I was fairly happy with my fitbit charge 4, but now it's actually useless as a watch most of the time because they pushed a firmware update that reduces the max screen brightness. So now it's impossible to read the screen outside, even on the max settings.
God I hate closed down hardware. I don't actually care if the battery life gets shorter because I take the damn thing off every day to shower anyway, and the time it stays off is more than enough to charge it every day if I had to.
But what really annoys me is that the choice is just made for me.
I'm never buying a device with closed firmware, unreplaceable batteries, etc, ever again. It's a complete waste of money in terms of durability and I'm sick of not really owning the devices I pay out the nose for and that fact making them strictly less capable.
xnorswap 670 days ago [-]
This is why I loved my Pebble.
The LCD screen meant it was readable in any light and also had fantastic battery life.
0xEF 670 days ago [-]
I still only use Pebble watches. You can pick them up on eBay for $30 USD, and the Rebble.io community helps keep them alive.
I have yet to see another smartwatch do what they did, which is a bit baffling to me. Watchy came close, being fully programmable with an e-ink screen, but the bulk of the housing was atrocious.
bbarnett 670 days ago [-]
which is a bit baffling to me.
I'm guessing pebble watches didn't geolocate you, and report your position, and probably didn't record everything said around you then "anonymize" it, so it was likely deemed useless by VCs, and thus died?
No wonder there's no replacement!
To all VCs, my startup sells geolocated tools, and also orders screws and nails, automatically, by selling special nails, with an rfid tag build in!
(next day? 1B buyout)
Nextgrid 670 days ago [-]
I hope your tools have a little screen and buzzer to display ads and notify the user in case they haven't "engaged" with it enough.
supportengineer 670 days ago [-]
You haven't ordered today, order now and keep your streak!
brookst 670 days ago [-]
Consumers decide product success, not VCs.
If there is demand, the product will succeed. See: all the companies that came from bootstrapped startups.
If there is no demand, no amount of VC money will make a successful company. See: Magic Leap.
hnbad 670 days ago [-]
Not really. VCs want growth, consumers want stability. A company can be profitable and stable and still die because VCs want ROI and hence growth and the growth potential of the existing market has been depleted.
Arguably, Pebble was an example of this. They initially presented the smartwatch as a productivity tool and many users loved it. But the productivity market was much smaller than the fitness market so they kept adding fitness related features. This eventually enabled them to be bought out by Fitbit (for a good exit) who saw no further use in the brand and killed it.
Another example is planned obsolescence: there's very little money in producing a product that has few returning customers because it continues to work fine for decades.
Saying "consumers" or "demand" or "your wallet" implies a level of agency and democratic control that isn't really there in practice. Consumers don't decide product success, profit and growth does. And consumers certainly don't get to make any direct decisions, they just get to pick through what has already been preselected for them.
BloodyIron 669 days ago [-]
And what about companies like 3M who don't inherently focus on MVP and instead significantly invest in products that are targetted for humans? Not favouring growth at all costs.
Yes, a lot of "new"/"modern" companies that have shiny balance sheets with the colour black used, and not red, follow as you attribe. But there are plenty whom do not.
pydry 670 days ago [-]
Consumers will routinely go for a smartwatch that is $25 cheaper that is riddled with spyware.
There are two schools of thought over this: they just don't care so it's fine or the wool has been pulled over their eyes.
The backlash from industry against laws that are largely just intended to inform consumers and keep them in the loop (like GDPR) kind of hints that it's not the former.
Consumers are especially bad at pricing risk. Just because they made a decision doesn't mean that they walked into those risks with open eyes.
marcosdumay 670 days ago [-]
Not on hardware.
Money decides hardware success. It may not come from a VC, but it's always the deciding factor.
2OEH8eoCRo0 670 days ago [-]
HN user chuckles and returns to their work of building surveillance
pbronez 670 days ago [-]
Oh man I had no idea there was a project keeping pebbles alive. The rebble project looks great. Very impressed by the documentation on their site.
pradn 670 days ago [-]
Pebble Time watches have spiked to $100-150, unfortunately. I really wanted one to hack around with. Their simplicity appeals to me. But they're no longer cheap. I think the other models are similar.
xela79 670 days ago [-]
the OG Pebble Steel was in a class apart, really loved that Watch. Unfortunately it had issues with connection cable and had 2 units that broke over time. My favorite long battery smartwatch owned.
LeifCarrotson 670 days ago [-]
Transflective Memory-In-Pixel LCD screen. The Fitbit has a backlit LCD, like a TV, which sucks in daylight.
You can still get transflective displays on Garmin fitness/hiking watches. They're great, because they allow for always-on display with more than a month of battery life. Some of their new consumer products are OLED that wake up when you turn your wrist, but the core audience really likes the transflective displays.
trd716 670 days ago [-]
Moto 360 Sport had this kind of display (transflective LCD) and I kept it working with battery replacements for years. Finally moved on to a GW4C and I miss the display all the time, it was perfect to glance at either day or night
m-p-3 670 days ago [-]
I currently have a Banglejs.2 and although the UI doesn't feel as snappy, it's IMO a decent enough alternative, although I miss the buttons from my Pebble.
I do might the Timeline UI, it still is in my opinion the pinnacle of what a smartwatch OS should aim for. It focused to keep the core function of a watch (time and time-related events) at the top.
dreamcompiler 670 days ago [-]
And you could program the damn thing yourself.
markhahn 670 days ago [-]
I have a charge 5 and it's fine - in particular, it would suit the OP.
I also would love to tinker with the fw and be able to service parts. But providing each of those features is a tradeoff. The fw is primarily a cultural issue, but to some extent also a support one. I think that's where I would push harder - rather than the hw aspect. Replaceable batteries are either quite specific or incur a substantial space penalty (are any widely-available button cells rechargable?)
mtlmtlmtlmtl 669 days ago [-]
Definitely agree that HW is a tougher ask. Though I mostly see it as an engineering problem that hasn't been solved mainly because no one is really trying.
And apparently rechargable button cells do exist based on a quick google search, though i have no idea how widely available they are. But again, it's just an engineering problem that can be solved should the right people put their minds to it. I can't really design hardware, but I did write the firmware for a two man startup at one point, designing custom electronics for people with too much money. We always made the source available to the customer and made our stuff USB or JTAG programmable. Not that any of them actually cared, but we did!
Xenonym 670 days ago [-]
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.
RhodesianHunter 670 days ago [-]
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!
lemming 670 days ago [-]
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.
tomgp 670 days ago [-]
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)
DreaminDani 670 days ago [-]
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
oakashes 670 days ago [-]
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.
wexomania 670 days ago [-]
I really love my scanwatch, so Withings is a big recommend from me.
santiagobasulto 670 days ago [-]
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?
Peanuts99 670 days ago [-]
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.
