An Afternoon in Tokyo with the Man Who Designs Casio G-Shock Watches (2017) | Hacker News Reader

An Afternoon in Tokyo with the Man Who Designs Casio G-Shock Watches (2017)

ablogtowatch.com

139 pointsbookofjoe70 comments

Finally, a company that gets ruggedization. It's not about wrapping some hulking box around the thing. It's about careful energy absorption around the key parts.

Most of the cell phone makers other than Nokia do not get this.

I mean, there's no way that cell phone makers don't understand that putting chunks of rubber in certain places would make their phones more durable, right?

Even if I had the option to choose, I'd still much rather be able to cycle through cases than have a phone with a built-in case that gets scuffed up and impossible to resell.

I go through 1-2 cases per iPhone and have a mint-condition device when I'm ready to get a new one. What works for $30 throwaway Nokia bricks doesn't work for $800 smartphones.

I don't think I'm in the minority.

Why are your cases lasting only one/two years?

I've never had a case not outlast a phone, they keep up well, rubber cases I mean.

tempered glass covers are a godsend

It's much more subtle than that. Tiny bits of elastomer in the right place can do more than a centimeter of rubber around the whole thing. Finite element analysis may be required to figure out how to absorb energy in minimal space. Internally, some parts may need a slight separation. Some connections may have to be flexible, but not all of them. This is hard design.

Sony phones are also reasonably durable in my experience.

Not in mine. Screen stopped working as I used the phone. Never dropped it. Under 3 years old and cost £500 new. Never buying another Sony phone.

Did you approach Sony for a repair, and if so, how did that play out? I tried to get Samsung to repair my two year old Galaxy when it turned off one day and refused to turn back on, but as it was purchased in a different country they refused to help. Haven't bought a Samsung since.

Casio a few years ago did use to sell the G'zOne, a literal G-Shock phone with the same rugged aesthetic: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=g%27zone&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=ima...

> Most of the cell phone makers other than Nokia do not get this.

Purchased a brand new LG G6 plus which I put in one of those bulky rubber/hard plastic rugged cases. I dropped it a few feet one day and the vibrator never worked again.

I have an LG G4 that has been dropped, knocked, thrown, placed under running water and generally suffered countless other abuses over the last 3 years. Still works like a champ.

I tried replacing the old workhorse with a Nokia 8 Sirocco earlier this year. The first time I dropped that thing the screen broke into a million pieces. I replaced it but dropped it again a few days later. Again it broke into a million pieces. I'm not fixing it again and now it sits on the shelf waiting to be recycled.

I saw a Japanese TV show about the story of his discovery of the G-Shock design. It embodies everything good and bad about Japanese business culture. Great story! https://www.gshock.com/technology/story

They prey on nostalgia, but the rugged aspect also speaks to me.

Casio watches, Nokia cellphones (formerly, now Huawei or Xiaomi), Thinkpad latops and Panasonic Toughbooks - if you have one, you are likely to have one of the others.

Looks like people are getting defined by their lifestyle. (I guess Rolex and Apple would be on the other end of the spectrum)

Rolex and Apple are alike in terms of cost and build quality but quite opposite in terms of fragility.

You are seriously underestimating the price of a Rolex.

Good point. FWIW in 1966, when I was 18 years old and a freshman in college, my first girlfriend happened. We broke up in the spring of that first year. I was heartbroken. I thought, that's it, I'll never fall in love again or meet anyone as wonderful. I decided that since I wouldn't need money for dates and such any more, I might as well use the money I would have spent on going out and buy something nice to distract myself from my misery. I took a bus to Beverly Hills (I was at UCLA on scholarship) and went to a jewelry store that carried Rolex and bought a beautiful new stainless steel Oyster Perpetual Datejust with a Jubilee bracelet. It cost $250. I loved it for about six months, it indeed distracted me for a while as intended. Then I gradually tired of its weight and retired it to a drawer. I sold it (in excellent condition) in the spring of 1969 to help raise money for a post-graduation Europe trip with a new girlfriend. The pawn shop gave me $50 for it and I was fine with that. I just checked StockX and saw they now sell there used for about $3,500.

An entry-level Rolex costs about $5000, or 5x the price of an iPhone Xs. That iPhone will be a worthless piece of e-waste after five years or so when it stops receiving iOS updates. With regular servicing, your old Rolex will make a handsome graduation gift for your great-great-great-grandson. The Rolex might be more expensive, but I think it's something of a bargain.

Still, entry level vs Apple's most expensive model.

Hah, well in my case you aren't wrong. Hit the nail on the head with the three devices that have batteries and are within 3 feet of me.

I don't think Rolex watches are necessarily built to "look tough" but they are tough as hell.

I have a Thinkpad and a featurephone, but I specifically dislike Casio's insistence on big, chunky, over-featured watches. I wish they'd go back to making the kind of watch they made in the 90s.

