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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Random Thoughts:

1. If it is shipping with Android 8 - an old version of Android. What are the chances that it will ever see any updates?

2. My wife would have been the target audience for this form factor - pre Apple Watch. Her phone is her least favorite device. She will leave it in the car in a heartbeat. She won’t think twice if she leaves at home.

But now, she has a cellular Apple Watch and AirPods with a third party ear clip. She doesn’t have to carry any phone.

3. The battery life is atrocious. Even the Apple Watch has better battery life for normal day to day use.

4. I seriously doubt it has 16GB of memory - the cellular Apple Watch does. That’s more than enough for local music playback without using cellular.

5. This is the Zune of phones to me. But, yes I realize that the cheapest entry point to our setup - phone + Watch is $800 if we did get A cheaper headset. With AirPods it would be $959.

View on HN

This device is out for few years by now. Interesting but maybe worth adding (2018) to title.

I thought this was a newer version.

However, if I pick up a 2 year old Windows/Mac computer or iOS device, I can still run the latest OS.

Can you?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42615378

Yes. My 4 year old Windows laptop and 5 year old iPhone have the latest operating system versions. The latter will get iOS 14.

Well, seeing that the update you cited in the article allowed the phone to continue working at a slower speed instead of shutting down entirely when the battery was old - yes.

I never said that Apple could defy the laws of physics and prevent battery degradation.

Also, if I bought a brand new phone that was released in 2018 and even if it did have an old operating system - but a new battery, I could update to the newest OS. If it was a used phone with an old battery - I could replace the battery for $70.

My son just replaced an iPhone 6S that I bought in 2015 late last year. I replaced the battery before giving it to him. It was and still can run the latest OS version. It will be running the latest OS until at least September 2021.

It may be news to you but Android manufacturers are generally not as honest as their intent, follow through and track record of providing up to date security patches for their phones, let alone OS updates.

I switched to an Android from iPhone when Galaxy Note 1 came out.

Apple did not have the audacity or innovation to release a phone with a large screen. Over time, every Android manufacturer except Google and BlackBerry proceeded to let me down with out of date security patches, if any at all.

Samsung makes some of the very best devices, but pushing 6 month old patches as a current update doesn’t fly. Projects like LineageOS have made inroads too.

I'd buy a Galaxy Note in a heartbeat if it ran Android One.

My hope is every manufacturer uses Android One distribution, Android has come far enough that the UI modifications/customizations aren’t as critical as they used to be. I’ll only consider a Pixel or Android One device moving forward if I don't end up on an iPhone.

Still, I’m typing this on an iPad, and have been on Mac for over a decade.. maybe it is time to look at an iPhone again. Part of me is exploring leaving Mac and head to Ubuntu. A palm phone with a great camera could be interesting if lineage might work on it.

Edit: Typos

The other thing to realize is that android phones are tied to a kernel version and that is never updated except minor revisions. Apple products get regular kernel updates.

As far as I'm concerned UI mods, custom launchers, etc; were never neccesary. My first android ran cupcake & I had no problem finding a good alternative launcher on the play store. It was one of the first apps I installed & still is Every time I've gotten a new phone. I don't want anything preinstalled on my phone that isn't a core part of android itself. That kind of bloat does nothing but take away valuable space for apps I actually use. Google owns some of the blame, because they actually made the promise that there would be zero bloat on android,& presented that as a selling point, but they never even attempted to follow through on that promise.

I pretty much refuse to support Samsung for any consumer device at this point.

Their TVs are loaded with spyware and push notifications, full screen ads, menu ads, all unremovable. You pay thousands for the privilege of this garbage.

All of their phones have unremovable bloatware and spyware. They push vulnerable, ancient, forked AOSP software like "samsung browser" and send full screen image ads via push notifications, unremovable Bixby stuff, unremovable Samsung Store. And the US versions can't be unlocked to install Lineage or stock android.

> If it is shipping with Android 8 - an old version of Android

Blame Qualcomm. If you’re a OEM with comparatively low volumes there is very little leverage you have to get your SOC vendor to give you the latest updates. When I worked on Android HW, Qualcomm were basically a year behind whatever the latest Android was, because our volume was so small we weren’t a priority.

