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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

I’ve just bought a new 3 series and it really bothers me how neuterd most of the apps feel. I have what’s equivalent to a desktop PC from 2005 on my wrist yet there is no web browser, decent games, or anything else actually pushing the hardware. The built in email client wont even render html or images. Google has dropped all app support but News. I’m not sure why people aren’t doing more with this platform, as the hardware specs are amazing.

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>I’ve just bought a new 3 series and it really bothers me how neuterd most of the apps feel. I have what’s equivalent to a desktop PC from 2005 on my wrist yet there is no web browser, decent games, or anything else actually pushing the hardware.

Because you'd e.g. be web browsing on a watch if it did have a web browser?

Besides, even with the "neutered apps" and only cursory use of them, the battery barely lasts a full day. Imagine with what you're suggesting...

I get the point of what you're saying but, FYI, my Series 3 watch lasts 3 full days on a single charge. I typically wear it all day and then to bed for sleep tracking and then charge it for the hour or so that it takes me to shower, get ready, make breakfast, etc.

With a series 3, even the cellular version, the battery will easily last 2 days for most people. Even with heavy use I usually have over 50% battery left at the end of the day...

Curious: I just got a series 3 last week and use it as my sole phone (hate smartphone form factor, flip phone user since forever). All I use it for is heart rate, phone, messaging, and music (very happy with it).

I've had to charge my series 3 every night. I guess not having it paired with a phone somehow uses more battery power? Technically, I reset my wife's phone with my sim+apple id, paired, reset back to wife's backup and sim. So it has no real phone to pair with, though I guess maybe that causes it to use cellular a lot more than most.

I'd imagine the constraints are not peak processing power but energy consumption and to some extent UI.

I think part of it was that until the series 3, you still needed the phone nearby for wifi connectivity so developers were less interested in building a watch-specific app. Most of the ones out there were just widgets or notification apps that played nicely with the phone's.

As each series improves and Apple opens up new libraries so your watch becomes more and more independent of the phone, I believe we'll get more watch developers to up their game.

You don’t actually need the phone nearby with the previous watches either, they will connect directly to WiFi if they need to - they just prefer to use the phone for battery saving.

I was kinda surprised the first time I got an iMessage on my series 2 when my phone was in airplane mode!

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