The one I had had an 8 year battery life, time/date alarms, timer, stopwatch, back/forward buttons. 30 phone number storage, heh. Nothing else. The only thing it was missing and could have used was a backlight.

Many of their newer watches also have this awful thing where if you hold own one of the buttons for a few seconds, it does a DST transition. Which is terrible, because suddenly your watch is off by an hour.

> I wish they'd go back to making the kind of watch they made in the 90s.

Many of their 90s watches are still in production, including the legendary/notorious F91W.

https://www.casio.com/products/watches/classic

Wow. I have a friend who's part of the 80's Mercedes crowd. Now I know what to get her for Christmas. Thanks!

Well, that's another thing. I'd love to get my hand on a 1980-1980 Mercedes.

Another thing build for live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W126

I'd love to import a well maintained one, still featuring its original parts.

To add to the other comment, they still sell the Databank watches too: https://www.casio.com/products/watches/databank

Timex Ironman might fit your needs. You can disable some features that you don't want. Indiglo backlight is excellent. They are cheap ($35) but not always durable

I use one. It’s excellent for what it is, though the pushers aren’t as responsive as I’d like after a year or two.

They do still make minimalist G-Shocks e.g. 5600 series

I have worn a g-shock daily since 2014, functionally I don’t remember it being much different to the one I had in 2001

Casio's g-shock watches are pretty strong but their other watches, particularly the cheaper ones, are very much not rugged in my experience. Perhaps they were in the past relative to other inexpensive watches, but they seem capable, but not particularly rugid in my experience.

Granted that's a given for the price, but I wouldn't associate all Casio watches with rugged necessarily.

The nostalgia, I get that, I bought an old f-91w out of nostalgia recently if only because I wore it 30 years ago ;)

I bought, and still wear, a Casio F-91W out of nostalgia. G-Shock never pushed that button for me.

I wear one too, one of perhaps 25 I've owned since it came out in 1989. I have 7 or 8 of them scattered around my house. I love the fact that the one you buy today is identical to the first one. Very few products go 30 years unchanged.

I have a G-Shock which syncs with the atomic clock. It is the best watch for international travel -- you will always know the correct time anywhere without any tweaking. It is a Casio -- so it does not attract the wrong kind of attention.

I love those Japanese Panasonic laptops with the circular touchpad that are still inexplicably sold with optical drives.

I don't think you can get them outside Japan anymore(?) but for me they will always be the archetype of "good quality business laptop".

The Let's Note series is underrated. I wish they sold them in America.

The Let's Note series being very conservative with I/O, with optical drives and analog VGA output, speaks volumes both about how pragmatic they are and also how painfully slow the average Japanese business scene changes in regards to tech (what with the persistence of fax machines and all...) :/

The funny thing is, all the models I've handled require the same number of screws to be removed to disassemble.

According to the article, he also designed the famous Casio F-91W model.

> They have watches for people who are soldiers, surfers, rescue workers, muddy rescue workers, boat workers, pilots, skateboarders, and even for glamping (“glamorous camping”).

I follow Casio earnestly but I have no idea what the "glamping" watch is. I probably want it though...

It's just camping ... but with a lot of fancy stuff ... so also not camping.

If it’s a way to get people to step out of their comfort zone and enjoy the outdoors, then it’s all good. No need for gate keeping.

It is a different word, so I think anyone glamping probably wouldn't be put off by saying it isn't 'camping'.

Dunno, everyone is talking about RVs and stuff but in my social group glamping is just when our campsite is no more than a short hike from wherever the cars are parked, so we can bring the grills and coolers and whatever weirdo light fixtures we want. We still just sleep in whatever we do when we're backpacking.

You are describing car camping by backpackers. The more you need to integrate with non-backpackers, the more your gear collection will start to include heavy items that would be ridiculous out on a trail, but a trivial addition to the back of the SUV...

Glamping, however, can go more into the territory of a trip hosted by guides and outfitters to provide a fantasy experience. They plan the meals, haul the equipment, and do the camp setup/teardown for the clients. They might be serving a multi-course meal, planned by an executive chef, with tableware and glassware befitting a dining room. They might bring a string quartet.

Still outside with mosquitoes.

Isn’t it usually an RV?

Nah, there are some pretty high-end tents that are really nice.

Oh no I've been glamping, I mean what watch was he referring to that's designed specifically for glamping?

I hope it unfolds into a little tent.

Here's the beach glamping series: https://baby-g.jp/products/glamping/

>I really can’t think of any other watch products which are so innovate at these prices save for smartwatches. And most smartwatches aren’t nearly as dependable and good-looking as your average G-Shock these days.

When I got my first tech job I became a victim to wristwatches and Swiss timepieces. I spent a couple grand on a present to myself with my first check and really loved the thing, but it was precious and needed to be wound and adjusted for daylight savings... over time, my G-Shock prevailed. I sold my watch last year for some other equipment related to another budding hobby/interest, and I don't see any reason to go beyond a Casio anymore. There are literally videos on YouTube of people smashing these things on anvils with sledgehammers and they don't even blink. I am astounded at what a good value they are.

