Historically (pocket) watches were highly useful, expensive and also somewhat of a status symbol. This kinda died out with quartz electronic watches, which are highly accurate and dirt cheap.
Since telling time is nowadays an ubiquitous, cheap function of everything, a wristwatch has to have a different primary function. That can be "smart" or (in particular male) "jewelry" or "status symbol" (Rolex but also apple ultra).
There's a lot of mechanical watches that are neither Rolex nor Nomos. Seiko 5s are excellent and can be had at below $100. No batteries need to be changed.
Sure, but that begs the question of "why a mechanical watch"? A simple quartz watch doesn't need to replace batteries for years, is very accurate and much cheaper still. For many people it boils down to "I like the mechanical engineering aspect and want to show that" (status and signalling) or as a fashion item. Of course, that is a different signal than the rolex "I am rich", but it is a signal. Which is perfectly fine; most clothing and accessories are like that. The point is "because it tells time" is nowadays more of a secondary function after that.
Just as an anecdote: A friend would often wear a very fashionable, old, mechanical watch. That watch would sometimes just stop, but that did not matter because the primary function was being jewellery on the wrist.
A mechanical watch doesn't need any intrusion and can work for years if not decades, and if it needs a service there are a lot of qualified people who can do it, including full disassembly and assembly. From that point of view, it can be a "lifetime" device.
Any smartwatch, no matter how expensive, will reliably and predictably turn into a paperweight when it stops being supported by the manufacturer. Many smartwatches will do it sooner — when their non-replaceable battery is out of juice.
I figure watches have been around for a few hundred years, so they were perfected over time.
Smart watches have been around for like 10 years, so maybe in another couple decades we can expect efficiencies in power consumption and power storage. Or atleast something as revolutionary as user replaceable batteries.
I've never been a fan of things on my wrist, but I have a problem of missing calls from my wife when my phone is on vibrate. I don't need a screen, just something that is close enough to my body to always vibrate noticeably without being uncomfortable.
I liked the Pebble Time Round because it was and still is way smaller than literally any other smartwatch (and most regular watches). I didn't love wearing watches in general but I didn't mind wearing the PTR. Even "small" smartwatches feel like a brick in comparison.
I think Sony had one of the few smart wristbands for analogue watches but IIRC its japan only. I found the idea quite nice, a small led row display to show whos calling for example and the wristband looked like a normal band for the watch.
Havent found anything like that since that Sony one
I have not personally used, but looks like banglejs[0], a fully hackable watch with GPS and a good battery life (4 weeks claim) is proabably the best successor for Pebble
I have worn a Bangle.js daily for 2 years (I have both the original and the version 2). I really like the watch, it is easy and fun to program.
But I'm not sure it's what OP is after. The requirements are:
> Phone notifications (so I don’t miss calls/ texts)
> Step counting
> A long battery life
Bangle.js doesn't connect to your phone at all, so you won't get any phone notifications. I don't personally use step counting, but when I have tried it I found it didn't work very well. Maybe that's just me.
The battery life depends a lot on what you're doing. In particular, clock faces that show seconds (i.e. have to wake up the CPU every second) drain the battery faster than clock faces that only go down to minutes. It still easily lasts longer than a day, which is good enough for me. I just charge mine overnight.
Another enthusiastic Bangle.js user here: I had the original and used it, programmed it until the strap (integrated into the body) broke.
Apparently you can actually connect it to phone notifications using gadgetbridge[0] but I didn't have much success when I tried it. The BLE was a little flaky at the best of times (pairing to a PC for programming failed more often than I'd like).
Banglejs2 user here, Gadgetbridge works perfectly fine for my basic usage.
idk if Bangle1 strap is different but (don't remember exact measurement) you can put any standard watch strap with a normal strap pin on it. I replaced the broken stock strap with a nylon one off the net and it's great.
Interesting, this is the first time I've heard about the Bangle.js. Seeing as it's an open project and it's based around Nordic's nRF52840 I wonder if an enterprising developer could expand the wireless interfaces to include the 802.15.4 radio for 6lowpan, Zigbee, and/or Thread support.
The Bangle most definitely connects to the phone and receives notifications. I used extensively at my last job and modified exactly this portion of the messaging code.
Third enthusiastic Bangle JS supporter. The hardware is fine, but the ecosystem that comes with it is the best part. The excellent documentation makes it easy to make your own watchface or application.
I have both versions of the Bangle. I absolutely love the software ecosystem and the apps are a lot of fun to program. On the down side, battery life is not great (4 days if you're lucky) and the step counter and heart rate detection algorithms in the open source firmware are not very accurate, which makes it a bit pointless for what I need. On the plus side, if you're up for the challenge, you can try to improve those algorithms yourself!
Please note that the current firmware switched to closed source hrm [1].
I charge weekly, after one week the battery is usually at ~50% with my usual usage. Obviously with GPS on the battery empties much faster, without any notifications etc the battery can hold multiple weeks.
I went on the same quest after the battery on my Fossil Sport died. Settled on slightly used Withings Steel HR which can be picked up on eBay quite cheaply compared to new.
It has everything I need: notifications, great battery life and traditional watch looks.
I’ve been using a Steel HR for a few years now. I’m extremely satisfied.
