Hello.
For a long time I have considered smart watches to be a gimmick but since they have become more accessible and common now for some time, I was wondering what the people who own and use them think of them?
So what has your experience been of them?
One thing I am curious about is how functional these (especially the Android ones) are without being connected to a phone via bluetooth since bluetooth drains battery?
I’m using a fossil HR hybrid, the battery lasts a long time, it has e-ink screen, it has the style of a classic watch but I get notifications. I think it’s the best compromise
IMO, it’s completely unnecessary if you have a smartphone, which you probably do, and almost anything a smart watch can do, a phone can do better.
Also, other than one smartwatch made by Pine64, none of them allow libre operating systems, at least not without some major hacking, so you have no idea how much tracking they’re doing. Get the Pine64 one if you really want a smart watch.
I use my Pinetime daily with WaspOS. It’s been great, but it’s definitely not at the same tier as a mainstream smart watch. I see it as a handy tool for telling the time, acting as a flashlight for really dark rooms, and doing alarms. WaspOS does support notifications but only with android devices. I think once I start using my Pinephone as a daily driver in a month or two I will switch to Infinitime which has more features and has a native app for the Pinephone.
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They are unnecessarily expensive. I’ve had a few big-name fitness bands. They were OK. Nothing too exciting. A few months ago I bought a Xiaomi Band 5 for $29. It’s great. Small, comfortable, does what I want, and it’s cheap. I bought two more for $27 each.
Without being connected to a smartphone, it’s essentially just a watch with a heart rate sensor.
Yeah I was wondering what kind of privacy nightmare it must be but by simply not connecting it to any device should prevent it from calling home, right? Unless they have hotspots around the world that the watch can automatically connect to but that just sounds paranoid.
The hotspots would then be the other Xiaomi bands or devices (that likely connect to the internet), right?
I love my Amazfit GTS mini 2. I have had plenty of them but I don’t like smartwatches, I like fitness trackers. I think the smartness as others said is useless because you already have the phone, you take more time reading a message from a tiny screen rather than just checking the phone.
The fitness part of it, I love it. Amazfit and other smartwatches have PAI, which are points for your heart rate, basically, game addictive mechanics into improving your health, I do anything to get that score up.
Still a gimmick IMO. My casio f-91w is going on 7 years now, it doesn’t scratch, I can shower with it, has a 10+ year battery life, and cost $10.
It also doesn’t have biometric sensors that siphon off information about your body and send it to some corporation. I’d say that’s a pretty big feature (or, lack of an anti-feature?).
We’re very lucky some companies are still willing to still make non spying consumer electronics. Seems like TVs, thermostats, refrigerators, ovens, coffee makers, all have “smart” spying now.
I absolutely hate that there are no more consumer-level “dumb” TVs.(Edit: apparently there are, see the reply to this comment) Is not having a company know exactly what I’m watching even if it’s playing from an attached set top box or PC really too much to ask? (You probably know this already, but yes, they can do that. I’m think they don’t actually send off screenshots but rather diffuse pixel values from all over the screen? But still.)I mean there are dumb ones, but they’re commercial models and actually more expensive at the same resolution and refresh rate. Guess it’s because they’re designed for 24/7 operation but that’s honestly pointless for a home entertainment setup specifically.
I’ve been trying to convince my family to take our living room TV off Wi-Fi and just get a cheap set top box for YouTube and Netflix for a while now. Yes it still tracks you, but at least I can have some peace of mind that what we do on the attached PC, which has a lot of our family’s personal files, isn’t being spied on by the freaking TV of all things.
Oh dumb TVs still exist. See? All though I don’t know why you would want one, TV is a relic at this point. Today all you need is a PC and optionally a smartphone by which I mean PinePhone or Librem5 :)
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I guess second hand is all you got.
The TV as a specific device is a relic, but a PC or smartphone is not suitable for family viewing. There are still some differences between tvs and monitors, but hopefully we can eventually just get rid of the two separate categories in favor of a single display category.
I might get something like this. I already have a Casio analogue+digital watch and while it looks cool, things like stopwatch and timer are needlessly hard to use. Would like something like this so I don’t have to take the phone to gym.
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I’ve had to replace mine’s band. But its pretty incredible how cheap yet long-lasting these things are.
Are we talking about the same watch? 😂
I’m not very good at taking care of it, that’s true. I go through one every or every other year. Only my first one lasted 5 years until the battery ran out (and that only barely).
A smartwatch wouldn’t last a week on my arm 😅
How the eff did u do that! I’ve dropped a weight on mine before accidentally and it came out okay.
Def gives you peace of mind when it’s so cheap tho, $10 is like 3 bags of chips.
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They are worthless things profiting off of people’s laziness. When I asked people why they used these for they told me it was for fitness and looking at their notifications, pulling the phone out of their pockets is too hard of a task apparently.
wow a phone in your pocket? Truly lazy why not walk to a phone booth or deliver the message in person.
why not walk to a phone booth or deliver the message in person.
…I don’t think you have any idea how stupid these arguments are.
First of phone booths are nowhere to be found these days, also the things we carry on our pockets have little to do with the thing Graham Bell invented. They are pocket PCs at this point, having a smartphone removes the need for a camera and an mp3 player and allows you to do a ton of stuff on the go. And you can access your mobile phone anywhere, unlike a phone booth.
Delivering a message to someone in person can take hours (months if they are in another city and years if they are in an other country). Carrying one with yourself fixes a ton of issues you might have otherwise had.
A smartwatch doesn’t fix any problems, and only convenient thing about is a total joke. Looking at notifications without pulling your phone, are you kidding me? That saves you like one second! What else can it do? It literally runs Android, it can’t do anything your phone can. I would understand if you buy one to replace your phone since they can do phone calls and allow you to view images, video and listen to music. If that’s all you need you may prefer those over a phone due to cheaper price. But paying money for a dedicated device just to view your notifications and doing fitness instead of pulling your phone out of your pocket and using a fitness app is stupid.
All of the limitations you’re describing are part of the point, from what I understand (I don’t have one myself). Interacting with notifications without pulling your phone out is supposed to help keep you focused. A common complaint with smartphones recently is that they’ve affected attention spans and peoples relationship to empty time. If you can’t get sucked into twitter, facebook, email threads, etc on a smartwatch, there’s less risk in checking a notification.
What kind of sense does that make? Smartphones grab your attention too much, so use this other thing that grabs your attention instead. How about just turning off notifications? At least for specific apps?
Smartphones grab your attention too much, so use this other thing that grabs your attention instead A smart watch doesn’t have much functionality on its own so when it grabs your attention, you respond and move on. With a smartphone, people tend to respond to one thing and then continue to use the smartphone. Turning off notifications doesn’t solve that, because the notifications are what users want to respond to on the smartwatch.
It sounds like you don’t have the problems smartwatches address, so they’re probably not for you. But that doesn’t mean they’re not useful for other people.
If you are concerned about privacy, Pine64 makes a (pricey) watch: https://pine64.com/product/pinetime-dev-kit/?v=0446c16e2e66
pricey = high in price, do you mean cheap?
I meant expensive: $25 for a developer kit with only accelerometer and heart rate sensor.
I bet it’s the cheapest open-source smart watch
Most likely because it’s the only one…
