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Comment by dstaley | Hacker News Reader

There's only three things I want in a smartwatch:

1. Resemble an actual, reasonably sized watch.

2. Display notifications from my phone along with their actions (such as marking an email as "Done" in Inbox, or liking a Tweet).

3. Allow me to respond with my voice for notifications that support quick replies.

The Pebble Time Round was great at all three, and (as far as I know) was the only watch to have the features that I wanted in a form factor that resembled a reasonably-sized watch. The only other alternatives currently are Android Wear watches, all of which don't look like the kinds of watches I like to wear (they're thick, with large bezels and superfluous embellishments).

If I knew for sure that a Pebble Time Round would continue to be useable for the next six months, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, but the uncertainty makes me hesitant to spend the $100+ on one.

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Fitness, Apple Pay, Siri.

These are the killer apps for smart watches. Pretty much everything else the Apple Watch does is a waste of time, just replicating functionality that is easier and better experienced on your phone.

The Apple Watch (and others) are trying to solve a bunch of other non-problems that don't exist for 99% of the real world.

They would be better products if they had less features.

> Fitness

I don't want or need a fitness tracker. Judging by other comments I'm not the only one.

> Apple Pay

...is not supported in most places where I live, so it's a gimmick at best.

> Siri

Maybe I'm weird but I don't find voice input acceptable in social situations and don't want to rely on speech recognition when it comes to technical terms or mixed language input (I'm not in the US).

For me "a controlled subset of your smartphone's notifications on your wrist" is the killer app. Everything else is a gimmick.

The Apple watch recently obtained a means to reply to messages by means of handwriting recognition. This works rather well in practice and I find I'm able to send short replies quickly and easily in situations where speaking to the watch would be inappropriate (e.g. on a bus).

I find Siri very useful indeed for one thing in particular, which is to set reminders. This has been a very useful feature of smartwatches, and I might even consider it a "killer app". Other than that, sending some messages from the watch and setting timers I don't use Siri.

I would agree about the utility of watch notifications. For example, if my Nest camera spots a human figure on my property I get a photograph of them turn up as a notification on my watch, which is awesome.

The fitness tracking is of little interest and not really very useful given my main sporting activities involve sparring - blocking punches is not an activity which suits wearing an expensive watch.

I find it funny that reminders are go-to thing that everyone talks about when mentioning Siri.

Can it do ANYTHING else well? Especially if you're outside USA?

I don't know and I'm not particularly bothered to find out since I don't want to use it for anything other than reminders, timers and the occasional text message.

When I was using Android Wear and Google Now that was all I wanted; the rest of Google Now was far too much of a nuisance. If Pebble could have handled reminders as easily I'd have been using that instead.

Agreed. I would also add a silent vibrating alarm to the list. Though interestingly, non of these features need much of a display or interface.

I have a Mi Band 2 with a 1 month battery life. It does everything i Ned. I'm pretty sure all of the above features would be possible with the Mi Band display, at a very low price.

I think smartwatches will split inyo fashion (Apple) vs Utility, depending on whether Google or Microsoft figure oit payments and assistants.

You mustn't have looked at Android watches in a while because they have some gorgeous round watches with much less bezel than the Pebble Time Round. I own a round Huwawei watch with a metal band and get compliments on it all the time. https://www.android.com/wear/

Pebble bezel: http://i.imgur.com/xllAVAu.jpg

OP may not have, but I have. Near universal size for Android watches seems to be 42mm (and 12mm thick). Roughly that used to be a common size of pocket watch. I don't want a pocket watch on my wrist. Apart from anything else I'll be forever bashing it. I'd rather have a smart fob watch! :p

Pebble Time Round was around 36mm and 7.5mm thick. It actually looks like a normal watch on your wrist. With 3 times the battery of Android.

42mm isn't really outrageous for a wristwatch anymore. At least it's not a Diesel monstrosity.

True, and some fashion watches have got truly silly.

I think it's the combination of diameter and thickness. When I looked at an Android it was just that bit too imposing. If either dimension shrinks I'll look again.

I'm a larger guy and it's outrageous to me. I have had 2 Wear watches and both were too large. My Pebble Time is the perfect size... sadly I won't be getting my Time 2 to replace it.

That's awesome! I'm so glad you like the watch you have. However, in the future please keep in mind that just because someone has a different opinion than you doesn't mean that they're less up-to-date than you are. I've had hands-on time with just about every Android Wear watch released (including the Huawei Watch), and none come close to matching the Pebble Time Round's svelte 7.4mm thickness (save for the original ZenWatch which I also owned, but sadly that had a rectangular display).

Sadly pretty much none of the Android Wear or Samsung watches are small enough for anyone except large men to wear. The Gear S3 looks okay, but I simply cannot physically wear it. Huawei Watch is the same.

I 100% agree, the only reason I didn't get the pebble round was because the bezel was a little much, I was waiting for v2 that would hopefully solve that. Noise I'm left with a bunch of lackluster Android watches that won't work well with my iPhone and a ridiculously expensive Apple watch that looks like a phone on my wrist.

You might want to look at Fossil Android watches. I had one for a few days and I loved it but my Android Phone broke and I had to sent it back.

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