I absolutely love the look of these watches, and they don’t look too thick, which is surprising with that kind of battery life. $600 though…
No posts in over a year? The smart watch really is dead. I’m on vacation in Japan for a month and didn’t bring my Pebble as its sort of on the fritz with the infamous screen tearing issues and I’ve ended up missing several messages from my wife so all of a sudden I have a hankering to get the Gear Sport. It looks like a terrific watch and one that isn’t ridiculously big on one’s wrist. It seems like Tizen has it together compared with Wear OS. I wonder if there’s something better coming out soon though.
I use my LTE Apple Watch Series 3 daily to monitor my elevated heart rate.
Yeah I wouldn’t call it exactly dead. I use my LTE series 3 every day and see lots of Apple watches in the wild.
Pebble was acquired by Fitbit and Fitbit just released a new smartwatch called Versa, probably it’s a child of the old Pebble.
I love my Apple Watch (series 2) and don’t like being without it. Sadly, my Pebble Steel is in a drawer somewhere.
Android Wear’s platform has stagnated, hobbled by its dependence on the Qualcomm Snapdragon whatever they made just for smart watches but never iterated on. Most Android OEMs have abandoned refreshes of Android Wear devices in 2017. Google recent attempted to rebrand it is all.
I have been wearing the same Citizen Skyhawk Eco-Pro since 2005. Every time I think about getting a smartwatch, I’m not sure what role it would play in my life. Not allowed to have a phone at work, anyway, so I guess that makes it less useful. : - /
I own the original Pebble and the Pebble Time Steel. For me they are the only smartwatches I’m interested in. They last long (5-7 days on a single charge), they do what I want (mute/unmute phone, messages on a glance, controlling music player, google maps navigation to your watch and a couple of other things), are always on and were quite inexpensive (I got the first one for 90€ and the second one for about 100€ or so). Also they don’t have touch controls but buttons which I consider to be an advantage.
So I’m sad because of Pebble’s demise as there is nothing comparable. In June the servers are shutdown, which isn’t that bad (only thing that’ll stop working for android users is voice recognition) but you’ll have to make backups of your Pebble apps and watchfaces as the store will be shut down, too.
How so? Without touch controls isn’t it difficult to start apps? Or doesn’t the Pebble have many? The Apple Watch would almost be unusable without touch.
Pebble have a 4 physicals buttons and you navigate the menu and launch app through the buttons… much like how Casio watches behaved. The buttons are super reliable and doesn’t fail… which made it quite compelling vs touch.
For me it’s way easier to use that way. There are four buttons that you can find without looking at them. Makes it easy to mute your phone during a meeting without anyone noticing for example. So it’s very easy to handle.
Similarly, Pebble’s always-on e-Ink allows you to glance at your watch without needing to be obvious about it. Gosh, I miss Pebble… but Apple Watch is my new love now. I am REALLY liking its Workout tracking app.
Still use the Garmin Fenix 3 every day. Lasts a pretty long time as a “smartwatch”, a week minimum or longer depending on how much i run. Because it always seems like my phone is getting set to silent mode for whatever reason, often it seems like i’m catching texts and calls on the watch rather than the phone itself.
It’s big though. Big enough i need to take it off to work on the laptop comfortably.
If anyone wants to let me live vicariously through them, the Samsung Gear Sport is only $229 at Amazon right now.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Sport-Smartwatch-Bluetooth-SM-R600NZKAXAR/dp/B075X35D8M
It seems that Pebble lost to the sports and fitness aspect of other smartwatches. For me it’s just a very convenient watch for my normal office life. And when I’m abroad I enjoy it not having to look at my phone for google maps but just to check my watch now and then. Makes me a less obvious tourist ;-)
Sadly, I’ve pretty much tried all of the available smart watches and I keep coming back to the Apple Watch Series 3. I don’t understand why other smart watch companies cannot get an AW modular watch face correct (one that shows next appointment, weather, fitness, etc.). Closest I came was the LG LTE smart watch but that is too big and suffered the dreaded disappearing watch face bug. The Samsung Gear S3’s built in watch face came close, but no next appointment on its version of a modular watch face. Android and Tizen third party watch faces had very spotty weather sync for some reason. Fitbit Iconic is actually my second choice (they have the best third party weather watch face) but it is much more of a fitness watch than smart watch (and no next appointment on the watch face).
I am probably that rare person where the smart watch drove my cel phone choice. I really wanted to stick with my Note 8, but constant software/hardware conflicts (Samsung Health does not sync anymore with MyFitness Pal or Nokia Health’s wireless scale) slowly forced me back to Apple’s much less chaotic mobile world.
Take a look at the Garmin Vivoactive. I really like mine. Several days of battery life, good selection of apps and features. I mainly use mine for ‘find my phone’, text and calendar notifications, the time and date, step count, activity tracking, and weather.
I’d say the Apple watch is superior but I prefer Android phones.
I picked up a fitbit versa, as it seems to have a decent battery life.
First impressions, it’s nice, and not huge, which is a big thing I look for in smartwatches, because I don’t generally like big watches… for traditional watches, I generally wear Seikos.
The software seems a bit flakey… the initial pairing process, for instance, did not go smoothly. I had to shut down my phone completely and then boot it up after a few minutes, because it was supposedly out of sync with the time servers, and thus had problems logging into Fitbit’s servers? This seems like a nonsensical explanation from fitbit, and this problem has been reported going back at least until 2014, and they never fixed it… but whatever.
The tracking of my bike ride into work today worked well enough though.
On some level, I was disappointed that it didn’t sync with map my ride… but the fitbit app tracks most of the same stuff, so I guess it’s ok? Overall, the total number of available apps is pretty small compared to android wear.
We’ll see how long the battery lasts.
Apple rumored to be removing physical buttons from the Apple Watch. My first thought was ‘what a horrible idea!’ Then I remembered the iPhone X and figure it’s probably not a big deal. With haptic feedback done right, I don’t think I would miss them. Although I do like the crown for scrolling quickly through long emails, etc.