same, and then after a year or so of occasionally going out and taking a mobile phone with me, which I have zero use for, just to tell the darned time, I got a nice watch, self-winding, and I love it. I dont have to boot it, keep it charged or worry about losing it or it being stolen. I have no idea where my phone is, and havent charged it for months. I’m not the secretary of state for defense, so I doubt anyone has to get hold of me so urgently it cant wait until I check my email.
Watches rock. Phones suck.
Why invent something? For historical tidiness sake, we should just re-appropriate “Ahoy-hoy”.
So reviews are coming out and they are… not overwhelmingly positive. It seems like a 7 out of 10 sort of first-gen product.
The basic constraint of CPU power, streaming data from your actual phone, and battery life are things that Apple just solved, but only just. I thought i was going to get one of these but because the workout/health parts of it seems so flaky, i might actually try one of those Microsoft Bands instead. I’m surprised when reviews seem to complain about the heart rate monitor being significantly off.
If by “just solved” you mean “just managed to last to the end of the day by the skin of its teeth” then yes, I suppose they did. But all of the other watch makers have gotten flak for only having a one day battery (or even longer) so Apple shouldn’t be absolved.
I’m going to get one, but it’ll definitely be the cheapest one that I can stand (42mm instead of 38mm aluminum Sport). I was considering a stainless steel model but dropped that idea once I read a bunch of reviews. People have been gifting me Apple Store gift cards since they want me to be their guinea pig on this, and from what I’ve read they are wise to let someone else go first. It’s an early adopter product to the max and will only be getting better in future iterations.
I want one because I want to see what it’s like to move my notifications to my wrist, and because I hate how my heart rate monitor strap chafes my ribs when I run. I’ve done a lot of the notification pruning already, so I’m not concerned about that criticism. The lag in displaying apps is going to bug me, as will the delay in showing the time when wrist raising. But I do really hope it will curtail my phone use, especially around my kids.
TLDR: I’m getting one, but I love to be on the bleeding edge. I owned a goddamn Microsoft SPOT watch.
That’s surprising about the optical heart rate monitor. The ones by Mio are pretty accurate. My tomtom multisport watch which licensed the tech from mio is pretty spot on. Yes, the heart rate strap can go die in a fire! I used one for about a year and pretty much hated the thing. Once you go optical you can never go back.
Oh yeah. None of the reviews I read mentioned the HR monitor being off. Can anyone link me to an article that says that? My friend who works at TomTom has told me the most common user problem with these optical sensors is that people don’t wear the bands tight enough. I suspect that’s what’s going on.
I won’t be pre-ordering but I’ll be watching to see how Apple addresses the problems with the watch in future patches. I’m mostly leaning on waiting for 2nd gen on this one, or at least until you can install natively compiled 3rd party apps. I saw a video of a 3rd party app taking an unacceptable amount of time to load (over Bluetooth, I guess). You could pull out your iPhone and accomplish the same task before the app loads on your watch. Apple says this will be fixed by the 24th so we’ll see.
My tomtom multisport is also very good in that regard. Cool piece of kit.
My brother’s stand-alone Mio is crap, however, by his account. He is going back to his HR strap for the Paris marathon he is about to compete in.
I expect that next year, smart watches are gonna get a good deal better… maybe two years from now.
Right now, they’re cool, but the battery life limitations kind of suck.
My first mio link kept dropping bluetooth connection constantly. I talked to support quite a bit. In the end I just exchanged it for another one where I bought it and this 2nd one works much better. But since I got the tomtom I haven’t used it much.
My guess is apple developed their own heart rate optical sensor. Does anybody know for sure?
I am a diagnosable chronic early adopter, and I had put aside money for this, but it’s moving over to the drone fund. <homer>Mmmm… Phantom 3</homer>
The killers for me are:
[ul]
[li]Battery life. After using a Pebble (4-6 days depending on usage) for so long, even the 2-day charge of my MS Band annoys me. Plus, short battery life means sleep tracking’s not really an option.
[/li][li]Display is not always on. One of the things I love about the Pebble is that I can glance at the time or a notification without having to touch/move anything. Nice for not overtly looking like you’re anxious to get out of a meeting, etc. Didn’t realize it until Apple’s latest vidoes, but the screen only comes on when you raise your wrist.
[/li][li]Water resistance. You can’t wear it swimming, in the shower, etc. MS Band has the same issue. I like tracking exercise when swimming, and not having to worry about someone stealing my watch at the beach.