DreaminDani 670 days ago [-]
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.
darreninthenet 670 days ago [-]
They look really nice... can you have something other than your heart rate displaying on that little screen by default..?
input_sh 670 days ago [-]
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.
anonymoose4 670 days ago [-]
Does the smart wakeup have a vibration-only alarm?
ancientworldnow 670 days ago [-]
Yes, that's the only form.
darreninthenet 670 days ago [-]
Sorry last question - does it do sleep tracking?
dustincoates 670 days ago [-]
I have one, and I can confirm it does.
daliusd 670 days ago [-]
It does. Sometimes it does that incorrectly though.
z0mghii 670 days ago [-]
Scanwatch is the newer model which uses sapphire glass, usually can find it pretty cheap on a marketplace
bad_alloc 670 days ago [-]
How privacy-friendly is that watch? It looks great on paper.
RhodesianHunter 670 days ago [-]
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.
profsummergig 670 days ago [-]
Was talking to an older lady the other 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).
rollcat 670 days ago [-]
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.)
macintux 670 days ago [-]
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.
taylodl 670 days ago [-]
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.
rollcat 669 days ago [-]
> Having said that, I'm still not sold on the Apple Vision Pro.
Yeah. To me VP feels like carrying a boombox on your shoulder, when all you actually need are AirPods.
lopis 670 days ago [-]
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.
yurishimo 670 days ago [-]
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.
Tildey 670 days ago [-]
Just to add, in the Find My app, you can whitelist (or blacklist depending on how you look at it I suppose) addresses that it won’t notify you about.
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.
lopis 670 days ago [-]
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.
troupo 670 days ago [-]
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
WeylandYutani 670 days ago [-]
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.
lopis 670 days ago [-]
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.
somethingsome 670 days ago [-]
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.
zikduruqe 670 days ago [-]
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.
rahoulb 670 days ago [-]
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.
onceiwasthere 670 days ago [-]
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.
daliusd 670 days ago [-]
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.
Andrew_nenakhov 670 days ago [-]
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.
jbverschoor 670 days ago [-]
That’s not how this feature works and not how this is notified to the user
Andrew_nenakhov 670 days ago [-]
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.
pintxo 670 days ago [-]
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.
Andrew_nenakhov 670 days ago [-]
It is a different thing, and we're talking mostly about androids.
Jim_Raynor 670 days ago [-]
So lets talk about android - does it something like that automatic? Remember location when bluetooth is disconected sound nice.
Andrew_nenakhov 667 days ago [-]
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.
ChainOfFools 670 days ago [-]
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.
cuu508 670 days ago [-]
On Garmin watches, Settings > Notifications & Alerts > System Alerts > Phone > Connection Alerts On. Yeah, it's a little buried :-)
tguvot 670 days ago [-]
garmin watch will buzz you if it looses connection to phone.
have an app from car on android phone showing where car is located
fnord77 670 days ago [-]
the nice thing about the parked car trick is it is available right on the watch face. one click
computer-user 670 days ago [-]
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.
lawn 670 days ago [-]
If your goal is long battery life with health tracking, there are lots of Garmin watches that would fit that bill.
delecti 670 days ago [-]
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.
gwbas1c 670 days ago [-]
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.
skeyo 670 days ago [-]
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.
fossuser 670 days ago [-]
The ultra’s battery life is substantially longer if that’s important to you.
wanderingmind 670 days ago [-]
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 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!
Humpelstilzchen 670 days ago [-]
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.
This is great to know, thanks for the update. I will definitely look at the newest firmware then.
AmosLightnin 670 days ago [-]
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.
jstanley 670 days ago [-]
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.
wanderingmind 670 days ago [-]
Sorry there is an FDroid Gadgetbridge App specifically for Banglejs [0], so I just assumed it must connect to the phone.
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.
voxadam 670 days ago [-]
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.
wanderingstan 670 days ago [-]
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.
aag 670 days ago [-]
It definitely does connect to the phone. I receive notifications on mine all the time.
I love my Bangle.js 2, and have written my own watch face for it.
chimprich 670 days ago [-]
The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging.
I use a Garmin smartwatch. One of the surprising things about Garmin is that they don't have a proper app store. They have an app where you can load apps into your watch, but it's rather crippled by having no payment system.
That would be fine if all the apps are free, but they're not: a lot of the prettier watch faces (for example) expect cash - but there's no easy way to pay for them. I recently added a watch face which stopped working after a few days because the author wanted cash sent through some dubious third party website.
I presume they do this to avoid issues with Android / Apple rules about payment, but it's a poor experience.
caturopath 670 days ago [-]
I am so satisfied with my Garmin Fenix. It's comically expensive, but it has been a dream compared to the Fitbits I used for years. Garmin has lots of lower-end watches, too, which would have resolved most of my headaches and many still have great battery life compared to the competition. I haven't touched the "smart watch" features, though.
Garmin conducts themselves really well, too. They make good stuff and do little to lock it down: you don't have to use their cloud shit if you don't want (I do use it and like it), they created a peripheral standard in ANT+ that became widely adopted, without actually privileging their own stuff, etc.
chimprich 670 days ago [-]
I had a very strange, mixed experience with Garmin customer services recently. My watch died after 2 1/2 years. I'd heard that Garmin will, unofficially, replace broken watches for a bit longer than the official warranty (and so they should, because 1 year life expectancy would be terrible for a smart watch), so I contacted them.
The said they'd replace it for free and gave me a label to download (great!) However, I was travelling and the label wasn't valid for where I was. I asked if I could send it myself or get the label re-allocated when I got back (it had a time limit).
We then exchanged a dozen or so emails where Garmin CS kept ignoring my suggestions and giving me stupid instructions (terrible) until we eventually agreed they'd give me another label when I got back (ok).
I got back home and requested another label. CS demanded payment equivalent to the cost of a new watch (terrible!) I repeatedly asked why they were suddenly asking for payment when they'd previously offered it for free and they kept ignoring the question (argh!)
I'd have been much less annoyed if they'd just said up front that it was out of warranty, as then I wouldn't have wasted weeks and dozens of emails.
I eventually noticed that the original label still seemed to be valid, so I took up their original offer, sent my watch off and got an apparently new replacement within a day or two (great! I think.)
So, very mixed views! It's a lot like trying to write a Garmin app. They've got some nice API documentation (with a tutorial) but very incomplete as soon as you try to do something non-trivial.
mechhacker 670 days ago [-]
Really happy with my Fenix as well. It's only crashed once when recording where it lost data (3+ hour long GPS session), but other than that I haven't really had serious issues. I will force a reboot occasionally but the user experience is so much better than the Samsung watch I tried.
And battery life...I can put it in low power mode and it just works as a watch until I want to record an activity. And it has power for ~a month that way.
danielbln 670 days ago [-]
I've got the Garmin Forerunner 735XT and while the software is a little clunky at times, it's a total work horse. Battery lasts for a week when worn all day and with at least 30 minutes of GPS tracked running activity per day, the display is extremely well to read outside in the sun and the smart features I use are the app notifications and that's it. No complaints, that thing is indestructible and I would buy it again. The prices at times are truly comical though, then again I've got this watch since 2017 and it's still going strong, I'm sure I would have gone through at least a couple of Apple Watches or Android Wear watches in the meantime.
JimtheCoder 670 days ago [-]
"while the software is a little clunky at times"
Are you talking about Garmin Express?
If so, a "little clunky" would be a massive understatement based on my experience...