Again, this is a solved problem with Windows - Microsoft writes drivers for popular hardware. Like I said below - Windows 7 supported my 2006 Mac Mini hardware - USB, FireWire, gigabit Ethernet, and it even recognized the IR sensor for the remote. I couldn’t find a way to use it.

If you as a PC OEM, no matter how small, if you used popular components, Windows would support it.

I mean if random people on XDA Developers can figure out how to port AOSP or Lineage to everything, often in the span of a few days then surely you'd think device manufacturers could too without relying on Qualcomm to do it for them.

Microsoft has a vested interest in getting Windows to run on hardware going as far back as possible, within reason. They mainly sell the OS and legacy support is a huge selling point.

Phone manufacturers are at the other end of the spectrum. They sell the hardware and it's their vested interest to sell as much as they can. Making it obsolete by not offering software updates and taking advantage of the free work from XDA works perfectly for them. Being able to blame Qualcomm is even better since it's a "boogieman" that doesn't need to look good for consumers.

I’m not blaming the phone manufacturers - I am blaming Google. Apple definitely didn’t go out of its way to make sure that my 2006 era Mac Mini worked with Windows. But since back then, Apple used mostly standard PC components, MS supported it.

> I’m not blaming the phone manufacturers - I am blaming Google. Apple definitely didn’t go out of its way to make sure that my 2006 era Mac Mini worked with Windows. But since back then, Apple used mostly standard PC components, MS supported it.

But Google doesn't control the hardware in the same way that Apple does. It seems odd to blame Google for the lack of hardware support when the target platforms are not homogenous and have no single entity controlling the platform.

Microsoft doesn't control hardware, neither does the Linux community, yet I can run Windows and Linux on all sorts of random PC configurations. You can absolutely give Google/Android shit for this.

PCs follow well defined standards. Embedded hardware has nothing comparable.

Yes and Microsoft/Intel defined these standards over 25 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_Plug_and_Play

Actually they do. Microsoft maintains a well-defined standard and certification tests that define whether a machine is Windows compatible. The current one is the Windows HLK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Hardware_Lab_Kit. FOSS operating systems simply ride on the coattails of that.

Microsoft doesn’t control the hardware either. They solved the problem in 1995. Even my old DX/2-66 DOS Compatibility Card created by Apple installed in my PowerMac 6100/60 that shipped with Windows 3.1 could run Windows 95 on release day. Apple never released new drivers for it.

If Windows ran on something that esoteric 25 years ago, why can’t Google solve the problem now?

Because they don't care, and it is curious how in Google's case their SV fans are so fast blaming the OEMs, as if poor Google wasn't capable to enforce it, if they really cared.

And that can be blamed back to users. Average Joe couldn't care less if his phone won't get updated so often or at all after some time.

They should, but they don't. Can be said about many aspects of our lives generally, humans are on average not that clever. Voting with wallet is something companies understand very well, I don't see any other fix (maybe EU could force them into something, till they find a way to skip it).

> And that can be blamed back to users.

That's victim blaming. Companies are the ones who shaped this situation and they managed to because each intrinsically acts as a unified entity with a unified goal and a lot of power behind it. People may be many but have little to no individual power, and they don't act in any coordinated fashion.

Users accept this because they can't really imagine it differently. Many of them never saw it working any other way. And phones never had the same kind of flexibility and repairability that PCs offer so people unwittingly assume this is normal and not even give it a second though.

Exactly. Plenty of users care, they're just powerless to do anything about. The OEM's are so big A LOT of people would have to outright boycott them to make any difference, but even then where are the going to go? ALL OEMs do this, so customers really have no choice in the matter.

Honestly, the users are right here - look at the history of this one, there's millions of dated Android devices out there lacking years of security patches, but do they get exploited?

Not in any significant number certainly, there haven't been any wildly successful Android worms like we've seen on Windows even in recent years.

The nature of sitting behind NATs, implementation of modern exploit mitigations in even older versions of Android, the diversity of devices, installation only via a marketplace, sandboxing and being able to rapidly update apps like browsers and email clients that do interact with network services makes those big OS-level exploits almost entirely unimportant.

The Average Joe has limited reason to care even if they stop getting security updates.