[/li][li]
[/li][/ul]
I have a Pebble Time Steel coming from Kickstarter (my kid now has my OG Pebble and I’m currently using the MS Band, which is an amazing fitness tracker except for the water resistance issue). It’s not as powerful as the Apple Watch, and it won’t get the app support Apple will, but addresses all of the issues listed above:
[ul]
[li]10-day battery life. I can easy go a week’s vacation without bringing yet another charging cable. And do stuff like sleep tracking, etc.
[/li][li]Always-on display. I really like the way Pebble handles notifications, too, leaving them onscreen until dismissed. If I’m talking in a meeting and my kid texts me, I can look down 20 seconds later to make sure it’s not an emergency, etc.
[/li][li]Water resistant down to 40m, way better than I’ll ever need.
[/li][li]Looks. I think the Apple Watch is pretty unattractive. The Pebble Time Steel looks a lot better the original Pebbles. I still think the Moto 360 wins in the looks department, but I’m not an Android guy.
[/li][li]
[/li][/ul]
I just can’t see sinking the kind of cash this is going to require into a device that’s likely to get a lot better in v2. I just look at my OG iPod Touch, with no freaking speaker, if I get tempted.
There are some cool ideas here, and if I’m still in the Apple phone ecosystem then, I imagine by the time they refine them to v3 I’ll be pulled in.
But for now, the Pebble Time Steel looks like it does the key things I want from a smartwatch (notifications and fitness tracking) very well, with a nice color screen. Perhaps someone will come up with a killer app for Apple Watch that will change my mind, but for now, my early adopter reflex isn’t triggering.
Display is not always on. One of the things I love about the Pebble is that I can glance at the time or a notification without having to touch/move anything. Nice for not overtly looking like you’re anxious to get out of a meeting, etc. Didn’t realize it until Apple’s latest vidoes, but the screen only comes on when you raise your wrist.
Is this always the case?
With my zenwatch, for instance, I can set it to be “always on”, where it’s always on in a dim, low-power mode. Basically, it shows a simplified greyscale image on the watch face, and I can customize what is shown in that mode to conserve power (more info uses more power).
Then, when I turn my wrist, the watch switches to “normal” mode.
I had assumed the apple watch would have a similar mode.
I personally suspect that smart watches aren’t going to get a lot better over the coming year or two, improvements in battery technology, displays, and CPUs are incremental these days.
The Pebble looks great for certain uses, I kind of want one and I like the extra battery life. But lets not kid ourselves, if Apple had come out with a e-ink watch with a 10 day battery, people would be hysterical about how crappy it is, and how no-one minds charging their gadget overnight.
I still want one of these, but I’m still going to have to wait until fall until I should spend the money on it. Maybe longer depending on how much money I have to drop on Rock Band.
Maybe consider the Fitbit Surge? I have one, and am pretty happy with it. It has an optical reader which is pretty accurate. (I haven’t compared to a strap, but the numbers are definitely ballpark close, which is good enough for me.) It displays text messages (but not other notifications). GPS is built-in, so you don’t need your phone when you go run. You can even use it to control your music in case you do bring your phone along. Time is always displayed.
No apps, though; it’s fitness first and not a true smartwatch. Also, it’s slightly chunkier than I’d like. Battery lasts for 4-5 days though (without GPS, which is a battery-destroyer).
i wish the jawbone up24’s great app had the display of a fuelband and the battery life of a garmin vivofit.
I have actually been looking into the Garmin Fenix 3, fyi, for a more fitness oriented watch.
I’ve been Fitbits for awhile now. First a Fitbit ONE, and then a Fitbit Flex. I’ve had consistent issues where they lose their ability to hold a charge after awhile, and although Fitbit support has been amazing about replacing all of them without charging me (well out of warranty period), I’ve decided I’ve had enough of their products for now. Besides, part of the fun will be the apps. For as much as I know there will be a lot of crap, I really do want Siri on my wrist for adding things to my shopping list, and I’m incessantly checking the weather on my phone, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the watch does for me there. A Surge just won’t cut it at this point, although I’m pretty sure it the better “pure fitness” device.
Well, while CPU’s performance improvements are incremental, there have been fairly dramatic improvements in the power efficiency of them in recent times, haven’t there?
I think that’s pretty much the missing piece at this point… they don’t need to be more powerful, and the battery doesn’t necessarily need to store more power, if you can just make them more efficient.
My current smartphone is WAY more powerful than my last one, but has the same battery life.