Long battery life is an understatement! Even when the battery drops to near 0 the watch is still useable as a plain analog watch for at least a week giving me enough time to find where I left the damn charger (given that I don’t get to use it often at all).
What I don’t get is how this model (analog watch with just enough smarts) hasn’t gained more traction. It seems to me there’s a lot of opportunities in this space, not everything requires a high resolution display.
I'm kind of disappointed that the Fossil hybrid watches don't do the trick where the watch keeps working when the smart has run out of juice. That said, I get four weeks of battery life, so it's never been an issue in practice.
If you want something simple and so cheap you don't have to worry about it then I can recommend the PineTime (< $30).
The OS is open source. The finish is good (though not high end materials but still water proofed), runs for multiple days and does phone notifications just fine.
Yeah I'm very surprised OP doesn't mention the only wrist computer that doesn't need a "cloud" connection, is cheap, and does exactly what they want.
---
Anyone wanna buy a pinetime?
I'm selling. Free (+shipping from NL/DE/BE) if you have a good use for it and send me an update after a few weeks or so ^^. I wanted a heartbeat tracker but it didn't work at all for me (known software issue, I should have done more research before). I've got one open dev kit and one sealed one, but need to check which one I gave away already. Email in profile
All I want is an analog watch that shades the face of the watch when I have calendar events coming up. That's it. No screen, no pings, no nothing. Just the ability to check my watch and see how long till my next appointment. Unfortunately, [this kickstarter watch](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1540240985/calendar-wat...) is now dead.
That's a super nice watch design; too bad it died. I know it's not what you want, but that interface is slick enough that I wonder if there's a good implementation of the same UX for an existing smart watch.
Automatic mute isn't part of it, but I enjoy the "my day" watch face on my Galaxy Watch. It shows a simple analogue clock, the date, and an abstract time line around the edge of the watch representing calendar appointments. You can also tap the little blue lines to get a quick overview of the details without opening the calendar app on the watch.
I'm not sure if this is available for other platforms. If not, there's money to be made, especially if you can add some kind of auto mute feature.
I used to have a Garmin running the Simply Late[0] watch face to achieve a similar goal. I wish there was something better on a more everyday-looking watch.
The Amazfit ones are fine, I get the reliability concern but when it's 1/4 the price of a Garmin you can buy one and buy another if it breaks. I don't really get the complaint about it being "too simple" - isn't that exactly what he was after?
Like MP3 players 10-20 years ago, I suspect there's "a market" for a simple smartwatch, but not a very profitable market. So your choice will be the expensive Apple version (and maybe a couple of other luxury brands) or the basic no-name Chinese manufacturer version.
>The Amazfit ones are fine, I get the reliability concern but when it's 1/4 the price of a Garmin you can buy one and buy another if it breaks. I don't really get the complaint about it being "too simple" - isn't that exactly what he was after?
Agreed. My Amazfit Bip does everything the blog's author was looking for, including *40,000* watch faces. I paid $60 five years ago, then $20 for a used one 2.5 years ago after the first one fell prey to a known design flaw (that has since been fixed, by my understanding). The darn thing even functions as a Bluetooth heartrate sensor for running! <https://np.reddit.com/r/amazfit/comments/8t1gsp/six_weeks_wi...>
>Like MP3 players 10-20 years ago, I suspect there's "a market" for a simple smartwatch, but not a very profitable market. So your choice will be the expensive Apple version (and maybe a couple of other luxury brands) or the basic no-name Chinese manufacturer version.
I think my Bip is superior to Apple Watch. The latter does many things that Bip does not, but Bip has the insuperable advantage of three full weeks of battery life. I have zero, zilch, zip desire to recharge a watch every day!
Very non-tech. Only uses an iPhone and an Apple watch. No laptop or tablet/iPad.
Gets a surprisingly large quantity of things done via her phone.
My phone is an Android. She shared 2 things her iPhone can do that I don't think my phone (OnePlus 7 pro) and watch (Amazfit T-Rex 2) combination can do:
- she can always find out where she parked her car
- her watch buzzes to warn her if she leaves her keys or phone behind in her car. I think she has some airtag type of thing in her keyring.
Surprised that Android phone + watch combination doesn't already natively offer these features (with easy discoverability).
I think Android can do parked car trick. I am guessing only but google maps apps on iOS shows where I have parked car. I am surprised that google does not offer something similar to airtag.
You can use any iBeacon/EddyStone BLE device for this, they are very cheap and are widely available. However, there are no neat built-in features in apps shipped with phones that make use of them on Android apps, you always have to use some 3rd party app and the UX there is usually not that great.
The third party app remembers the location when it last received pulse from the beacon that is in the car and when you open it, leads the user back to it.
Disclosure: I actually happen to kno exactly how this feature works, as I added support for iBeacons in apps for iOS and Android in one of our projects. Not for the functionality described above, but for waking the app once a user walks to a proximity of a beacon. My office beacon is laying at a distance of less than 1meter from me right now.
Afaik, iOS does save a location, and marks it as a parked car, when it looses the bluetooth connection to a device it identified as being a car. So no additional hardware needed for this to work.
No, it doesn't. Did I ever say it did? Also, in my part of the world I don't see many cars around that connect to Android/iOS as a Bluetooth accessory anyway.