I love my Garmin watch, but I wish the Garmin software was lot more...usable.
xur17 670 days ago [-]
Same here. I had a Samsung Android watch for years that I would use for tracking runs, and I was never very happy with it. Slow gps fix, horrible battery life (the thing died on a bike ride when I started with it fully charged), and the touch screen was hard to use while running.
I wear my Garmin all day, and charge it every other week. Physical buttons are a game changer, and the activity tracking software feels like it was made by someone that actually uses it.
hammock 670 days ago [-]
>The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging.
Just get one without a screen. Iirc there are a bunch of G SHOCK digital watches that can show phone notifications. You can even get solar for a never ending battery life
JKCalhoun 670 days ago [-]
For me GPS is a must-have. I want the tracking of my walks/rides.
Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.
tlavoie 670 days ago [-]
With Garmin watches, the GPS tracking is enabled when you start an activity. So you're not using it all day, it's for the hour or two that you're out doing something. My old Fenix 3HR is good for close to a week with a daily walk tracked. My Descent G1 Solar (based on the [edit] Instinct 2 I think) is more like a couple of weeks with activities tracked.
There are quite a few settings that you can tweak as well, depending on the model of watch. My Descent has most things turned on during the day, but switches most off automatically using a power-save mode configured to match the "sleep" time on my phone. I think if it's set to minimum power usage, it's closer to a couple months. (Estimated battery time is typically shown in the watch face.)
HumblyTossed 670 days ago [-]
Apple Watch 8 is rated at 18 hours mixed usage. My Venu 2 is rated at 20 hours with the GPS on the entire time. My experience bears that out. I lose about 5% an hour battery when tracking my bike rides. Mixed usage, I'm getting 5 days out of it.
Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours (mixed usage). Good grief.
wombat-man 670 days ago [-]
Yeah I had a series 7 and the battery life killed it for me. I do kind of like seeing sleep tracking data so I don't want to charge while I'm asleep, so I would basically need to charge it while in the shower. This wasn't always enough charge time.
It really introduced me to a new level of battery anxiety. I'm extremely satisfied with my garmin which lasts a week+ per charge.
izacus 670 days ago [-]
It absolutely isn't the same as Apple Watch, not sure what you've been looking at.
Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode).
Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.
kaba0 670 days ago [-]
Hours?! That’s definitely not true, I am by no means a Marathon runner, but mine has definitely managed to track quite long distances.
Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.
smoldesu 670 days ago [-]
My ex would leave on GPS tracking when we'd go out so he could re-draw his route later, and his Apple Watch would almost always be dead before dinner. Just my N+1 anecdata, and he was using an older (Series 3?) model.
izacus 670 days ago [-]
Apple Watch Ultra has juice for about 10-13 hours of active GPS activity tracking time. Non-Ultra Apple Watch does less. My Garmin Epix2 can do about 24 hours with full battery, Fenix series does a bit more.
andreiii 670 days ago [-]
most Garmin watches give you at least 1 week of battery life with 7-8h of GPS activity during that week. if you do less than 8h, you can get 1.5 weeks of battery life.
treffer 670 days ago [-]
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.
It is very bare bones though.
Aachen 670 days ago [-]
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
silveira 670 days ago [-]
After my two Pebbles, I have never found something quite like it. I have then accumulated a drawer full of sad, obsolete and nonfunctional smart watches.
I then moved my interest to good old plain watches. Digital, mechanical, self-winding, manual-winding, hacking seconds, chronographs, divers, all that. It's a rich, complex, and beautiful world.
They can get as expensive or as affordable as you want, but for the price of one expensive smart watch you can get quite a nice collection of watches that you can combine with different styles of life and fashion.
spdif899 670 days ago [-]
I'm right there with you (drawer full of loved-but-neglected pebbles, along with a few Garmin watches).
I ended up going the other direction, I got an apple watch and just sucked it up and accepted that I'll toss it on the charger every morning. It has a lot of really good features (I can approve okta logins and get authy codes from my wrist, I can check weather and scroll around to browse the forecast, things like that).
I think there are two branches at this point post-pebble. You either get something that augments your phone with a couple benefits over a traditional watch, or you get something like Apple Watch that does many of the things your phone can do, saving you from spending time on the big screen.
For me there's strong value to the latter that makes up for the battery downsides: the powerful-but-focused app functionality means I can accomplish a task without getting pulled into other things. On a phone I find it all too easy to check the weather then start checking notifications and get sucked into news or something.
BloodyIron 669 days ago [-]
Why not revive your pebbles? Depending on the model, there are replacement battery options, and with rebble.io the software aspect is addressed.
Literally wearing a fully functional Pebble Time as I write this. I also have a Pebble Time Steel (not wearing currently) also fully operational.
2OEH8eoCRo0 670 days ago [-]
After my Pebble I switched to a $5 Casio that was on sale at Wal-Mart and has a "10 year battery"
Less is more.
user_7832 670 days ago [-]
> Plus, call me picky if you like, but having a reputable brand name behind my purchase gives me extra peace of mind when it comes to reliability.
I hope the author realizes that Amazfit is owned by Huami which is a sister/sibling company of Xiaomi. And as of 2021 at least, they were the 3rd largest smartwatch maker after Apple and Samsung.[1] I'd expect their build quality to be at least quite decent on average, and my n=1 $60 Amazfit Bip is probably 4 years old now with absolutely no issues.
> I’m aware that there are cheaper alternatives out there like the Amazfit range but these watches were either too complex, or too basic, there was no middle ground.
AFAIK nearly all the fancier options can be turned off from the app. And apart from a very few models with (I think) 8 segment displays all of them satisfy the author's criteria of notifications + other features.
I sometimes wish Amazfit would advertise more because every "I want a simple smartwatch!" discussion ends up with "Aah I wish Pebble existed" comments, folks paying $$$ for Garmins/Fitbits and people bemoaning the battery life on Apple/Samsung watches. Just get an Amazfit Bip (original or S).
> I hope the author realizes that Amazfit is owned by Huami which is a sister/sibling company of Xiaomi. And as of 2021 at least, they were the 3rd largest smartwatch maker after Apple and Samsung.
For some this association might be offputting. My current phone is by Xiaomi, as was the previous one, but my next won't be. There is a pile of stuff you can't (easily) uninstall that keeps trying to run and wants all sorts of odd perms for their task, heck the default clock on this device wanted location access before letting me set an alarm! (I just installed a different app), and they get good battery life scores by being _very_ aggressive about killing apps which is a pain for some things you might want to keep running in the background.
Can these watches be used without the company's own cloud stuff, and/or an advert laden app, or is that forced on you like like the inexpensive (and sometimes not so inexpensive!) home cameras from Yi and similar manufacturers?
> I'd expect their build quality to be at least quite decent on average,
That is certainly true with the phones I've used. The hardware seems as solid as similar (usually more expensive) devices, including the cameras being pretty decent.
dirtyid 670 days ago [-]
Amazfit and xiaomi bands are like the Casio f91w of smart watches.
mft_ 670 days ago [-]
I have a Fitbit Inspire 3 which, while looking more like a bracelet than a watch, offers all of the functionality the author was searching for. (I bought it primarily for sleep tracking, for which it offers AFAIK the best feature set outside of dedicated expensive sleep-tracking equipment.)