In 2020, I’m kind of amazed to hear you say that NAT is a mitigation for security exploits. “NAT is not a firewall” has been a mantra for at least 20 years.

This is just one exploit that can’t be patched by the app level and is dependent on the OEM.

https://threatpost.com/mediatek-bug-actively-exploited-andro...

The problem is that a lot of those ports are using old kernels and various hacks that a) OEM wouldn’t want to support since it can produce unreliable results and b) may quite likely be in violation of whichever agreement they have signed with the SoC manufacturer.

That said the larger OEMs could easily provide updates since they can simply compel Qualcomm to support newer kernels heck some of them like Samsung even produce their own SoCs.

They don’t want too, planned obsolescence has pretty much been integrated into the android ecosystem.

This is why I left it, OnePlus One was my last Android phone, iPhone 6S was my first iOS phone (I had an iPad and a iPod touch before but didn’t really used them, these were gifts and a raffle win).

The iPhone 6S will still get iOS 14 this year.

Overall I could sum up my Android experience as - lost weekends of tinkering with ROMs and kernels trying to get my phones in-line with new releases.

Not to mention the worst shit they cam up with and that was when updates were linked to carriers so sometimes you had to wait a year to get an update if you didn’t want to risk bricking your phone by applying an update form a different region.

Honestly if there was a $300 iPhone coming out each year I don’t think Android would have gotten above single digit percentage in the west.

And while I’ll probably get flack here for saying this but Android is the biggest piece of shit out there not because the OS is bad but because even Google cant get their asses out of their head long enough to provide support for more than a couple of years to their own devices.

And the worse thing about this is that because of how utterly garbage the Android ecosystem is we are somehow supposed to pat Apple on the back for supporting devices for 5 years.

No. Apple supports the iPhone 6S from 2015 with the latest OS until at least September of 2021.

Apple also released a point update to correct bugs in devices going back to the 2011 iPhone 4s last July. Apple supported a phone that was 8 years old.

I don't think its that Microsoft writes drivers for popular hardware. It's more so that Windows has a stable binary driver abi. Windows 7 drivers will still generally work on Windows 10. In contrast the Linux kernel will happily break any binary drivers between releases.

Android One has solved this, but I don't think it existed in 2018.

Not really. But even then you only get two years of guaranteed updates.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Android-One-program-is-a-s...

Oh, that's a really big pity.

Android One was on very few devices, many international ones on 2018.

I do hope as Android One devices are easier for projects like LineageOS or Postmarket to support.

Good point about the Apple Watch being the truly minimal "phone."

I also very frequently now leave my iPhone at home. This takes a little planning in the form of having an audio book and a few podcasts on the watch.

Apple Watch + AirPods makes me feel set free when I am hiking or out of the house with family and friends. It is so easy to ignore the light vibration notification for incoming text messages or emails, and easy to ignore calls.

Sorry this may sound stupid but does this mean the Apple iWatxh now has cellular?

Oh ok - yes it does. And wi-fi !

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch

Yes, but streaming over cellular is mostly limited to support from Apple apps, not third party apps. Spotify might be the kind exception for that right now.

Nope it‘s not.

The API was added last year to allow third parties to stream and a Siri intent was added for third party music apps to work as well as Apple Music. After years of whining, Spotify took (has taken?) forever taking advantage of it.

It's just streaming from the phone though, not actually over cell? I know they don't have offline, which is the main reason I've held off buying a watch and airpods for running: I only need a few hours of music, GPS, and HR, and it feels like this should be a good combo.

Apple Music could stream over cellular over the watch when the first Apple Watch with cellular was introduced. They added support for third parties last year.

Apple Music and maybe Spotify will work off line. The cellular Apple Watch has 16GB of storage.

https://support.spotify.com/us/listen_everywhere/smart_watch...

Shockingly, Pandora seems to have offline playback: https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/29/pandora-shows-spotify-how-to-..., so I'll chalk this one up to "Spotify spends all its time complaining instead of actually building the app"

Watch always had Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, GPS + Cellular is available from S3 as extra but rumor is cellular existed for testing since S0

Minor clarification: GPS is always included. Only cellular is optional. I know what you mean, but your wording makes it sound as if GPS was a paid feature.

The zune of phones as in the best device made in both hardware and software quality but just too late to the game to get any traction?

