Hacker News Reader

The question is does this opinion comes from experience, or from assumption?

Having an Apple Watch now for about 6 months, I can say I love it, and none of those things (and I shared the same skepticism before buying one) have proven to be issues.

I don't tend to look at my watch when I sleep - so that one's easy, and when you charge the watch its in a mode that gives off a low-light time (nightstand mode, i think they call it). On top of that, it takes about an hour to charge, so often I end up charging it during my night time regiment, and by the time I go to bed, i COULD wear it (if i need to make sure I'm up early for something, i wear it so i get the vibration)

If you want a traditional watch, then get a traditional watch - comparing it to a traditional watch and holding to the same standards is not a position of common sense...

I didn't think I would like charging a watch every day, but I have the watch charger next to my phone charger, and I charge my phone every night, so... it works for me.

But then, I hate having to charge my phone every night... When are we going to have a major advance in battery life?

"comparing it to a traditional watch and holding to the same standards is not a position of common sense"

Totally agree, the old Nokia phones used to last entire week with a single charge, I don't see people hanging on to it.

I've seen many skeptics who end up actually likeing smart watches after using them.

Everyone I've known who has had a smartwatch has basically liked it (including people who have Android Wear smartwatches).

Only one person I've known who's had a smartwatch has told me that they were worth the money. In general, the consensus has been "Given that I have it, I like it. But it's not a big enough deal to be worth several hundred dollars."

> If you want a traditional watch, then get a traditional watch - comparing it to a traditional watch and holding to the same standards is not a position of common sense...

I don't think this is accurate. Someone brought up a comparison of smartphone to a Nokia phone, but this is not the same kind of comparison. A smartphone greatly simplified user interface and made accessing the internet and sharing much easier, and also created new ways of interacting (swiping etc). Whereas, the watch seems to be very featureful sure, but the internet is already accessible using your phone. And the added worry of carrying yet another charger when traveling (and the horror of losing it...). Now, a traditional watch, you don't worry about it for YEARS, not a week. Its mostly another ornament, like a cap or a shirt.

It may be a difference in temperament. But personally, I like to reduce things in my life which require any form of attention: because I forget things very easily (or am just too lazy to do them).

Also, this may not apply to everyone, but there is simply too many beautifully crafted wristwatches out there for me to ever seriously consider a smartwatch.

"It may be a difference in temperament. But personally, I like to reduce things in my life which require any form of attention: because I forget things very easily (or am just too lazy to do them)."

That was exactly my primary concern. In practice though, you (well, I, and most people) charge my phone at night. I set it next to the bed and plug it in... now my watch charger is right next to my phone charger, so its a no-brainer (and the wristband is fast on/off - thats important to me). Turns out because of the phone, i had no new habit to get into :)

Experience. I have a Samsung Gear Fit 2 (or something like that) watch from about 2 years ago.

I would say that most smartwatches are indeed a parody of real watches. They certainly do not have feature parity with their traditional competitors.

I saw that typo too. I assumed auto-correct boned him, and opted to skip the english lesson.

> [I] opted to skip the english lesson.

Good, because of the pot and kettle thing.

For the non-native English speakers, or for the native but non-US speakers, this was a very interesting misspelling. A lot of native US speakers pronounce the two words absolutelly in the same way. The British pronounciation is a bit different, as I suspect to be the case in many other English speaking countries. Even in the US not everyone pronounces the 't' in "parity" the same as the 'd' in "parody", I would estimate it's about fifty-fifdy.

Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.

Don't worry about it. We all understood what you meant. I couldn't pass up the opportunity for a pun though.

For you I'd suggest checking out what Pebble has been doing. Battery life is about 7-10 days on some models, and has an 'always on' display.

This would have been my response. I've got a Pebble and I charge it ~2hrs a week and the time is always visible.

For these reasons, for me, Pebble was the only smartwatch that appealed to me, hardware-wise, but it's worth noting that the ToS on their Pebble software is ridiculously anti-privacy. There's an alternative app on Android that is privacy-conscious (gadget bridge), but it's still a work in progress (and they have to reverse engineer everything on the device).

I'm still happy enough with being able to more or less customize my watchface, but if you both care about your privacy and want to make serious use of the "smart" smartwatch features, I don't think there's currently anything on the market for you.

Can you make payments with the Pebble? Turn on the computer when you come in proximity?

No.

No, but for parity with a standard wrist watch the Pebble is your best bet.

You can auto-unlock an Android phone with the Pebble via stock Android. (no passcode required with a Bluetooth connection to a certain device)

I agree with you. I have a mechanical Rolex watch with an automatic winder. I can keep it on my wrist 24/7, even at night. It glows in the dark. I can instantly see the time when I look at the watch. There is no smartwatch in the world that matches these features. And it does all this without me ever having to "charge" it. Yes, I do have to adjust the time once a week because it runs about 1 second fast per day. But that takes me about 5 seconds/week to adjust.