However, I’d not really recommend it, and probably wouldn’t buy it again, given the choice:
- very slow and buggy sync, which often takes a minute or longer to sync a day’s activity when sitting next to the phone running the Fitbit app in the foreground, and/or often fails. (This is the sort of crap that makes me appreciate e.g. AirPods just working)
- poor ability (and worse, to my memory, than very early Fitbits) to accurately determine the start and end of sleeping. Given sleep tracking is one of its standout features, this is very disappointing.
- probably, overly-sensitive sleeping tracking suggesting I wake multiple times in a (good) night, which other data would suggest isn’t the case.
- the ‘raise wrist to turn screen on’ feature almost never works. Not the end of the world because I’m used to double-tapping it instead, but another example of bad coding/QA.
- weird inaccuracies/oversights in exercise tracking. For example, it will correctly figure out that the recent two-hour block of raised heart rate was a bike ride, but will simultaneously credit me with 15000 steps during that time, presumably due to the vibrations from riding the bike, but not putting 2+2 together.
wartijn_ 670 days ago [-]
My experience with Garmin with regards to sleep tracking is unfortunately not much better. It does measure the time I'm in bed, but if it takes me a while to fall asleep, or keep laying in bed after waking up, it will count that as sleep.
I've even had a few times where it didn't notice that I woke up at night, went to the bathroom and then back bed. It would just count that as sleeping.
Since it can't even see the difference between being awake and sleeping, I absolutely don't trust anything it says about the amount of time I spend in each sleep phase.
smallpipe 670 days ago [-]
The double counting of bike activity as steps drove me crazy when I had one. Made me switch to a garmin.
lmm 670 days ago [-]
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.
TMWNN 670 days ago [-]
>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!
kyletns 670 days ago [-]
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.
yjftsjthsd-h 670 days ago [-]
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.
jeroenhd 670 days ago [-]
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.
alanpearce 670 days ago [-]
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.
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.
morsch 670 days ago [-]
They're also supported by Gadgetbridge.
iamwil 670 days ago [-]
If you get a used Pebble off of eBay, you can still bring it back to life with https://rebble.io/.
gbtw 670 days ago [-]
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.
JoachimS 670 days ago [-]
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.
1ko 670 days ago [-]
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.
boredumb 670 days ago [-]
I got a couple pine time watches last year and have been very happy with them. They are bare bones so i'm sure they don't hit everyones use cases but I really enjoy it.
I also ended up stumbling on https://github.com/lupyuen/pinetime-rust-mynewt which got me interested in rust which i'm using as a daily driver now and have fully ingested the rusty kool-aid
Brajeshwar 670 days ago [-]
I'm still using my Apple Watch Series 5. I started with that series because that was when the Apple watch actually became a watch (you can see the clock dial stays on). The battery is the only reason I might upgrade next. It is the simplest one that works with the ecosystem I'm in. Of course, I can walk out if need be.
Besides the clock (retro analog dial with the numbers), and the date, the only Complication on the first watch face is the Timer. The Timer is the most productive tool that I have found. It is way easier to quickly set the timer for everything than use my brain for remembering the short-term events - such as making tea just before a meeting, boiling eggs, allowance time to people coming late to meetings, grocery aisle walks, and many other things.
I also have a second Watch Face used only when traveling outside of the country, a travel specific data and 2-3 complications.
I don't do phone calls (except a few allowed numbers), no notifications except a few, such as calendar and health app.
So, it is the simplest yet good Smartwatch for me. Sometimes, the battery dies - so, be it - the intermittent charging in between hand-washes, baths, washroom breaks, early morning, and during the wind-down routines are good enough to go round the clock.
cheesio 670 days ago [-]
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.
raffraffraff 670 days ago [-]
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.
zoom6628 670 days ago [-]
I’m using a pinetime and loving it. I use a Garmin Forerunner 735XT for training only with gps but it’s battery life is superb.
rnk 670 days ago [-]
Garmin's have great battery life for sure.
goda90 670 days ago [-]
I want to see more wearable tech besides watches.
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.
pyr0hu 670 days ago [-]
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
silveira 670 days ago [-]
Sony Wena, if anyone is searching too.
modeless 670 days ago [-]
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.
fbn79 670 days ago [-]
I love my Garmin Instict. Has all the basic feature I love (always on display, activity tracking, notifications, ...) and I charge it only tree times a month.
NoboruWataya 670 days ago [-]
I'm also happy with my Garmin vívoactive 3. It has the features I want and I can get it looking fairly minimalist. Battery life is good as well, probably over a week on a single charge, though maybe a bit less if I'm doing loads of activities.
I do like the look of the "hybrid" watches that have physical hands.
orbanlevi 670 days ago [-]
Ex Garmin Instict user here, I just now changed to MK2S beacuse of the diving capabilities, but in general one of my best and robust watch that I ever used.
warunsl 670 days ago [-]
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.
throwawayai2 670 days ago [-]
I just got a Coros Apex 2, I'm very happy with it.
factorialboy 670 days ago [-]
I feel the new G-Shocks will fill this role quite well. Insane battery life, ruggedness, and now an improved MIP screen and smart features.
I tested out and threw out smart watches. They are not for me. I love the freedom of a €125 dumb rugged square G Shock.
doodlebugging 670 days ago [-]
I am not a watch person myself though I do wear a Garmin Instinct 2 Solar that I bought last year for some of the activity tracking functionality. It is the first thing for a wrist that I have worn in more than 40 years so I am still getting accustomed to the feel of something on my arm. I may ultimately give it away after getting enough data to understand where I am in my personal fitness at my age (>60).
If I were a watch person I would definitely be a G-Shock person. I bought one for a brother more than 20 years ago when he joined the Army and needed a durable watch. His model charges by solar and syncs to local time via radio I think. No matter where he has traveled he always had the correct time. He told me that the watch has never had a problem and that he wouldn't consider "upgrading" to a smart watch which would tie him to a charger.
Casio makes excellent watches and their entry into the smart watch domain should be interesting. I bought the Garmin because of the battery life, feature set, and reliability and because I have used Garmin GPS devices and know them to be excellent devices. Casio has a similar reputation for quality and so they should be on anyone's short list of devices to consider.
kasey_junk 670 days ago [-]
Which g shocks do phone notifications?
My problem with the g shock line is it’s so expansive and hard to figure out which does what.
The g shock website doesn’t allow you to filter by phone notifications…
maktouch 670 days ago [-]
I have a GBD-200. battery life is like 2 years lol. the notifications aren't the most reliable... sometimes it disconnects and I'm not sure why.
factorialboy 670 days ago [-]
The recent release H5600 is a square G Shock with smart features. There's also the GBD 200 and the H1000s, but the 5600 is closest to the old-school square G Shock.
hammeiam 670 days ago [-]
Withings scanwatch is the way to go. Looks like a watch, functions like a smartwatch, doesn’t break the bank. https://a.co/d/gvy1CWR
fxj 670 days ago [-]
I have an Amazfit Bip. 4 weeks runtime, notifications, step counter, HR monitor, workout monitor. Always on display like a pebble.
pizza234 670 days ago [-]
I own one, too, and it's a piece of crap.