Google (Maps?) has done the car parking location for 10+ years. But like many things Google, Google software is not well integrated with itself, and discoverability is bad. It's perfectly possible that this feature has been removed and re-added several times during the last decade, as is the fate of many Google projects.
Yup, Google Maps automatically marks the location of your parked car... Until once in a blue moon it doesn't. This happened to me just yesterday. Thankfully, Apple Maps marked it automatically, too
It still works but only in certain circumstances. You need to navigate to a destination that is far enough away and visited less frequently as to be categorized as a visit. Maps will not save your parking location in front of your office, for example.
If I leave an airtag in my car, I will always know where it is because my phone is constantly looking for the BT signal.
And that's what I mean. The idea is there, and they have all your location data, but the feature is not polished, it's inconsistent, and not reliable, so it might as well not exist.
My car is apparently parked on the same spot from 3 years according to Google maps, however it's very far from my house and I never go there, no idea how to unpin that location and set new ones.
I use a seperate app for car navigation. Can't trust Google.
But a lot of people apparently want a single "super" app that does everything. Musk was right about that- we're all going to see a Western WeChat emerge. All hail integration.
Google and Microsoft have the resources and market penetration to create a Western WeChat, but these companies are too fragmented internally, so their various teams will never be able to work together to pull it off.
Apple will probably be the one creating something like a "super ecosystem", but reserved for Apple users of course.
I can't imagine any other company pulling it off. Amazon could but its reputation seems so bad lately that I doubt people would jump in. So I find it incredibly hard to believe that a true "Western WeChat" could emerge any time soon.
Honestly, if I could buy and provision my Apple Watch with cellular without having to have an iPhone, my only devices would be my MacBook and my Apple Watch.
I seldom carry a phone around with me, and my Apple Watch does every thing I need while outside the house.
I've been waiting for years for that (or at the very least being able to manage the watch from an iPad, as I tend to carry that around with me).
The only other thing the watch is missing is the ability to connect to bluetooth in my car, so if I have left my phone behind I can still answer calls or listen to music. I'm sure this is intentionally crippled as it starts the pairing process then fails - tried in several cars with different makes of head unit.
I've been (kind of) successful with this with my Apple Watch SE and Honda Civic. The issues arise when I have both my phone and watch in the car and it wants to connect to the watch. Then things get confused and don't work out the way you would want. With just the watch, however, it seems to work fine.
On a related note, I've had significant issues trying to play music through airpods through the watch. I can get it to connect, and it plays a few seconds of music, then goes silent. The screen still indicates its playing. Very frustrating.
I feel AW is underrated as an everyday tool, especially when it comes to being mindful about contemporary attention sinks.
You can do almost anything from it that doesn't require a larger screen or a keyboard, and the kinds of activities the larger screen enables tend to mostly just waste your time. Take a typical 2007 "dumb" phone - the watch screen is roughly that size.
It becomes awkward when you need to find something on the web (you can't even access the browser directly, you need to ask Siri and work with a popup), but I was mildly successful following a recipe when cooking. It's plain better than a phone at many other common tasks (following directions, checking the weather, paying for stuff, telling time, etc).
The biggest impact it had is that I no longer feel compelled to reach for my phone in most situations. It's not just that it saves 5-10 seconds here and there: the context switch is brief enough that I can remain focused on whatever I was doing.
(inb4 just turn off notifications, yes I am already very picky about what is allowed to distract me.)
I agree, for me the biggest value of the Apple Watch is how much it has liberated me from my phone. I use my iPad for content browsing, and my watch for responding to incoming notifications, and my phone mainly serves as a camera.
The (literal and figurative) friction of dragging my phone out of my pocket when I receive a call or text or other alert is gone, and I love it.
Having just bought my first Apple Watch about four months ago - I've been really surprised at how useful and unobtrusive it is. Hate to admit it, but I should have bought one years ago. Having said that, I'm still not sold on the Apple Vision Pro.
Pretty sure you could do both with Tasker, but it's one of those tools that is almost too powerful (therefore too generalized) to be casually approachable for simple things like this. There may be pre-existing templates that gets you fairly close.
For the parked car trick I would guess you'd do something like set up a trigger that fires when your phone or watch disconnect from your car's Bluetooth and drops a notification with your GPS location that you would tap on your way back to the car to have it pull up in Google Maps.
I have a similar task set up that automatically switches on my wireguard tunnel as soon as home Wi-Fi signal is below a certain strength for more than 10 seconds (the implication being that I am departing not only the house but also the immediate area outside where my Wi-Fi still operates). As a fairly unsophisticated Tasker user I was able to cobble this together in about 2 hours by starting from a template that did something similar, including the testing necessary to confirm where the cutoff dB should be.
I've got a Watchy. It's a fun toy. Within an hour of opening the box I'd recompiled the code to remove a couple icons. Very cool, and the eink looks really nice.
It doesn't have a lot of features, but you could give it a lot of features. But don't buy one if the idea of recompling.
The Withings Steel HR seems to fit the bill perfectly - it has a screen for phone notifications, a step tracker and basic fitness function, and I regularly get two weeks and more of battery life out of mine. Only problem might be that you find it’s small circular screen too small - but I think that’s a feature of its minimalist aesthetic, not a bug.