No Smartwatch for me, I think my mechanical watch is much smarter.

Does your Rolex show you your email?

It does not. For that I have my iPhone. Which your "smartwatch" needs too.

I agree. I think the mistake made by the industry is selling them as "watches" and not gadgets like bands or wearables in general.

A watch should be good to tell the time. smartwatches are a throwback to the 70's where you had to press a little button.

I feel the same way. My watch is a solar powered waterproof (200m) chunk of titanium and sapphire with a radio inside that sets itself every night. It is practically indestructible. It will run the rest of my life. I will never have to set it. I will never have to remove from my wrist (barring an MRI or some other fringe context).

It's also beautiful. It's the only thing I wear, other than my wedding ring, that could be considered jewelry. I'm going to give it to my son some day. And at that moment, perhaps 40-60 years from now, it will still be a functional work of art.

I look at smart watches vs. dumb watches and just think it's a bunch of total nonsense. Eventually, yes, they will likely get their, but it's going to 50-something years from now when it's cheaper to put a super computer in something than it is to leave it out.

>The biggest issue for me with the "smartwatch" is that they don't have feature parody with dumb watches. I've had many watches in the past and the battery lasts for years. I can also turn my wrist and see the time instantly. Who would have thought?

The same happens with e.g. paper vs computer. With paper the "battery" lasts forever. But you tradeoff some things to get other stuff.

>What I get now is some piece of crap that needs to be charged every night. So I basically have no features while I'm sleeping. I can't just wake up in the middle of the night an instantly know what the time is.

Well, you probably have your phone next to you, your alarm clock next to the bed, and several other clocks nearby in the bedroom.

"Well, you probably have your phone next to you, your alarm clock next to the bed, and several other clocks nearby in the bedroom."

So I should supplement my smart watch with other devices in order to know what time it is? Makes $ense.

>So I should supplement my smart watch with other devices in order to know what time it is? Makes $ense.

In order to know what time it is:

  (1) at bed at night && 

  (2) if you haven't kept it charged &&

  (3) if you don't charge it by the bedstand

One could see oneself suffering this huge inconvenience when sleeping if they value the other things their smartwatch does when it's charged and their are not at bed at night...

Besides, no reason to buy a smartwatch for its timekeeping, you could just as well buy a $10 Casio watch and be done with it. Or one of those alarm-clock/radio bedstand thingies.

Do people wear dumb watches to bed just so they know what time it is when they wake up in the middle of the night? I take my watch off to sleep.

Yeah, I do. I don't set an alarm, I just get up when I wake up. Sometimes I wake up at 4:00 instead of 7:00, the watch tells me to go back to sleep. No way would I use a phone for that - I set it on silent in case a group chat blows up in the middle of the night, but if I saw the notifications I'd have to check them. At 4am. Ugh.

No(t only). People wear traditional watches to bed because they have waterproof watches and couldn't be bothered with taking them off, and don't set their strap/bracelet too tight.

>People wear traditional watches to bed because they have waterproof watches and couldn't be bothered with taking them off

What does the watch being waterproof have to do with wearing it in bed?

Not that. Watch being waterproof has to do with not needing to take it off. For shower, specifically, but this extends to sleep as well.

That's why I love e-ink. I've charged my Kindle about four times this year, if you don't count the couple minutes here and there when I plug in to move new books on. Although you probably ought to, since that's usually enough to top the battery off.

I use a pebble. It has a battery life of about a week, but if I forget to charge it for a day after it tells me it needs charging it still works fine, and it charges pretty fast even if I charge it during the day. It displays the time 24/7 and all I have to do is jiggle my wrist to light up the backlight if it's dark outside. It shows me notifications from my phone which makes it easy to keep track of what's going on and which notifications I actually need to take action on or reply to. When I go bike riding and use Strava it switches over to show me the time, distance, etc. for my ride, which is super convenient. Overall it ends up being very useful for me.

Most of the smart- era is a regression in street UI. All old devices were static, touch driven, instantaneous, no brainers. No I have to look, swipe, wait, dig, to do anything. Nails.

Conversely, I have stopped wearing other watches because I believe my rather rudimentary smartwatch has made them obsolete.

The device in question is a Fitbit fitness tracker. The killer feature regarding the battery is the ratio of life to charging time, viz that I can wear it all day and all night (gaining sleep tracking and, best of all, a silent vibrating alarm) and keep the battery topped up in the duration of a daily shower. Not 24/7, but 23.6/7 easily.

This is typical of any new thing, no?

It has to solve SOME problem that some subset of people care about so intensely that you don't mind the many ways in which it is not as mature as the incumbent.

It's clear that the current smart watches do not accomplish this for you. That's ok as long as there is an initial target audience for which they do. Whether that is the case right now.. well, we'll see.