The Zune came out with a 30GB hard drive player when the world had moved on to flash based smaller players and three months before the iPhone

The flash based Zunes similar to the Nanos came out at the same time as the second generation iPod Touch.

The Zune HD came out with no apps around the end of 2009. Peak iPod - including the Touch - was 4th quarter 2008. The iPod was already losing steam and even then it was being propped up by the iPod Touch.

And it was brown.

These are all true, but the Zune was still awesome... Video support, awesome customizations, and a very fun interface. I had all 3 of the Zunes you mentioned. My least favorite was the original, because the spinning disc would sometimes hit buffering issues, but the rest of the device family was practically perfect.

Perfect as long as you didn’t care about third party apps - which were very much a thing by 2009 when the Zune HD came out.

It might be a generational thing but I couldn't care less about third party apps.

All I use: email, browser, maps, phone, txt, calendar, camera (non essential for me).

No it’s not a generational thing - it’s you. That’s like the old Slashdot meme - “I haven’t owned a TV in 10 years Do people still watch TV?”. Seeing that my first computer was an Apple //e in 86, I’m definitely not a young buck.

it's not just him, there is a sizeable contingent of people who focus on just these apps for all their uses, and I think it would be much bigger if mobile didn't promote separate apps for everything.

Our customer base skews older and you wouldn't believe how many customer service tickets we field where they don't know what their apple account password is because they have literally never installed an app on their phone before. And these are people with brand new, most recent model iPhones that get a new one every few years.

The Zune 30, the first Zune, and the only 30gb Zune player you could be speaking about, was released in Nov 2005. By comparison, Apple's flash offerings in 2005 included the 1G Shuffle (1gb) and the 1G Nano (4gb). These were not large and complex enough devices to be considered competitors to the Zune 30; Apple's competitor to the Zune 30 was the 5G Classic, which came in 30/60/80gb hard drive sizes.

I'm not sure how you got "three months before the iPhone" when the Zune 30 was released in Nov 2005 and the iPhone was released in June 2007. That's not 3 months, that's 19 months.

The Zune 30 was released November 2006 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune_30). The iPhone was announced January 2007.

It didn’t matter if they were “competitive”. The market had already spoken. People preferred the flash based smaller players to the larger players. MS went after the smallest part of the market.

Lol. I had a Zune HD. Opening the calculator app took half a minute... and that was pretty much the only app available. It was a cool device but there’s no surprise it got trampled by iPod Touch.

Wow, you're only slightly exaggerating. I counted 11 seconds.

https://youtu.be/iIj9W74Ju2E

Loved the Zune. Not sure which I had. It wasn’t HD or anything though. It was also a launchpad for me to begin enjoying streaming and tracking things. I began tracking music listens with Last.fm and I used Microsoft’s music streaming service at the time. Usually (or always?) you’d download music onto your device and have to renew it every 30 days or so.

I began rambling since I’m trying to have same practices as your wife. Moved my questions to top of comment;

Which Apple Watch cell version does she have. Do you happen to know the third party ear clip? I hadn’t thought of getting that. I just ordered AirPods arriving today.

—

This is the perfect post for me to see. I am in my second deep dive in trying to make the Apple Watch a major priority, possibly upgrading to a cellular Watch if this proves to go well. Your wife is another key point for me to push this attempt.

I fit the same demo where a minimalist sort of phone like this would have been right for me. But there is no perfect and the Watch is as good or better than any other option. Especially with my lack of passive phone usage discipline.

Another time I might waste a lot of time contemplating getting something like this. But I’ve finally gotten over a few remaining “needs” for always having phone on me:

(1) detailed location history logging —- don’t think there’s an alternative to this. Won’t have it without a phone.

(2) Siri isn’t very good at dictation on the Watch —- just have to deal with it

(3) Not enough apps on the Watch —- same pattern of just deal with it. I am starting to use a few apps to put stuff into and later I can organize the info. Drafts App and Things are two main ones. Some chat/messaging apps lack proper/any Watch support. Again deal with it :p.

Her clips are something like these.

https://www.amazon.com/New-EARBUDi-AirPods-Slides-Earhook-Am...

She uses them when she is teaching online fitness classes and they stay in her ear so they are pretty good.