I've owned a Steel HR for many years and I can highly recommend them. I wanted a basic smart watch with a classic analog look that isn't too flashy but offers notifications, basic fitness tracking with a battery that I don't have to think about very often (we have enough stuff to keep charged in our daily lives). The Steel HR fits the bill perfectly. I've gotten many compliments about it too, and people are surprised to learn it is a smart watch. Don't expect to read full emails on it. But then again, I never understood why people would want to.
As for size, I never thought it was too small. In fact, I would say it's a perfect size for my wrist.
I similarly love my Withings ScanWatch. I charge it maybe every three weeks at my desk, and it monitors my sleep and hearth rhythms which is important to me for genetic reasons. Otherwise it's just a good old fashioned watch!
I’ve had my Steel for years (it’s nokia branded so pre 2018) and would buy another in a snap if it broke or i lost it. my battery life tends to be closer to a month or more (though recently that’s been creeping down)
There's about a dozen of screens you can toggle between (time, date, next alarm, number of steps, distance and so on). Short press of the only button toggles between them, long press does some action (example: cancel next alarm).
However I don't have anything on that screen by default to extend battery life closer to a month.
Two more features I highly appreciate:
- I don't think I could go back to an alarm on my phone. Smart wakeup really works wonderfully.
- Even when battery's at 0%, basic functionality (telling time, counting steps) still works for like a week or two.
My wife and I both had these, we loved them and I agree it fits the description perfectly. However, both of them failed for us right around the time the warranty expired in the same way - the watch worked fine but refused to charge. My wife managed to get hers replaced, but mine failed just after a year and they refused to replace it. I decided not to get another one because of this, but I do miss it and there’s really no other I’ve found like it.
I was reading to pull the trigger on a Withings but then I got so many reports of inaccurate tracking data that I backed out. How's been your experience with it?
It makes the same mistakes all the other watches I've tried do. It'll track drumming, for instance, as swimming. But it's easy enough to update the activity or just delete it from your history altogether.
I've had a Steel HR for 6 years (Nokia branded) that I bought of eBay for £50. Steps and activity tracking works well, sleep tracking mostly works. Battery still lasts a month easily, has shown no signs of degradation.
Came here to recommend Withings. I have the ScanWatch and love it. All the other watches I've tried were either too dumb (o.g. pebble and the similar tiny Garmin) or too smart (android wear / Apple Watch). Withings strikes a perfect balance between the two
I have it and if fitness/sleep tracking is the main thing you are after, it's easy to recommend. It looks fantastic and the battery lasts forever.
But I find it almost completely useless for reading notifications from my phone. The small screen + no way to recall notifications if you don't watch the whole thing scroll past when it originally comes in are very frustrating. Plus it's very annoying that despite having users asking for this for years they have not implemented a "find my phone" feature.
Its features are minimalist, so it really doesn't have access to anything other than your text messages and whatever health data it collects, which you can control in a fine-grained way.
Looking for a simple SmartWatch and then going for a big Garmin?
I think there are other alternatives that are way simpler. The Withings watches for example.
I think the problem is that everyone has their own “all I want - it’s so simple” set of features, but there are nearly limitless possibilities of feature combinations.
I wanted a long battery life (e-ink would work) minimal watch with health tracking only. In the end I just chose the Apple Watch SE, switched off all phone & message notifications and made recharging part of my daily routine. It’s easier to adapt than find the perfect device and I’ve found many useful features on the SE that I wouldn’t have chosen on my custom smart watch.
Exactly. There was a very similar discussion on here a little while ago about electric cars. For me, all I want is a simple smart watch that has great battery life, navigation with maps, and high GPS accuracy. Everything else I don't care about. The Garmin Fenix fits that bill, along with 500 other features for everyone else with their simple lists.
I entirely agree with your identification of the problem. Everyone thinks their desired set of features is the most reasonable set of features to want, and is confused why anyone would want anything else.
My desired features are basically yours, plus notifications. I've found the Amazfit Bip to just about fit the bill. I wish it had a bit more health tracking, but the ~month of battery life makes up for it. Watches with batteries that last a week are what confuse me; it's too regular to forget about, and too infrequent to easily remember. I could probably get used to a daily charge though.
Yeah, I feel like my Google Pixel Watch is a step back from my Fitbit Versa, because it's loaded with a million features that I will never use, and have no desire to use.
The big problem is all the menus are cluttered with buttons for features that I will never use. I'm sure every feature has someone who will use it; but I certainly won't.
(It's not like it's 1995 and half the fun of a brand new computer is figuring out how to use it.)
Probably the best way to solve the problem is to make it easier to disable (or ignore) most of the features.
Same here, been using two Fossil Hybrid smartwatches ever since my Pebble stopped working.
I'm sold on simple smartwatches that only require an e-ink (or whatever it is) screen because they hold a charge for well over a month and still do everything I need from them. Namely show notifications, who's calling, who's messaging, read messages, control music, and some other stuff that is less important.
The app has also improved over the years, even though I'm still pretty sure they sell all my personal data to any bidder. Of course I'd prefer a more self hosted or open approach.