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).
fensgrim 670 days ago [-]
For a 204-mhz device (as in: not using basic 16mhz NRF52840) it seems to be surprisingly limited.
miniwark 670 days ago [-]
The author is a bit strange.
He said than he have only tree requirements: Phone notifications, step counting & long battery life. But then faced with a Casio he said "Casio watches showed promise, but their limited notifications and unattractive styling didn’t meet my preferences for a more elegant design"...
His final choice may have been more because of the "elegant design" than his initial requirements. He confirm it more or less because he even "had to disable a ton of fitness tracking features that I’ll never use just so that I could do the things I wanted."
furyg3 670 days ago [-]
I'm disappointed with the lack of notification granularity, at least as it pertains to my iPhone / non-Apple Watch setup (Garmin).
On my watch I'd only like notifications about meeting reminders, scheduled reminders, and possibly google maps notifications (directions) while biking. I don't want my watch to buzz when I get a message. I do want to see a badge / bubble on my phone though. With iPhone / Garmin, it's all or nothing.
With Garmin you can enable/disable which apps notify you. Right now I only have my task app, signal and calendar sending me notifications. Nothing else gets through.
furyg3 663 days ago [-]
Where do you do this? I think this is only with Android...
binarymoon 670 days ago [-]
With Garmin on Android you can enable or disable notifications per app in the Garmin app settings.
BiteCode_dev 670 days ago [-]
I get where the author comes from, but my definition of simple doesn't include anything with the word "smart" in it.
I have simple watches. They are casio.
CRConrad 660 days ago [-]
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.
mdrzn 670 days ago [-]
I stopped using a smartwatch once I started wearing a MiBand. They're too good.
pzo 670 days ago [-]
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
mdrzn 670 days ago [-]
>> 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.
infthi 670 days ago [-]
> bands are of poor quality
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.
saool 670 days ago [-]
The Skagen Hybrids (cell battery powered for 4+ months) are the best I've found for this low-tech approach, much more so than any Garmin.
xavxav 670 days ago [-]
I really want a good health tracker with all the sensors of the Apple Watch but completely inconspicuous as smartwatches are ugly.
Kaibeezy 670 days ago [-]
I’m an analog watch wearer and have been looking for something like that too. Found a dead Kickstarter thing that replaced the buckle on a watch band with a sensor blob, would have been perfect.
A simple strap (or ring, I guess) with a minimal electronics package, waterproof, long battery life, that sends data to my phone. Anyone? Is it not a business? Everything goes upmarket.
Oh, without a mandatory monthly fee, Oura.
mft_ 670 days ago [-]
I’ve been waiting for this for years. If it’s possible to stick health tracking features into a ring, it should certainly be possible to fit them into a watch strap.
I’m imagining a standard-looking watch strap with a small display that would sit just below the face of whichever analog watch it was attached to. It could have a thin bridge joining the two sides of the strap together, running underneath the watch - this isn’t a problem when wearing (for example) a NATO-style strap.
Kaibeezy 670 days ago [-]
Yep. Or even with no display at all, just the sensor package. And/or even with no watch at all, just attach it to one of the billion straps out there.
I was all ready to file a provisional when I found that smart buckle or whatever they called it.
mrweasel 670 days ago [-]
Not sure it that's what you're getting at, but yeah, leave out the watch part. In fact just lose the screen, I don't need or want it.
All I want is a "fitness band" that will track heart rate, sleep patterns, what ever you can stuff in there and just sync it all to HealtKit next time it's in Bluetooth range of my phone. If I go for a run I want the tracking, but not the connectivity and I certainly never want to know the time.
sorenjan 670 days ago [-]
There's Whoop which is just a strap, but I've heard mixed reviews and I think it's a bit expensive.
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).
maratc 670 days ago [-]
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.
diffeomorphism 670 days ago [-]
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.
maratc 670 days ago [-]
As GP noted,
> 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.
stevezsa8 670 days ago [-]
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.
DrNosferatu 670 days ago [-]
On paper, the "MyKronoz ZeTime"[a] seems great - even perfect, at least for my needs.
However, some reviews here and there claim it does not do (satisfactorily) what it says on the tin.
- Anyone with direct experience?
There was also a ZeTime 2 announced by MyKronoz in 2019[b], but failure to launch is worrying...
I have a ZeTime that I used on and off for a couple of years. Now it's just sitting on a shelf. It was fine for my purposes at the time, but ended up inheriting an Apple Watch that's a lot more polished. I don't see ever going back to the ZeTime.
If you are interested, I'll let you have it for the cost of postage.
ausaus 670 days ago [-]
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.
landhar 670 days ago [-]
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.
morsch 670 days ago [-]
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.
somethingsome 670 days ago [-]
I was very very positively surprised by the Amazon smartwatches, I brought a amazfit GTS 2 Mini Fitness Watch, and it fulfill the main points of the article, it was very cheap also (65€). The app is nice, not perfect but does the job at tracking steps, the GPS is accurate, heart, stress levels, sleep, etc.. Perfect synch with the phone, I receive the phone notifications, good waterproofing and the battery last something like 6-7 days.
The oled screen simulates a classical watch, so it's not hybrid, but for me it doesn't matter that much, I barely notice.
The app could be better integrated with other fitness app, but it works with the ones I use.
Bad_CRC 670 days ago [-]
I have an Amazfit Bit U for 35€ and is everything OP wants.
They have nothing to do with Amazon though.
agapon 670 days ago [-]
Amazfit has nothing to do with Amazon, though.
occz 670 days ago [-]
>I was very very positively surprised by the Amazon smartwatches
Wait, Amazfit is not created by Amazon, right?
moondowner 670 days ago [-]
Noup. Amazfit/Zepp Health is a Chinese brand, somehow related to Xiaomi (I have a few Xiaomi Mi Band devices and they use the Zepp app on the phone).
alfiedotwtf 670 days ago [-]
I've been on this quest and have tried almost everything you can name. Even bought a 3D printer so I could prototype my own and started reading electronics books to start putting one together myself.
... but then I bought a Garmin, sold the 3D printer, and can focus my time on other things. I loved my Pebble, but I feel like the Garmin Instinct and Fenix 7 is probably a no brainer. Just a shame that Garmin don't have Pebble's app ecosystem even though their API looks not that bad.
TYPE_FASTER 670 days ago [-]
My Pebble Steel was great. I've had an Apple Watch 5 for a few years now. It's comparable, except for the shorter battery life. I configured it for very limited notifications, and mostly use it for exercise tracking because it has the heart rate sensor.
