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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

No @#$^. I have a traditional quartz wristwatch that I like but that I never use anymore because my $150 Garmin smartband is so much more capable, and I'm not gonna wear things on both wrists. The Garmin does an unbelievable number of things that the wristwatch doesn't do, including: (a) telling time more accurately and automatically adjusting for daylight saving time and travel timezone changes, (b) email/text/IM notifications, (c) GPS logging of biking/running, (d) step tracking, (e) heartrate monitoring. And this isn't even the pinnacle of what smartwatches can do; there's ones that play music directly to Bluetooth earbuds so you don't even need to bring along your phone.

I like the styling of a traditional wristwatch more, but I'm not gonna give up so much functionality to continue wearing it. It's just a no-brainer to get the more capable device.

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I live in the opposite side of the fence. I have a Longines I bought some twenty years ago and I consider it irreplaceable with any kind of smart watch. While the latter provide a lot more functionality an automatic watch is a marvel of engineering and as such I view them more like an accessory than something that just tells the time. I love staring at it even twenty years later.

It's been fascinating to see the rise, fall, and rise of digital watches among techies.

I remember 1990s Dilbert having an entire storyline about the engineers getting into a calculator-watch arms-race. In real life, it was pretty common to laugh about how a $50 digital Casio could do far more things than a Rolex.

By about 2010 (or perhaps even by the iPod Touch or Palm Pilot), I stopped hearing that. Watches had lost all of their unique functions to smartphones, so their raison d'etre was either "rugged and cheap" or "jewelry" and calculator watches almost vanished.

Circa 2015, we get Pebble gen 2, Apple Watch, and Fitbit Blaze: smart watches have phone integrations, fitness tracking, and don't look like hell anymore. Since then, they've increasingly aimed for design good enough to wear with a suit; the Galaxy Watch is always-on and analog.

These days, I see two splits among watch-wearing engineers: smartwatch vs not, and practical vs decorative. So the result is quadrants like:

Fitbit | Galaxy Watch

Casio | Longines

I wore a fitbit for a year or so, which was enough to tell me that I walk "many" steps a day - remarkably consistent amounts for weekdays, and then much more over the weekend.

But nothing beats a decent watch. I have no problem pulling my phone out of my pocket if I want to interact with it, and it seems like most people who have notifications pushed to their wrists still do that. It's announce-only.

I've got a 20 year old rolex I wear most days, and a couple of other mechanical watches, including an old Soviet piece made the year I was born. Each of my watches is used for a specific thing, which keeps them in regular rotation. (For example I have a sauna-watch, a photography watch, a swimming watch, a posh-event watch, etc. My only digital watch is a Casio F-91W which is used in the sauna.)

Sure mechanical watches aren't perfect, and if you have one with a date you need to reset it if is one of a rotation, but they're classy, they're fashionable, and they're so much more practical than most smart-watches (largely due to the charging issues).

Smartwatches are far more practical if you need more than time / date / stopwatch / timer. Some smartwatches can go several days on a charge depending on how much you use the GPS tracking or apps.

I like that my $300 automatic watch tells me the time and nothing more, not even a date. I don't want it to listen to me; I don't want it to log my location; I don't want it to store my health information on someone else's servers: I just want it to tell me the time.

In five years I'll still have my watch; will you? In a decade I anticipate still having my watch; will you?

Simplicity is luxury.

You want more than that, because all of above can be done by a $30 watch.

Fair enough! I think that the mechanisms (called movements) are really cool too. I also like not having to change a battery.

And I like the style I got for more money.

Regardless, I like having a mechanical watch rather than yet another piece of electronics. I see it as a positive rather than a negative.

The downside is that all these "smart" devices contain radios which you can't put off, with firmware you can't upgrade, and contain batteries you can't replace. They were never made to last as long as your Quartz. Full disclosure: happy owner of a Fossil Hybrid HR (which spits out Bluetooth signal, has e-ink yet has a traditional look).

The GPS logging sounds interesting (I'm not a smartwatch/smartband user). Where do the logs go, does it get send to a companion app on the phone, or to log files?

It all gets synced to their app. They do allow you to export your data on their website, but it's not necessarily an easy process.. but the app that can do everything from monitoring your sleep cycles and reading heart rate to recording your route (and elevation change) on a hike with the ability to navigate you back to your starting position.

I have a Garmin Instinct that I bought a year and a half ago and wear it daily. It looks like a dumb-watch, and the battery lasts 2 weeks with daily tracked GPS runs... Can't say enough good things about it. Oh, it's also waterproof (I've swam and showered with it many times) and shockproof.

The privacy activist in me is pretty worried about what they can do with this data, since it's all synced (sleep patterns, exercise habbits, etc...), but I have just enough cognitive dissonance to use it anyways lol

At least they aren't in the ad selling business. Leaks are always a threat, but I can't see them selling it to advertisers.

if you're paranoid or want to use other tools, you can also just connect garmin watches via usb and access all the log gps/activity files without their app or software

I have mine hooked up to Strava, so every time I go for a run, it automatically gets uploaded.

The logs are stored to internal flash storage as FIT files and can then be synced to Garmin's cloud service or mobile app. You can also copy the FIT files directly from the USB storage device to analyze them yourself.

https://www.thisisant.com/developer/

It's not GPS logging per se, it's GPS activity tracking. You have to start a run/bike ride for it to start recording GPS, and then stop it when you're done. Then it syncs over Bluetooth to the app and I have that automatically sync to Strava.

It's not on unless you want it to be, and it drives down the battery life from roughly a week to single digit hours.

I like the styling of traditional wristwatches more as well.

Have you seen the Fossil Hybrid watches? They look like a normal watch but can do ALMOST everything a smart watch does, including display text messages.

https://www.fossil.com/en-us/products/hybrid-smartwatch-hr-c...

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