But it's good enough. Currently I'm using a Machine, don't remember the name of the one before it but it was similar, slightly smaller.
Kronaby looks like a traditional watch but it has step counter and vibrates when someone is calling or sending text. And the battery lasts for 2 years.
I've had a Kronaby for a few years now. The first battery lasted maybe 14-15 months, next one barely one year. Nowadays, I switch battery every 8-9 months.
It's still much better than charging your watch every night/week/month. And I really like the minimal functionality it offers.
I got a Garmin Fenix 5s when they first came out. I do some running, but I really got it because I was on a terrible on-call rota (daytime only) where I'd get 20+ alerts per day. The alert app was dreadful, took a screen unlock, swipe and wait just to see if it was one of the bogus alerts I needed to tune out. With the Garmin I could "ack" the alert with two button pushes. My phone stayed in my pocket.
It's years old by now but I still get well over a week of battery life, if I don't use GPS. It tracks my sleep, runs, walks and cycles automatically. It mirrors my notifications, including 2fa codes sent via email, sms or app. It finds my phone. It can keep my phone unlocked as long as it's nearby. It's waterproof at depths where I'll be dead. It has a stopwatch and a countdown timer (like any decent watch should). Everything is controlled with a few buttons (no touchscreen, so no accidental swipes or poor usability when wet).
I got the one with the sapphire lens, expensive as ffff at the time, but it's completely perfect after a few accidental scrapes on concrete.
I am surprised no one has mentioned Coros yet. I have been using the Coros Pace 2 and it been very good. Basic smartphone with notification mirroring from iPhone. Has about 10 days of battery life. Has very good support for various activities. Very satisfied so far.
I had a moto360, first version, when it was released. Well, it was pretty cool. The battery could almost last all day if I didn't use the watch for anything.
Same. I got mine for $149 (down from $199) thanks to some discount deal they were running at Staples of all places. Looked nice, did all the basics (notifications, nav for when I was riding my motorcycle, quick replies, could install or create any watch face I wanted), and the battery lasted long enough that I only needed to charge for 30min in the evening if I was going out somewhere after work.
Eventually the battery died and I failed miserably at replacing it so it was toast. I figured there would be something new available in the few years since I'd bought it - maybe improved battery or a fix for the "flat tire" at the bottom of the display. But when I searched, all I found were either ugly plastic "omg sportz@!" designs or classier stuff for 2-3x the price.
Still haven't purchased another smart watch. It was bad enough dropping a couple hundred bucks for ~3 years of use. I can't imagine spending $400-600 for (at best) minor incremental updates.
The new Casio DW-H5600 has solar charging and amazingly long battery life. I was pretty anti-smartwatch but i like g-shock squares and ended up getting it been surprisingly good.
I bought one of these for the solar charging, great battery life. And that works. But it is really hard to read the LCD. The automatic lightning works quite unreliably, and even when it works the tiny screen is hard to read. At least with my old man eyes.
The latest casio lcd screens are amazing in terms of readability. They don't have the digits shadow problem anymore (this was especially plaguing the negative displays). It's really night and day.
I have an Auriol. (I don't know for certain, but I like to imagine the brand is named after French rally driver Hubert Auriol.) It has a monochrome face, twelve simple hour demarcations, and two hands.
In its own way(s), that is actually quite a smart watch.
I use those too - they are super cheap. I mostly need smartwatch/smartband for:
1. push notifications (I keep my phone on silent)
2. show time, date, weather
3. change music volumes
4. remote camera trigger
5. sleep tracking / step counter
Things I like about miband:
- dirty cheap
- 2weeks+ battery
- waterproof (I just go to swim with it or take shower and had no issues)
Things I don't like in miband though:
- screen is small to read some longer push notifications (its good to get notified and figure out if something is important or not). If seems important you will still have to fish for your phone to double check
- firmware has problems with displaying emoji and some non standard characters
- bands are of poor quality and they will after half a year or so
- same with charging cable - they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one and those also easy to break or hard to find where you need charging
- wish had some wireless charging
- wish had some simple google maps navigation support (just basic info e.g 'in 100m turn left', etc
- wish had some physical programmable buttons to open specific apps
>> screen is small to read some longer push notifications
I agree, but also I don't want a full-size watch on my wrist, so the latest MiBand (which is larger than the one before) is actually perfect. I can see who the sender is and what the start of the message is.
>> firmware has problems with displaying emoji and some non standard characters
Haven't had this issue so far, or haven't noticed.
>> bands are of poor quality and they will after half a year or so
I also agree, but they're still so dirt cheap (bought a box of 20 different colors for like 9,99€) that I don't really care unless they break while I'm on a scooter or doing some physical activity.
>> same with charging cable - they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one and those also easy to break or hard to find where you need charging
Battery life is so long that I only take it off on a Sunday while showering and leave it charging near the pc for an hour or so.
>> wish had some wireless charging
Eh, the current charger is decent and used so sporadically that it's fine.
>> wish had some simple google maps navigation support (just basic info e.g 'in 100m turn left', etc
This is one of the main thing I miss from a full fledged smartwatch, but still not worth to wear the Galaxy Watch Active I have.
>> wish had some physical programmable buttons to open specific apps
I think you can do that with some Android apps like Tasker or similar.