I don't feel the need to upgrade to a newer version. The only motivator for me to upgrade an iPhone is usually the camera. I have the cell version of the watch, but have never used it because I have my phone with me.
lukeinator42 670 days ago [-]
An interesting thing to note is that Garmin, Coros, and Suunto are pretty much the only brands used by long distance runners, and all three companies have really optimized them for long battery life. I really love my Garmin Fenix 6, and the battery on it lasts around 10 days-2 weeks depending on how much running I record with it. It's funny how most people don't know about Coros or Suunto outside of the running community though.
mike_pol 670 days ago [-]
I recently got the Garmin Instinct Crossover with solar charging, basically if you turn off all the features that the OP did you get infinite battery life more or less. It functions as a normal watch with hands and can do most of the smart notifications. I've turned off all notifications apart from calls/messages so it doesn't constantly beep and have been very happy with it so far.
cientifico 670 days ago [-]
Surprisingly (and with different needs than OP) I am using for 5 years Amazfit neo.
It is a 10 bucks with digital screen (always on) 1 month battery, sleep, step, activity and heart beat tracker. You can enable notifications but that reduces the battery life.
They are hard to find now but if you like the design, for me is the best.
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.
wesapien 670 days ago [-]
On the topic of simple, when can we see continuous glucose monitoring that's fairly accurate?
koheripbal 670 days ago [-]
Current wearables on the upper arm are not accurate?
670 days ago [-]
Affric 670 days ago [-]
The long tail is the name of the game.
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?
runjake 670 days ago [-]
Some notes:
- The Forerunner 55 doesn't do SpO2 measurements.
- The 55's battery lasts me about a week, with 4-5 30 minute runs per week.
- The 55 goes on sale occasionally.
- The 55's screen could be much brighter. It's often hard to read the time and date.
Al-Khwarizmi 670 days ago [-]
The Huawei watches aren't simple, but you can just ignore the functionality you don't need (there are tons of exercise apps I haven't even opened) and enjoy 2-3 weeks of battery life.
shubhamgrg04 670 days ago [-]
It's surprising how the smartwatch market seems flooded yet lacking when it comes to basic, reliable options. I would look for reliable battery life, GPS and water resistance.
Andrew_nenakhov 670 days ago [-]
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.
soylentcola 670 days ago [-]
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.
growt 670 days ago [-]
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.
0x53 670 days ago [-]
I have a Garmin 265. I really like that Garmin doesn’t make you subscribe to any monthly service to get the full features of the watch.
utopcell 670 days ago [-]
Notifications / step counting / long battery life: the Pebble watch fit that bill perfectly.
yakcyll 670 days ago [-]
On that subject, are there any good looking smart/hybrid pocket watches?
zeekaran 670 days ago [-]
A pocket watch? Yeah, it's called a phone.
iancmceachern 670 days ago [-]
I wear one of these, it's a Casio calculator watch, I love it
classified 669 days ago [-]
Isn't "simple smartwatch" a contradiction in terms?
amelius 670 days ago [-]
I don't understand why some men would choose to replace the most important piece of jewelry a man can wear —a precision mechanical wristwatch— by something that looks like a cheap toy.
zeekaran 670 days ago [-]
Maybe because not everyone subscribes to conspicuous consumption / has zero interest in mechanical watches?
hext 670 days ago [-]
You and me both. One of the only statement pieces a guy can wear and you throw that away to save the effort of taking your phone out of your pocket? Insanity.
wartijn_ 670 days ago [-]
Is it one of the only statement pieces a guy can were though? I know plenty of guys with bracelets, chains, rings, earrings and/or tattoos. You can express statements with your clothing too, if you want.
And than there are people who don't care about statement pieces and just want to wear whatever is most practical. And people who want to express themselves by wearing a smartwatch.
amelius 670 days ago [-]
> I know plenty of guys with bracelets, chains, rings, earrings and/or tattoos
These are mostly considered to be low-status symbols. For men, in fact it is often recommended not to wear necklaces to a job interview, and hide any tattoos.
Jim_Raynor 670 days ago [-]
Maybe he already got a job? So lets leave mechanical watches to unemployment?
amelius 670 days ago [-]
Makes little sense as being unemployed for medium-long term also doesn't look nice in a job interview.
The watch basically says: I had a good job that paid well.
millitzer 670 days ago [-]
[dead]
pwenzel 670 days ago [-]
I picked up a used Fossil FTW1166 smartwatch for $45 on eBay. It features a simple analog activity tracker, with just a plain-old dial like any other watch. There is no screen and no e-ink.
The lack of screen is awesome and I can't believe there aren't more watches out there like this!
Also, after 4 months of use the battery life is still around 100%.
Same. I've had a fossil hybrid HR for several years and am pretty happy with it.
From what I read, you can do some more automation if it connects with an android watch, but I use iOS so I only get the out of box functionality -- which includes customizable display with information like heart rate, steps, and weather. Notifications with vibration and readable text. And probably my favorite thing, physical hands so it looks like a "normal" watch.
knodi123 670 days ago [-]
My fossil hybrid HR was a beautiful watch, and the display was great. But the software, ugh! In 3 years of use, they never managed to get as high as a 30% success rate on fetching weather info. It was almost always displaying "connection error" or something like that. It's just the weather! Why was THAT the sticking point that they couldn't figure out?
God I hate closed down hardware. I don't actually care if the battery life gets shorter because I take the damn thing off every day to shower anyway, and the time it stays off is more than enough to charge it every day if I had to.
But what really annoys me is that the choice is just made for me.
I'm never buying a device with closed firmware, unreplaceable batteries, etc, ever again. It's a complete waste of money in terms of durability and I'm sick of not really owning the devices I pay out the nose for and that fact making them strictly less capable.
The LCD screen meant it was readable in any light and also had fantastic battery life.
I have yet to see another smartwatch do what they did, which is a bit baffling to me. Watchy came close, being fully programmable with an e-ink screen, but the bulk of the housing was atrocious.
I'm guessing pebble watches didn't geolocate you, and report your position, and probably didn't record everything said around you then "anonymize" it, so it was likely deemed useless by VCs, and thus died?
No wonder there's no replacement!
To all VCs, my startup sells geolocated tools, and also orders screws and nails, automatically, by selling special nails, with an rfid tag build in!
(next day? 1B buyout)
If there is demand, the product will succeed. See: all the companies that came from bootstrapped startups.
If there is no demand, no amount of VC money will make a successful company. See: Magic Leap.
Arguably, Pebble was an example of this. They initially presented the smartwatch as a productivity tool and many users loved it. But the productivity market was much smaller than the fitness market so they kept adding fitness related features. This eventually enabled them to be bought out by Fitbit (for a good exit) who saw no further use in the brand and killed it.
Another example is planned obsolescence: there's very little money in producing a product that has few returning customers because it continues to work fine for decades.
Saying "consumers" or "demand" or "your wallet" implies a level of agency and democratic control that isn't really there in practice. Consumers don't decide product success, profit and growth does. And consumers certainly don't get to make any direct decisions, they just get to pick through what has already been preselected for them.
Yes, a lot of "new"/"modern" companies that have shiny balance sheets with the colour black used, and not red, follow as you attribe. But there are plenty whom do not.
There are two schools of thought over this: they just don't care so it's fine or the wool has been pulled over their eyes.
The backlash from industry against laws that are largely just intended to inform consumers and keep them in the loop (like GDPR) kind of hints that it's not the former.
Consumers are especially bad at pricing risk. Just because they made a decision doesn't mean that they walked into those risks with open eyes.