I think it's pretty clear that there is some group that is getting value out of smartwatches. The 1st-gen Apple Watch sold 10-20M units, which is more than all Apple 2 PCs combined. And many of those users are quite satisfied (I am).

The tricky part is that they face a crossing-the-chasm problem now. The initial group of users is happy - but does that generalize to all users? Is it worth continuing to invest money into what's currently a niche market? Tivos, Blackberries, WebTV, 1st-gen PCs all found success in an early adopter market that was roughly as large as the smartwatch market is now, but it took a major re-envisioning of the concept before they became a mainstream product that all customers wanted.

> What I get now is some piece of crap that needs to be charged every night. So I basically have no features while I'm sleeping. I can't just wake up in the middle of the night an instantly know what the time is.

I sleep with my Apple Watch on every night. I use it in tandem with my phone as an alarm clock. (That's actually incredibly useful. I haven't slept through an alarm a single time since I started doing this.)

It needs to be charged once per 24 hour period, but it doesn't have to be charged at night. I pop mine on the charger in the morning when I get ready for the day (shower, etc.) and at night when I get ready for bed. That's all it takes for me to keep it charged. It's never died on me in a year. In fact, it's never even entered power saving mode, which will retain the features of a "dumb" watch (telling the time) which you stated you desired at night.

"feature parody"

Some might say that's exactly what they have :)

Have you seen the Mondaine Helvetica? https://www.mondaine.com/watches/mondaine-helvetica/helvetic...

Traditional look, smart features, and 2-year battery life.

Smart features? Plural? Not really. It's a basic watch with one extra red hand that can track your steps for the day; that's it. Very nice watch, however; I love Mondaine's design. But let's not pretend this is at all comparable to Apple Watch.

that watch is gorgeous... I'm drooling. But I can't get over the $950 price tag for a quartz watch.

Quartz watches can be just as beautifully executed as mechanical watches. Grand Sieko watches being the case in point: http://www.grand-seiko.com/movement/quartz.php

> Let me know when battery life is within a couple of orders of magnitude of real watches, then maybe I'll revisit.

Check out Vector Watch. It's more like a traditional watch that is also smart (it tells you when you got a phone call, an email, a meeting etc), the battery lasts for more than 30 days and it's always on.

I wear my Seiko 5 every day, I need to set the day once every other month and the time once every ~3 weeks, it winds perpetually.

After the world is over, I'll still be able to tell time.

I would love a smart watchband so I can get meeting alerts but I don't see a way they can make a smartwatch that beats my $100 mechanical.

I love mechanical watches too and have been looking for something that combines some smartwatch functionality with a good mechanical watch; have you seen Chronos?

https://wearchronos.com/

that's actually very intriguing! The only thing that worries me is, I'd be concerned about tapping my mechanical watch dozens of times a day. Tapping can exert surprising amount of force to tiny movement pieces.

Agreed -- same worries for the vibration. But for something like light notifications alone...

I'd have to get one and try it out first, though; it seems like a reasonable compromise.

As timekeeping devices, the Casio G-Shock devices with solar charging and WWWV setting are hard to beat. Rugged, waterproof, etc. Prices start around $55. All they do is tell time, without requiring any attention or maintenance.

> I can also turn my wrist and see the time instantly.

My Moto360 turns on instantly when I flip the wrist.

> I can't just wake up in the middle of the night an instantly know what the time is.

The Moto360 charging on its cradle shows the time pretty much like an ordinary stationary clock. It glows softly in the dark and shows you the time. It's a lot more visible that way compared to an old wristwatch.

> Let me know when battery life is within a couple of orders of magnitude of real watches

That is a legitimate complaint.

However, showing time is much less important nowadays, I think. Pretty much anything that uses electricity can show you the time. In my kitchen, there's something like 3 time displays visible at once. My wife's car has two (one is the old car clock, the other is from the new radio I've installed a while ago).

The reason why I wear a smartwatch is to avoid having to pull out the phone every time I get a notification. That, IMO, is the killer app of the smartwatch. I get the notification sound, just flip the wrist; decide whether it needs attention, and act accordingly or ignore. Done. Super-useful.

I agree that as timepieces alone the smartwatches are a regression.

Here is an article about user perception about smart watch market: https://feedcheck.co/blog/smartwatches-quality-by-consumer-p...

They should include a small digital watch under the glass UNATTACHED to the OS, so it has the features of a watch, and additional features while powered

"real" watches, i.e. an automatic, never need charging. even if you let it sit for days until the spring unwinds, you just put it on, shake your wrist, and it starts ticking again.

my casio digitals are solar. life is too short to replace or charge watch batteries. i mean, this problem was solved nearly a century ago.

the cheapest automatics are made by seiko and are barely $50. solars are cheaper.

i'll never buy a smartwatch until they're one or the other. watches should not have batteries or any other design feature that renders them useless on purpose.

They are called smart watches, because mr smart has to watch them all the time. Leave it alone for too long? No time for you.

Feature parity.