A month ago I found out there exist metal bracelets for mibands. Bought one and probably will not have problems with bands anymore. Also they look much better.
> they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one
5, 6 and 7 definitely had interchangeable chargers.
It takes ages to sync, and, adding insult to injury, every time the app is updated, it syncs the AGPS, which is a very slow operation.
The on-demand screen backlighting is unreliable (one needs to do a very exaggerated arm twist to ensure it works).
But worse of all, when the Bluetooth connection breaks, one receives no notifications, which is a very serious problem for users relying on a smartwatch to be notified when they're at physical distance from their phone.
There are other UX problems (e.g. alarms can be set only via app), but those are secondary compared to the above).
It's a shame, because even if it's not really a smartwatch, it could perfectly fit the bill of "minimal, long-running smartwatch" (as a matter of fact, it fits the requirements of the author).
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Historically (pocket) watches were highly useful, expensive and also somewhat of a status symbol. This kinda died out with quartz electronic watches, which are highly accurate and dirt cheap.
Since telling time is nowadays an ubiquitous, cheap function of everything, a wristwatch has to have a different primary function. That can be "smart" or (in particular male) "jewelry" or "status symbol" (Rolex but also apple ultra).
Just as an anecdote: A friend would often wear a very fashionable, old, mechanical watch. That watch would sometimes just stop, but that did not matter because the primary function was being jewellery on the wrist.
> an example of reliable manufacturing
A mechanical watch doesn't need any intrusion and can work for years if not decades, and if it needs a service there are a lot of qualified people who can do it, including full disassembly and assembly. From that point of view, it can be a "lifetime" device.
Any smartwatch, no matter how expensive, will reliably and predictably turn into a paperweight when it stops being supported by the manufacturer. Many smartwatches will do it sooner — when their non-replaceable battery is out of juice.
Smart watches have been around for like 10 years, so maybe in another couple decades we can expect efficiencies in power consumption and power storage. Or atleast something as revolutionary as user replaceable batteries.
I've never been a fan of things on my wrist, but I have a problem of missing calls from my wife when my phone is on vibrate. I don't need a screen, just something that is close enough to my body to always vibrate noticeably without being uncomfortable.
Havent found anything like that since that Sony one
[0] https://banglejs.com/
But I'm not sure it's what OP is after. The requirements are:
> Phone notifications (so I don’t miss calls/ texts)
> Step counting
> A long battery life
Bangle.js doesn't connect to your phone at all, so you won't get any phone notifications. I don't personally use step counting, but when I have tried it I found it didn't work very well. Maybe that's just me.
The battery life depends a lot on what you're doing. In particular, clock faces that show seconds (i.e. have to wake up the CPU every second) drain the battery faster than clock faces that only go down to minutes. It still easily lasts longer than a day, which is good enough for me. I just charge mine overnight.
Apparently you can actually connect it to phone notifications using gadgetbridge[0] but I didn't have much success when I tried it. The BLE was a little flaky at the best of times (pairing to a PC for programming failed more often than I'd like).
[0] https://www.espruino.com/Gadgetbridge
idk if Bangle1 strap is different but (don't remember exact measurement) you can put any standard watch strap with a normal strap pin on it. I replaced the broken stock strap with a nylon one off the net and it's great.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.espruino.gadgetbridge.ba...
I love my Bangle.js 2, and have written my own watch face for it.
I charge weekly, after one week the battery is usually at ~50% with my usual usage. Obviously with GPS on the battery empties much faster, without any notifications etc the battery can hold multiple weeks.
[1] https://forum.espruino.com/conversations/385922/
It has everything I need: notifications, great battery life and traditional watch looks.
Long battery life is an understatement! Even when the battery drops to near 0 the watch is still useable as a plain analog watch for at least a week giving me enough time to find where I left the damn charger (given that I don’t get to use it often at all).
What I don’t get is how this model (analog watch with just enough smarts) hasn’t gained more traction. It seems to me there’s a lot of opportunities in this space, not everything requires a high resolution display.
The OS is open source. The finish is good (though not high end materials but still water proofed), runs for multiple days and does phone notifications just fine.
It is very bare bones though.
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Anyone wanna buy a pinetime?
I'm selling. Free (+shipping from NL/DE/BE) if you have a good use for it and send me an update after a few weeks or so ^^. I wanted a heartbeat tracker but it didn't work at all for me (known software issue, I should have done more research before). I've got one open dev kit and one sealed one, but need to check which one I gave away already. Email in profile
I'm not sure if this is available for other platforms. If not, there's money to be made, especially if you can add some kind of auto mute feature.
[0]: https://sl8.ch/
Like MP3 players 10-20 years ago, I suspect there's "a market" for a simple smartwatch, but not a very profitable market. So your choice will be the expensive Apple version (and maybe a couple of other luxury brands) or the basic no-name Chinese manufacturer version.
Agreed. My Amazfit Bip does everything the blog's author was looking for, including *40,000* watch faces. I paid $60 five years ago, then $20 for a used one 2.5 years ago after the first one fell prey to a known design flaw (that has since been fixed, by my understanding). The darn thing even functions as a Bluetooth heartrate sensor for running! <https://np.reddit.com/r/amazfit/comments/8t1gsp/six_weeks_wi...>
>Like MP3 players 10-20 years ago, I suspect there's "a market" for a simple smartwatch, but not a very profitable market. So your choice will be the expensive Apple version (and maybe a couple of other luxury brands) or the basic no-name Chinese manufacturer version.