If I were still an outdoor runner I would probably get the PowerBeats with the over the ear clips.

I haven’t had any problems with Siri doing decently well for voice dictation and I have a southern accent.

>This is the Zune of phones to me.

The Zune was a great device yo.

Probably as was the last Walkman in the age of the iPod...

Devices are still released under the Walkman brand, I bought one last year. They’re a great intermediate between phones and audiophile kit.

How are they actually doing in the market?

Well enough they keep coming out with them every year.

> If it is shipping with Android 8 - an old version of Android. What are the chances that it will ever see any updates?

Android 8.1 to be precise. As long as google is releasing security updates it should be okay.

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....

How long will that be, is that known?

I am not aware of any official numbers. But security and basic compatibility should be covered for a few more years; based on how long previous versions continued to receive support/updates.

Thanks!

Why is it okay to ship a new device with an operating system that is two versions old? Neither Windows, Mac, or iOS users have to worry about that.

For sake of argument, the most important thing is app support, not the operating system. I’d happily run Windows 7 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard if I could still access all the apps I use now.

Not entirely related to phones, but it is nice that my iPad that I bought in 2016 has gotten operating system support for external hard drives, Ethernet (long story), good support for external pointing devices, better multitasking support, etc.

My wife’s iPad that is a year newer will get much better operating system wide support for the Pencil.

It is not ok, but that is how telecommunications industry has ever worked, "want updates? get a new phone".

Even on Symbian best days, you would be lucky to get at very least one time update, and Symbian was the exception, as no else every provided any kind of updates.

I agree it is very stupid, but if Google prefers to have Android in every piece of mobile CPU without arm wrestling OEMs, that is never going to change.

Note that while Project Treble has actually turned Linux into a pseudo microkernel, where standard Linux drivers are "legacy" and everything else runs on their own process with Android IPC, the situation has hardly changed, because Google is still leaving to the OEMs the responsibility for the update process.

On a side note, any of my Windows Phones has gotten more updates than all my Android devices combined.

But as I mention in another thread today, iDevices aren't for price sensitive pre-pay customers that use the devices until they die or get stolen. The majority of the world isn't US with free exchange programs every two years.

In some locations, the hard paied for unknown brand Android device is the first computer many people manage to own, so they aren't even on Apple's target demographic.

It is not ok, but that is how telecommunications industry has ever worked, "want updates? get a new phone".

It hasn’t work that way since the iPhone came out - in 2007.

I agree it is very stupid, but if Google prefers to have Android in every piece of mobile CPU without arm wrestling OEMs, that is never going to change.

Yet and still not only can I update my Windows PCs directly from Microsoft without having to wait on the OEMs, I was also able to stick a Windows 7 DVD in my 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini, install it and it recognized all of my hardware flawlessly. Apple abandoned it years ago, I could still run a supported version of Windows through the beginning of this year.

Microsoft figures this out on PCs over 15 years ago with WinHEC and plug and play.

Apple is the exception, as they don't rely on 3rd party OEMs.

It would be 100% like everyone else had Apple allowed for iOS based OEM devices.

Indeed, but that is only thanks to IBM's failure to close back the PC and only applies to desktop and server devices.

Even Microsoft isn't able to do much regarding laptops and Windows tablets, and was forced to start their own Surface line.

But yes, they still do much better than Google, because Google just doesn't care.

Project Trent would have been the opportunity to change contracts for accessing Google services, and they just kept everything regarding OEMs as before.

The proof that they don't really care is the support for their own Pixel devices.

However as mentioned before, not everyone on this planet can afford to be an Apple customer and OS updates aren't certainly on their daily worries.

Apple is the exception, as they don't rely on 3rd party OEMs.

Microsoft however does allow 3rd party OEMs for Windows and PCs don’t have that issue. MS makes sure the most popular or even some obscure hardware is supported.

Even Microsoft isn't able to do much regarding laptops and Windows tablets, and was forced to start their own Surface line.

I have an 11 year old Dell E6500 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz running Windows 10 perfectly.

My 2007 Toshiba laptop recently died (not sure why, I'm gonna let the old dog die gracefully). It had been upgraded over the years with more RAM and an SSD and it ran beautifully on Windows 10 for the last few years.

