing judgement on your feelings, or implying that they're invalid, because I certainly have my moments where I'm a little creeped out by Google Now as well. But I do want to push back a little bit on Google Now cards being necessarily depressing.

I recently traveled up to Boston on a short hybrid work/vacation trip with my wife. When we were headed to the airport, Google Now had a card letting me know my flight was on time, and letting me know when I had to leave to make it to the airport on time. It was information I could have otherwise looked up, but it surfaced that information for me, and it was nice.

When we landed in Boston, we wanted to contact our hotel to verify the check in time and ask if we could leave luggage there for the day if necessary. When I pulled my phone out, there was already a card with the hotel address, travel time, and contact info. Again, stuff I could have looked up (check my email to verify hotel name, look up number, call), but it was nice to have it there and ready for me.

When I head to work in the morning, Google Now has a card for my commute, along with notifications about any accidents that may impact my travel. I also live far enough away that there are a few very different routes I can take, and day to day one or the other may be the best. Finding out my commute needs to go a different way, or I should plan for it to be a bit longer (or shorter, sometimes!) doesn't seem depressing to me.

I keep a pretty close eye on how Google is using my information, and if I begin to feel like it has crossed a line from mutual benefit (helping me, and deriving value as well) to something more one-sided (exploiting me for value), I hope I won't prove to have been naive, but in the meantime, this is something that really seems to make my life better. Just my experience.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#98

Post by DSingularity »

svenkatesh wrote: post #19
wvenable wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's Law will eventually catch up. The Pebble is currently the PalmPilot of smartwatches; perfectly suited to the current state of the art. However, progress being what it is, eventually the technology will be good enough that Android (or iOS) on a smartwatch will become the better solution.

Moore's law is about transistor count; what does that have to do with battery life?

Everyone is interested in maintaining the growth in compute devices diversity and capabilities that Moore's Law has enabled in the past decade. To do that we need to continue to pack more and more transistors on chips.

As you pointed out, todays problem is not the transistor size, but rather it is the energy consumption. Both dynamic and static power are not decreasing proportionally with node size, and therefore we have gotten to the point of asking "why add them if we can't use them?". This is the problems of the power wall and the observation that we must continue to turn off more and more of our silicon if we can't scale dynamic and static power characteristics of transistors with their size. This problem threatens the well being of all semi conductor companies.

Do you think that Intel will just surrender and go bankrupt? If they don't defeat this problem, soon companies will have no reason to buy chips from Intel. So what if they have 2x the cores on the chip if you can only keep half of them active? Without breakthroughs in energy storage and heat dissipation, how can google/apple/... create exciting new compute devices if the processors continue to sip as much power as they did two years ago? Do we decrease the compute capabilities (i.e. give up on the additional transistors) or run them slower than we are used to and is that acceptable?

There is a lot of interest in continuing Moores law. Todays problem is power, like you pointed. Tomorrows problem will be different. With 100 billion dollar livelihoods on the line, I have no doubt they will be solved in the coming years!

Re: Android coming to wearables

#99

Post by danford »

happyscrappy wrote: post #80
danford wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the only reason your secrets may not be in jeopardy with Apple is because they don't know as many... If you really want your secrets to be safe you wouldn't use any closed source code at all and would take security precautions to secure the code you do use. Unfortunately we live in a time when closed-source software is the norm and too many people think having a secure, open, communications infrastructure is t…

>but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source Yes, let's have the government mandate what license your code should have! Facepalm.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> In Comments

>Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Public facing code shouldn't be closed source. Sure, if you want to run something on your own and for your self, you don't have to share that with anyone, but when you put something out into the wild that can't be conclusively shown to not be malicious it should be treated like malware.

Edit: and also, what do you think the government should do for the people when it comes to digital rights? Or do you believe corporations know what's best? I for one don't believe in either.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#100

Post by angersock »

nfoz wrote: post #24
angersock wrote: post #15

It'll be a cold day in hell before I let Google have an always-on device attached to my person, wearable or otherwise. These folks have proven--proven!--that they are unable to protect their infrastructure from state actors, that they do not care about individual customers, and that they will hijack our services on a whim to try and raise money. Fuck that noise. Any wearables need to be completely open-source, and wi…

I feel your pain. Out of curiosity, do you carry a mobile phone?

Old dumb feature phone.
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