I think my Bip is superior to Apple Watch. The latter does many things that Bip does not, but Bip has the insuperable advantage of three full weeks of battery life. I have zero, zilch, zip desire to recharge a watch every day!
Very non-tech. Only uses an iPhone and an Apple watch. No laptop or tablet/iPad.
Gets a surprisingly large quantity of things done via her phone.
My phone is an Android. She shared 2 things her iPhone can do that I don't think my phone (OnePlus 7 pro) and watch (Amazfit T-Rex 2) combination can do:
- she can always find out where she parked her car
- her watch buzzes to warn her if she leaves her keys or phone behind in her car. I think she has some airtag type of thing in her keyring.
Surprised that Android phone + watch combination doesn't already natively offer these features (with easy discoverability).
Disclosure: I actually happen to kno exactly how this feature works, as I added support for iBeacons in apps for iOS and Android in one of our projects. Not for the functionality described above, but for waking the app once a user walks to a proximity of a beacon. My office beacon is laying at a distance of less than 1meter from me right now.
If I leave an airtag in my car, I will always know where it is because my phone is constantly looking for the BT signal.
So I don’t get a notification when I leave my iPad at home, but I do whenever I leave it at work, for example.
But a lot of people apparently want a single "super" app that does everything. Musk was right about that- we're all going to see a Western WeChat emerge. All hail integration.
Apple will probably be the one creating something like a "super ecosystem", but reserved for Apple users of course.
I can't imagine any other company pulling it off. Amazon could but its reputation seems so bad lately that I doubt people would jump in. So I find it incredibly hard to believe that a true "Western WeChat" could emerge any time soon.
I seldom carry a phone around with me, and my Apple Watch does every thing I need while outside the house.
The only other thing the watch is missing is the ability to connect to bluetooth in my car, so if I have left my phone behind I can still answer calls or listen to music. I'm sure this is intentionally crippled as it starts the pairing process then fails - tried in several cars with different makes of head unit.
On a related note, I've had significant issues trying to play music through airpods through the watch. I can get it to connect, and it plays a few seconds of music, then goes silent. The screen still indicates its playing. Very frustrating.
You can do almost anything from it that doesn't require a larger screen or a keyboard, and the kinds of activities the larger screen enables tend to mostly just waste your time. Take a typical 2007 "dumb" phone - the watch screen is roughly that size.
It becomes awkward when you need to find something on the web (you can't even access the browser directly, you need to ask Siri and work with a popup), but I was mildly successful following a recipe when cooking. It's plain better than a phone at many other common tasks (following directions, checking the weather, paying for stuff, telling time, etc).
The biggest impact it had is that I no longer feel compelled to reach for my phone in most situations. It's not just that it saves 5-10 seconds here and there: the context switch is brief enough that I can remain focused on whatever I was doing.
(inb4 just turn off notifications, yes I am already very picky about what is allowed to distract me.)
The (literal and figurative) friction of dragging my phone out of my pocket when I receive a call or text or other alert is gone, and I love it.
Yeah. To me VP feels like carrying a boombox on your shoulder, when all you actually need are AirPods.
For the parked car trick I would guess you'd do something like set up a trigger that fires when your phone or watch disconnect from your car's Bluetooth and drops a notification with your GPS location that you would tap on your way back to the car to have it pull up in Google Maps.
I have a similar task set up that automatically switches on my wireguard tunnel as soon as home Wi-Fi signal is below a certain strength for more than 10 seconds (the implication being that I am departing not only the house but also the immediate area outside where my Wi-Fi still operates). As a fairly unsophisticated Tasker user I was able to cobble this together in about 2 hours by starting from a template that did something similar, including the testing necessary to confirm where the cutoff dB should be.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy#products
It doesn't have a lot of features, but you could give it a lot of features. But don't buy one if the idea of recompling.
https://www.withings.com/us/en/steel-hr
As for size, I never thought it was too small. In fact, I would say it's a perfect size for my wrist.
However I don't have anything on that screen by default to extend battery life closer to a month.
Two more features I highly appreciate:
- I don't think I could go back to an alarm on my phone. Smart wakeup really works wonderfully.
- Even when battery's at 0%, basic functionality (telling time, counting steps) still works for like a week or two.
But I find it almost completely useless for reading notifications from my phone. The small screen + no way to recall notifications if you don't watch the whole thing scroll past when it originally comes in are very frustrating. Plus it's very annoying that despite having users asking for this for years they have not implemented a "find my phone" feature.
I wanted a long battery life (e-ink would work) minimal watch with health tracking only. In the end I just chose the Apple Watch SE, switched off all phone & message notifications and made recharging part of my daily routine. It’s easier to adapt than find the perfect device and I’ve found many useful features on the SE that I wouldn’t have chosen on my custom smart watch.
My desired features are basically yours, plus notifications. I've found the Amazfit Bip to just about fit the bill. I wish it had a bit more health tracking, but the ~month of battery life makes up for it. Watches with batteries that last a week are what confuse me; it's too regular to forget about, and too infrequent to easily remember. I could probably get used to a daily charge though.