I'm not sure why people don't admit that Windows does backwards compatibility well. Windows has many issues, but running well on old hardware isn't one of them.

I have an Asus laptop from 2009 sold with Windows 7 and running Windows 10 currently, except it has an additional cooling fan running all the time, because only the original customized Windows 7 with Asus drivers does the power management properly.

Any other Windows 7 version, or more recent versions, the internal fan is not able to make for the generated heat due to missing power management settings.

So I just got used to the noise of having two fans running all the time when I need to do something with that laptop, which has long lost the laptop capability, but hey it runs Windows 10.

Lucky you, I have had several laptops that don't work without OEM drivers and require the explicit Windows version that was sold with the laptop.

As an example, the webcam drivers and power management settings that without OEM drivers will just fry the CPU until the security takes over and forces a hard shutdown.

It was a business Dell and was high end at the time - 8GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, 1920x1200 display.

Yeah, business Dell have much better support story.

The main concern for me is not the feature difference between Android 8.1 and 9, but the security updates. As long as those are shipping I think it's okay.

So, to turn the question around, assuming this is your stance, why is it not okay?

I think it would be ok if the older version gets e.g. much better battery life out of the device

This as an argument I heard for using older android versions for low end phones around 50$, because newer versions run horrible on them.

I'm not enough into mobile phones to judge whether this is true, but OS version is a tradeoff I would be willing to make dependent on what I'm looking for

Android 9 was released only a couple of months before the Palm Phone. I'd say it's reasonable that the device shipped with Android 8.1.

For context, back when I bought a Dell laptop running Vista but after Windows 7 had been announced, but not released, Dell guaranteed Windows 7 compatibility and made free upgrades available.

How long is the Windows beta available for major updates to give the ecosystem a chance to test for compatibility. Google just doesn’t know how to handle an ecosystem.

Does she reply to emails/tweets/texts via her smartwatch + airpods combo?

Did she use her phone to read articles on the go? If yes, how is she getting this done with this setup?

Neither would I want to do that on a phone the size of the Palm. The entire idea of this phone was initially to be a companion phone just for simple things.

Email isn’t really used that often anymore for personal, immediate communications. If someone is emailing you, culturally it’s really not considered urgent.

Read articles on the go? Sure you can read news snippets on the Watch using the News app, but if she is leaving her phone behind, it’s specifically in a context where she doesn’t want to be distracted but does want to be able to communicate with people.

I have an Apple Watch just because, but I really don’t get that much usefulness out of it. I work from home now. I haven’t gone inside a gym in years where the idea of having a phone with me all of the time was irritating - I have a fully equipped workout room at home. Besides, women often wear clothes without pockets. Men usually don’t - except maybe at the gym or while running.

As far as texts. Siri’s voice recognition works surprisingly well for responding to them.

The Palm Phone does work as a standalone device (except maybe on Verizon). Swipe text is a little less accurate, but overall still plenty usable. Honestly not sure why they wanted it to be a "companion" device so much. One of the huge benefits of using the Palm Phone is not carrying a gigantic brick in your pocket.

This was introduced at a time when there was both exhaustion at increasingly larger phones and people started complaining about “screen time” and distractions. This was suppose to address both of those issues.

Right, I get the main reasons for the Palm Phone. I'm one of the few people in the world who has one lol.

I just think the "companion" aspect was always dumb. You would have to manage two devices and keep them with you anyway, all that would do is increase personal toil. It only became viable for me once I could replace my larger phone with it entirely.

I wonder how bad the battery life is in practice.

They seem to be selling an always on battery saving mode as a quality of life feature. Which is fine for me having do not disturb activated 90% of time on my phone.

All the smartphones I had in recent years I had to charge overnight. Not because they were depleted completely, but enough so that they usually run out some point the next day. And I prefer to just plug the devices in at home insted of carrying around cables and charging banks.

And related question: How well does the apple or other smart watches do with audio interactions only? I have been playing with the tought of instead of having a phone, using a smart pocket watch. So not even wearing on the wrist. But just take it out once in a while and use headphones, for things like accepting call, dictate messages/notes and chose spotify playlist.

That "pocket watch" idea is kinda neat. Maybe someone could bring back the pocket watch form factor. Come to think of it, that's how I used my phone before I got a smart watch.