Money decides hardware success. It may not come from a VC, but it's always the deciding factor.
You can still get transflective displays on Garmin fitness/hiking watches. They're great, because they allow for always-on display with more than a month of battery life. Some of their new consumer products are OLED that wake up when you turn your wrist, but the core audience really likes the transflective displays.
I do might the Timeline UI, it still is in my opinion the pinnacle of what a smartwatch OS should aim for. It focused to keep the core function of a watch (time and time-related events) at the top.
I also would love to tinker with the fw and be able to service parts. But providing each of those features is a tradeoff. The fw is primarily a cultural issue, but to some extent also a support one. I think that's where I would push harder - rather than the hw aspect. Replaceable batteries are either quite specific or incur a substantial space penalty (are any widely-available button cells rechargable?)
And apparently rechargable button cells do exist based on a quick google search, though i have no idea how widely available they are. But again, it's just an engineering problem that can be solved should the right people put their minds to it. I can't really design hardware, but I did write the firmware for a two man startup at one point, designing custom electronics for people with too much money. We always made the source available to the customer and made our stuff USB or JTAG programmable. Not that any of them actually cared, but we did!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[0] https://banglejs.com/
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/
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.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.espruino.gadgetbridge.ba...
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.
I love my Bangle.js 2, and have written my own watch face for it.
I use a Garmin smartwatch. One of the surprising things about Garmin is that they don't have a proper app store. They have an app where you can load apps into your watch, but it's rather crippled by having no payment system.
That would be fine if all the apps are free, but they're not: a lot of the prettier watch faces (for example) expect cash - but there's no easy way to pay for them. I recently added a watch face which stopped working after a few days because the author wanted cash sent through some dubious third party website.
I presume they do this to avoid issues with Android / Apple rules about payment, but it's a poor experience.
Garmin conducts themselves really well, too. They make good stuff and do little to lock it down: you don't have to use their cloud shit if you don't want (I do use it and like it), they created a peripheral standard in ANT+ that became widely adopted, without actually privileging their own stuff, etc.
The said they'd replace it for free and gave me a label to download (great!) However, I was travelling and the label wasn't valid for where I was. I asked if I could send it myself or get the label re-allocated when I got back (it had a time limit).
We then exchanged a dozen or so emails where Garmin CS kept ignoring my suggestions and giving me stupid instructions (terrible) until we eventually agreed they'd give me another label when I got back (ok).
I got back home and requested another label. CS demanded payment equivalent to the cost of a new watch (terrible!) I repeatedly asked why they were suddenly asking for payment when they'd previously offered it for free and they kept ignoring the question (argh!)
I'd have been much less annoyed if they'd just said up front that it was out of warranty, as then I wouldn't have wasted weeks and dozens of emails.
I eventually noticed that the original label still seemed to be valid, so I took up their original offer, sent my watch off and got an apparently new replacement within a day or two (great! I think.)
So, very mixed views! It's a lot like trying to write a Garmin app. They've got some nice API documentation (with a tutorial) but very incomplete as soon as you try to do something non-trivial.
And battery life...I can put it in low power mode and it just works as a watch until I want to record an activity. And it has power for ~a month that way.
Are you talking about Garmin Express?
If so, a "little clunky" would be a massive understatement based on my experience...
I love my Garmin watch, but I wish the Garmin software was lot more...usable.
I wear my Garmin all day, and charge it every other week. Physical buttons are a game changer, and the activity tracking software feels like it was made by someone that actually uses it.
Just get one without a screen. Iirc there are a bunch of G SHOCK digital watches that can show phone notifications. You can even get solar for a never ending battery life
Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.
There are quite a few settings that you can tweak as well, depending on the model of watch. My Descent has most things turned on during the day, but switches most off automatically using a power-save mode configured to match the "sleep" time on my phone. I think if it's set to minimum power usage, it's closer to a couple months. (Estimated battery time is typically shown in the watch face.)
Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours (mixed usage). Good grief.
It really introduced me to a new level of battery anxiety. I'm extremely satisfied with my garmin which lasts a week+ per charge.
Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode).
Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.
Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.
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.
---
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 then moved my interest to good old plain watches. Digital, mechanical, self-winding, manual-winding, hacking seconds, chronographs, divers, all that. It's a rich, complex, and beautiful world.
They can get as expensive or as affordable as you want, but for the price of one expensive smart watch you can get quite a nice collection of watches that you can combine with different styles of life and fashion.
I ended up going the other direction, I got an apple watch and just sucked it up and accepted that I'll toss it on the charger every morning. It has a lot of really good features (I can approve okta logins and get authy codes from my wrist, I can check weather and scroll around to browse the forecast, things like that).
I think there are two branches at this point post-pebble. You either get something that augments your phone with a couple benefits over a traditional watch, or you get something like Apple Watch that does many of the things your phone can do, saving you from spending time on the big screen.
For me there's strong value to the latter that makes up for the battery downsides: the powerful-but-focused app functionality means I can accomplish a task without getting pulled into other things. On a phone I find it all too easy to check the weather then start checking notifications and get sucked into news or something.
Literally wearing a fully functional Pebble Time as I write this. I also have a Pebble Time Steel (not wearing currently) also fully operational.
Less is more.
I hope the author realizes that Amazfit is owned by Huami which is a sister/sibling company of Xiaomi. And as of 2021 at least, they were the 3rd largest smartwatch maker after Apple and Samsung.[1] I'd expect their build quality to be at least quite decent on average, and my n=1 $60 Amazfit Bip is probably 4 years old now with absolutely no issues.
> I’m aware that there are cheaper alternatives out there like the Amazfit range but these watches were either too complex, or too basic, there was no middle ground.
AFAIK nearly all the fancier options can be turned off from the app. And apart from a very few models with (I think) 8 segment displays all of them satisfy the author's criteria of notifications + other features.
I sometimes wish Amazfit would advertise more because every "I want a simple smartwatch!" discussion ends up with "Aah I wish Pebble existed" comments, folks paying $$$ for Garmins/Fitbits and people bemoaning the battery life on Apple/Samsung watches. Just get an Amazfit Bip (original or S).
1 - https://www.gizmochina.com/2021/11/30/amazfit-becomes-third-...
For some this association might be offputting. My current phone is by Xiaomi, as was the previous one, but my next won't be. There is a pile of stuff you can't (easily) uninstall that keeps trying to run and wants all sorts of odd perms for their task, heck the default clock on this device wanted location access before letting me set an alarm! (I just installed a different app), and they get good battery life scores by being _very_ aggressive about killing apps which is a pain for some things you might want to keep running in the background.
Can these watches be used without the company's own cloud stuff, and/or an advert laden app, or is that forced on you like like the inexpensive (and sometimes not so inexpensive!) home cameras from Yi and similar manufacturers?
> I'd expect their build quality to be at least quite decent on average,
That is certainly true with the phones I've used. The hardware seems as solid as similar (usually more expensive) devices, including the cameras being pretty decent.