The big problem is all the menus are cluttered with buttons for features that I will never use. I'm sure every feature has someone who will use it; but I certainly won't.
(It's not like it's 1995 and half the fun of a brand new computer is figuring out how to use it.)
Probably the best way to solve the problem is to make it easier to disable (or ignore) most of the features.
I'm sold on simple smartwatches that only require an e-ink (or whatever it is) screen because they hold a charge for well over a month and still do everything I need from them. Namely show notifications, who's calling, who's messaging, read messages, control music, and some other stuff that is less important.
The app has also improved over the years, even though I'm still pretty sure they sell all my personal data to any bidder. Of course I'd prefer a more self hosted or open approach.
But it's good enough. Currently I'm using a Machine, don't remember the name of the one before it but it was similar, slightly smaller.
I remember I got one of the early t-touch watches in early 2000, that has to be as simple as they get yet so infinitely cool: https://www.tissotwatches.com/en-en/men/categories/t-touch.h...
https://kronaby.com
It's still much better than charging your watch every night/week/month. And I really like the minimal functionality it offers.
It's years old by now but I still get well over a week of battery life, if I don't use GPS. It tracks my sleep, runs, walks and cycles automatically. It mirrors my notifications, including 2fa codes sent via email, sms or app. It finds my phone. It can keep my phone unlocked as long as it's nearby. It's waterproof at depths where I'll be dead. It has a stopwatch and a countdown timer (like any decent watch should). Everything is controlled with a few buttons (no touchscreen, so no accidental swipes or poor usability when wet).
I got the one with the sapphire lens, expensive as ffff at the time, but it's completely perfect after a few accidental scrapes on concrete.
Eventually the battery died and I failed miserably at replacing it so it was toast. I figured there would be something new available in the few years since I'd bought it - maybe improved battery or a fix for the "flat tire" at the bottom of the display. But when I searched, all I found were either ugly plastic "omg sportz@!" designs or classier stuff for 2-3x the price.
Still haven't purchased another smart watch. It was bad enough dropping a couple hundred bucks for ~3 years of use. I can't imagine spending $400-600 for (at best) minor incremental updates.
My smart watch can do shitloads of shit I don't need it for.
But there's no slimmed down smart watch that can do all the things I need it to do.
Imagine trying to make a smart watch that has all the features only an individual needs?
I have simple watches. They are casio.
In its own way(s), that is actually quite a smart watch.
1. push notifications (I keep my phone on silent)
2. show time, date, weather
3. change music volumes
4. remote camera trigger
5. sleep tracking / step counter
Things I like about miband:
- dirty cheap
- 2weeks+ battery
- waterproof (I just go to swim with it or take shower and had no issues)
Things I don't like in miband though:
- screen is small to read some longer push notifications (its good to get notified and figure out if something is important or not). If seems important you will still have to fish for your phone to double check
- firmware has problems with displaying emoji and some non standard characters
- bands are of poor quality and they will after half a year or so
- same with charging cable - they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one and those also easy to break or hard to find where you need charging
- wish had some wireless charging
- wish had some simple google maps navigation support (just basic info e.g 'in 100m turn left', etc
- wish had some physical programmable buttons to open specific apps
I agree, but also I don't want a full-size watch on my wrist, so the latest MiBand (which is larger than the one before) is actually perfect. I can see who the sender is and what the start of the message is.
>> firmware has problems with displaying emoji and some non standard characters
Haven't had this issue so far, or haven't noticed.
>> bands are of poor quality and they will after half a year or so
I also agree, but they're still so dirt cheap (bought a box of 20 different colors for like 9,99€) that I don't really care unless they break while I'm on a scooter or doing some physical activity.
>> same with charging cable - they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one and those also easy to break or hard to find where you need charging
Battery life is so long that I only take it off on a Sunday while showering and leave it charging near the pc for an hour or so.
>> wish had some wireless charging
Eh, the current charger is decent and used so sporadically that it's fine.
>> wish had some simple google maps navigation support (just basic info e.g 'in 100m turn left', etc
This is one of the main thing I miss from a full fledged smartwatch, but still not worth to wear the Galaxy Watch Active I have.
>> wish had some physical programmable buttons to open specific apps
I think you can do that with some Android apps like Tasker or similar.
A month ago I found out there exist metal bracelets for mibands. Bought one and probably will not have problems with bands anymore. Also they look much better.
> they keep changing charging cables so you cannot use older one
5, 6 and 7 definitely had interchangeable chargers.
It takes ages to sync, and, adding insult to injury, every time the app is updated, it syncs the AGPS, which is a very slow operation.
The on-demand screen backlighting is unreliable (one needs to do a very exaggerated arm twist to ensure it works).
But worse of all, when the Bluetooth connection breaks, one receives no notifications, which is a very serious problem for users relying on a smartwatch to be notified when they're at physical distance from their phone.
There are other UX problems (e.g. alarms can be set only via app), but those are secondary compared to the above).
It's a shame, because even if it's not really a smartwatch, it could perfectly fit the bill of "minimal, long-running smartwatch" (as a matter of fact, it fits the requirements of the author).