And for those that want a little bling, well... they have you covered still: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/solid-18-karat-gold-g-shoc...

Some people like it, but I personally find the G-Shock (exterior) design intolerable. At least, they should remove some of the spurious writings on their higher end watches. I currently have an old Casio Protrek PRG-550BD that seems to be indestructible, too, but if it ever stops working I will probably go for a Seiko or a Hamilton Field watch.

There is an interesting story about Seiko I once read. Apparently they built two factories in the 60s whose main purpose was to compete with each other to break new precision records for their quartz watches. They almost destroyed the Swiss watch business.

Agreed. The area around the LCD doesn’t need to be an advertisement for all its features. My current Timex Ironman has labels for what the buttons do on the screen instead of around it, which means that there’s less useless writing on the face. But it still has to mention its “10 LAP TIMER” near the bottom, which is annoying.

Also this bloated ruggedness is mostly an aesthetic feature. I mean there are no moving parts in a digital watch. Why would you need such excessive casing. And what's the benefit of a watch that can sustain a blow with a sledgehammer when there's no wrist left to wear a watch.

Anyway - Seiko manufactures everything from the caliber to the casing which makes them in my opinion superior to most Swiss watch makers as those just design a casing and put an ETA in there. Also the value for price ratio of a Seiko automatic is unbeatable. Plus they revolutionized the wrist watch technologies and have lots of history to show for.

I really like their Pro-Trek series for outdoors usage - besides typical watch functions and the rugged G-Shock-like case they have an altimeter, barometer and compass. Some models also have time synchronization and are solar powered.

Unfortunately the latest models are a catastrophe. Google is giving their watch OS away for free and have probably ruined the market - manufacturers don't invest in their own software, they slap Google's OS on everything, so now a Pro-Trek watch has a battery life of a few hours under heavy usage or two days under normal usage, WiFi, a color screen and other useless crap.

Only two companies that I know of still do their own thing: Garmin, which requires app/cloud sync and Suunto, which can function standalone. Both have a battery life of about a 5-10h with GPS under heavy usage/a week with normal usage.

Polar is another brand that has their own watch software. They tried Android in one model, but they too had problems with battery life.

Unfortunately Suunto is moving to the app only direction too with the numbered sport watch series. Ambit and Spartan required an app for synchronization too but at least there was a desktop option. One thing that Garmin got right in their old models was that you could just plug the watch into computer and it would show up as USB drive with GPS tracks as files.

The new Suunto app is complete shit. I am going to stick with the old one as long as I can, then just go back to syncing when I charge it.

The desktop app and Movescount are supposed to be shut down at some point, but now it seems they are extending the deadline indefinitely.

Totally agree, older models were better. I’ve been wearing my PRG-80T titanium Pro Trek, Tough Solar Casio for nearly two decades and it’s working like day one. You can’t go wrong with a Casio ABC (Altimeter Barometer Compass) watch ;-)

The latest Garmin fitness trackers have up to 36 hours battery life with GPS. They're designed for use by long-course triathletes and ultramarathon runners.

I love the solar g-shock wave ceptors. They blend radio signals (to sync the time), toughness and solar power. They are almost as accurate as GPS time on smart phones, yet much simpler.

I had a Casio F-91W in those days. Except for sleeping, it never left my wrist through a 2 year period that included daily jogging, swimming and sauna routines. Superb product.

Casio also made watches with incredible battery life. I have had a Casio Edifice (EFA-111, 10-year battery) for 15 years, with no change of battery. Amazing tech. Imagine buying something in 2004 and still have it work perfectly today, having done no maintenance whatsoever...

The ones with solar charging technology ("Tough Solar") are even more amazing. I used to have an older version that failed around the 10-year mark, but newer versions are said to last over 20 years if regularly exposed to light.

Solar power unlocks so much potential that are usually limited by battery life in quartz watches. Since much more power is now available, they can make watches that automatically detect the current location by GPS, sync the time over radio, etc.

Having a tough solar pro trek Casio I totally agree, but keep in mind that the long battery life is due to the very low power consumption and sleep function. Around 8hrs per day my watch is in standby mode and then for 95% of the time it only displays time/date. It’s only when you use the extra functionality/backlight that the battery starts to drain.

It is incredible with this diversity in timepieces and yet so few have ability to show week number.

This is the kind of page / reporting where I disable my ad-blocker and reload the page.

fashion question to all : are you able to pull off wearing a fitbit and a normal watch at the same time?

edit: changed "not-smart" to normal

I’ve seen many people try this and none who can make it look good. The problem is the mixed messages it sends. Digital+Fitbit? Redundant, just wear a Garmin or Suunto. Mechanical+Fitbit? Confused, trying too hard.

fitbit on ankle, normal watch on wrist

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