I wonder how bad the battery life is in practice.

Third party reviews have said that it could last 18-24 hours

That’s the same reason I bought my iPhone 8 Plus. At the time it had the best battery life of any iPhone.

Now the iPhone 11 Pro Max can easily last two days on a charge but that phone is ridiculously large.

How well does the apple or other smart watches do with audio interactions only?

We tested ours when we first got them. I had my watch on, arms down, no headphones and we couldn’t tell that you weren’t on a phone. Of course with a headphones you couldn’t tell the difference. Apple Music works well with voice interaction. I’m not sure if Spotify has been updated to take advantage of the new APIs and Siri integration Apple introduced last year. Text messaging using voice only works well. But, if I know my wife is out and about. I try to ask simple questions in text where she can just use a quick reply - yes, no, etc.

Battery life horribleness on Android is often tied to the screen size too.

I have one. I charge it every night or two. Sometimes it runs out of battery but I don't care much. Web browsing, emailing, calling for a rideshare, and other straightforward stuff is fine. If you're using Google Maps for turn by turn GPS continuously in a car without a way to charge your phone via USB, you'll run out of battery in a couple hours. If you play a bunch of graphically games, I imagine it wouldn't be super great.

I've been using one of these for the past 6 months (they were going for ~$70 on eBay when I got mine). I don't use the "Life Mode" feature, and the battery doesn't even come close to lasting all day. When using the phone with screen on you can watch the battery percentage tick down ~1% a minute, and listening to streaming music over Bluetooth with screen off give you about 3 hours of life total. In practice I find myself leaving the phone plugged in, disconnecting it only to change location or leave the house. On excursions a battery pack is an absolute must-have.

This is something I've given a lot of thought about in the past few months. I almost bought one of these palm phones but ultimately the drawbacks mentioned here and on reviews sort of dissuaded me from getting one. Your smart pocket watch reminds me of the runcible, which was really cool and I wish I had gotten one but didn't have the funds at the time. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/runcible-circular-open-so...

I really like the idea of the watch instead of a phone, but it seems like they've explicitly designed it so that it will never be a stand-alone device.

I don't mind buying the watch and the airpods, but having to buy a phone AND two data subscriptions (thanks Canada telecoms)? Not worth it.

In day to day use, you never need the phone if you have the watch. Just for the initial setup and to pair with your data plan. But as far as cost you’re right - even with T-Mobile I pay $40 plan and $10 for the Watch data plan.

Hey man I had both a Zune and a ZuneHD. The Zune was fun and funky right when the iPod was starting to turn into a serious gadget used by Wall Street traders. I had the brown one!

Now, the ZuneHD that was a sexy piece of hardware. And the screen was brilliant!

I think the ZuneHD was Microsoft starting to finally get hardware right. But of course the software was terrible. Well, the client was. The “twisted” interface for the ZuneHD was actually much easier to use than music app or Spotify even today.

Android update? Happens all the time. I'm helping a client upgrade their device to 9 right now.

Why the delay? The chipset manufacturer only recently came out with the BSP for Android 9. So, cost.

Does Microsoft wait on the chipset manufacturer to release drivers for their operating system?

Maybe not. But Microsoft has 100,000+ employees. These chipset manufacturers may have 100+. So there's that.

Microsoft is the operating system vendor as is Google. I’m sure Google can spare a few “smart people” (tm) to better manage the Android ecosystem.

> zune of phones

nobody who owned a zune would consider that a negative comparison

Depends on the Zune I think. If it was a V1, there is a lot to hate. Also, try using it today - this guy did and it seems like he seriously struggled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG3Jud-829A

I think having the latest Android version is overrated. I'm using an enterprise Android 7 device that, afaik, has never gotten any firmware updates.

It now sells with 8.1, but I haven't been able to find any option to upgrade on their site.

All the apps I want to use are still available, F-Droid works great, I have the latest Chrome (which I use as Bromium). I've been able to disable most of Google apps, though I'm a bit sore that most of the OS breaks down when I disable Chrome.

The Apple Watch Series 5 has 32 GB.

Assuming you mean storage, this device apparently ships with 32 GiB of storage.

it has a custom ui, aside from security which can be patched, why would they update its android version

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