However, I’d not really recommend it, and probably wouldn’t buy it again, given the choice:
- very slow and buggy sync, which often takes a minute or longer to sync a day’s activity when sitting next to the phone running the Fitbit app in the foreground, and/or often fails. (This is the sort of crap that makes me appreciate e.g. AirPods just working)
- poor ability (and worse, to my memory, than very early Fitbits) to accurately determine the start and end of sleeping. Given sleep tracking is one of its standout features, this is very disappointing.
- probably, overly-sensitive sleeping tracking suggesting I wake multiple times in a (good) night, which other data would suggest isn’t the case.
- the ‘raise wrist to turn screen on’ feature almost never works. Not the end of the world because I’m used to double-tapping it instead, but another example of bad coding/QA.
- weird inaccuracies/oversights in exercise tracking. For example, it will correctly figure out that the recent two-hour block of raised heart rate was a bike ride, but will simultaneously credit me with 15000 steps during that time, presumably due to the vibrations from riding the bike, but not putting 2+2 together.
Since it can't even see the difference between being awake and sleeping, I absolutely don't trust anything it says about the amount of time I spend in each sleep phase.
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!
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/
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...
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 also ended up stumbling on https://github.com/lupyuen/pinetime-rust-mynewt which got me interested in rust which i'm using as a daily driver now and have fully ingested the rusty kool-aid
Besides the clock (retro analog dial with the numbers), and the date, the only Complication on the first watch face is the Timer. The Timer is the most productive tool that I have found. It is way easier to quickly set the timer for everything than use my brain for remembering the short-term events - such as making tea just before a meeting, boiling eggs, allowance time to people coming late to meetings, grocery aisle walks, and many other things.
I also have a second Watch Face used only when traveling outside of the country, a travel specific data and 2-3 complications.
I don't do phone calls (except a few allowed numbers), no notifications except a few, such as calendar and health app.
So, it is the simplest yet good Smartwatch for me. Sometimes, the battery dies - so, be it - the intermittent charging in between hand-washes, baths, washroom breaks, early morning, and during the wind-down routines are good enough to go round the clock.
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.
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
I do like the look of the "hybrid" watches that have physical hands.
I tested out and threw out smart watches. They are not for me. I love the freedom of a €125 dumb rugged square G Shock.
If I were a watch person I would definitely be a G-Shock person. I bought one for a brother more than 20 years ago when he joined the Army and needed a durable watch. His model charges by solar and syncs to local time via radio I think. No matter where he has traveled he always had the correct time. He told me that the watch has never had a problem and that he wouldn't consider "upgrading" to a smart watch which would tie him to a charger.
Casio makes excellent watches and their entry into the smart watch domain should be interesting. I bought the Garmin because of the battery life, feature set, and reliability and because I have used Garmin GPS devices and know them to be excellent devices. Casio has a similar reputation for quality and so they should be on anyone's short list of devices to consider.
My problem with the g shock line is it’s so expansive and hard to figure out which does what.
The g shock website doesn’t allow you to filter by phone notifications…
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).
He said than he have only tree requirements: Phone notifications, step counting & long battery life. But then faced with a Casio he said "Casio watches showed promise, but their limited notifications and unattractive styling didn’t meet my preferences for a more elegant design"...
His final choice may have been more because of the "elegant design" than his initial requirements. He confirm it more or less because he even "had to disable a ton of fitness tracking features that I’ll never use just so that I could do the things I wanted."
On my watch I'd only like notifications about meeting reminders, scheduled reminders, and possibly google maps notifications (directions) while biking. I don't want my watch to buzz when I get a message. I do want to see a badge / bubble on my phone though. With iPhone / Garmin, it's all or nothing.
time to upgrade to Apple Watch ;)
it has all that granularity, which is just awesome https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/change-notification-se...
With Garmin you can enable/disable which apps notify you. Right now I only have my task app, signal and calendar sending me notifications. Nothing else gets through.
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.
A simple strap (or ring, I guess) with a minimal electronics package, waterproof, long battery life, that sends data to my phone. Anyone? Is it not a business? Everything goes upmarket.
Oh, without a mandatory monthly fee, Oura.
I’m imagining a standard-looking watch strap with a small display that would sit just below the face of whichever analog watch it was attached to. It could have a thin bridge joining the two sides of the strap together, running underneath the watch - this isn’t a problem when wearing (for example) a NATO-style strap.
I was all ready to file a provisional when I found that smart buckle or whatever they called it.
All I want is a "fitness band" that will track heart rate, sleep patterns, what ever you can stuff in there and just sync it all to HealtKit next time it's in Bluetooth range of my phone. If I go for a run I want the tracking, but not the connectivity and I certainly never want to know the time.
https://www.whoop.com/
Why can't I just buy the device? I can't manage anymore subscriptions.
I'm surprised Apple Watch crammed so many sensors and still doesn't look half bad (I still don't like it :) )
https://nomos-glashuette.com/de
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.
However, some reviews here and there claim it does not do (satisfactorily) what it says on the tin.
- Anyone with direct experience?
There was also a ZeTime 2 announced by MyKronoz in 2019[b], but failure to launch is worrying...
[a] - https://www.mykronoz.com/eu/en/zetime.html
[b] - https://cdn-magento.mykronoz.com/media/wysiwyg/Press/press-a...
If you are interested, I'll let you have it for the cost of postage.
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 oled screen simulates a classical watch, so it's not hybrid, but for me it doesn't matter that much, I barely notice.
The app could be better integrated with other fitness app, but it works with the ones I use.
They have nothing to do with Amazon though.
Wait, Amazfit is not created by Amazon, right?
... but then I bought a Garmin, sold the 3D printer, and can focus my time on other things. I loved my Pebble, but I feel like the Garmin Instinct and Fenix 7 is probably a no brainer. Just a shame that Garmin don't have Pebble's app ecosystem even though their API looks not that bad.
I don't feel the need to upgrade to a newer version. The only motivator for me to upgrade an iPhone is usually the camera. I have the cell version of the watch, but have never used it because I have my phone with me.
It is a 10 bucks with digital screen (always on) 1 month battery, sleep, step, activity and heart beat tracker. You can enable notifications but that reduces the battery life.
They are hard to find now but if you like the design, for me is the best.
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.
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?
- The Forerunner 55 doesn't do SpO2 measurements.
- The 55's battery lasts me about a week, with 4-5 30 minute runs per week.
- The 55 goes on sale occasionally.
- The 55's screen could be much brighter. It's often hard to read the time and date.
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.
And than there are people who don't care about statement pieces and just want to wear whatever is most practical. And people who want to express themselves by wearing a smartwatch.
These are mostly considered to be low-status symbols. For men, in fact it is often recommended not to wear necklaces to a job interview, and hide any tattoos.
The watch basically says: I had a good job that paid well.
The lack of screen is awesome and I can't believe there aren't more watches out there like this!
Also, after 4 months of use the battery life is still around 100%.
https://www.fossil.com/en-in/products/hybrid-smartwatch-mach...
From what I read, you can do some more automation if it connects with an android watch, but I use iOS so I only get the out of box functionality -- which includes customizable display with information like heart rate, steps, and weather. Notifications with vibration and readable text. And probably my favorite thing, physical hands so it looks like a "normal" watch.