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Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

I had several pebbles (2 b/w and the colored one) and now have an apple watch. You don’t know what you’re talking about, the tech in the apple watch is years ahead. There’s much to criticize about the apple watch but it does the important things just so much better than the competition. I also never understood the focus on battery life. I put my watch on the charger whenever I go to sleep. If I forget it either still has more than 50% charge or I can charge it quickly. I don’t care for edge cases (camping etc.)

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I mean, sure the Apple Watch is "years ahead". It not only came out two years later, but is developed by one of the most wealthy consumer tech/software companies in the world. Pebble was acquired by FitBit right around the time the second iteration of the Apple Watch was out, so there's really not much point in comparing the two in terms of technology.

Despite Apple Watch's merits over the Pebble, I still miss my Pebble watches. The thing I actually miss the most is the physical buttons, so I can switch the currently-playing song with my watch without having to look at it. Having nearly all interaction with the Apple Watch being a touch screen is one big downside IMO -- still something it hasn't really "beaten" vs. Pebble Watch :)

I feel the same way with regards to the physical buttons, so easy to control by feel. I'd pay decent money for a phone case with external buttons for pausing/playing and other quick access functions.

The actual buttons on the pebble were terrible though but I do agree, it really sucks that this isn’t possible. I remember having a jailbreak tweak that allowed to use long presses on volume up/down to skip songs. Something like this could be done with the crown on the watch but we’re talking about apple, so don’t even think about using the physical inputs for something useful.

> can switch the currently-playing song with my watch without having to look at it

Why would you need to look at your watch? If you are listening to music on your Apple Watch - you are probably using headphones, all of which have next/prev buttons or gestures.

driving in my car and listening to music playing from my phone via bluetooth :)

Can you not use the button on your steering wheel in that scenario?

No, my car is kinda old - I use a Bluetooth FM Transmitter to broadcast the music to my car stereo! hahah :)

> I put my watch on the charger whenever I go to sleep.

One of the things that always confused me about the Apple Watch (and other smartwatches) is that they market them as sleep tracking devices, but if you do use it for that purpose then I'm not sure when you're supposed to charge it. I guess you could charge it during a morning (or evening) shower but is ~30 minutes a day of charging enough?

> I guess you could charge it during a morning (or evening) shower but is ~30 minutes a day of charging enough?

As someone who does this, yes. (It's more like twice a day, roughly ~30 minutes each.)

If it helps, I also usually turn on cinema mode on my Series 5 before I go to sleep.

You can set up sleep timings in the watch app on iPhone and the watch will automatically enter sleep mode in that range. It’ll mute notifications etc. as well, and give you a sweet notification on your iPhone when it’s done charging.

I charge it for 30 minutes while I get ready for bed and for 15 minutes in the morning while I dress and brush my teeth. For the other 23 hours and 15 minutes I wear it. I’ve yet to see it dip below 30% (except for days when I do all day hikes and have my outdoors map + gps tracking on the watch).

So I could probably make do with just the 30 minute charge in the evening.

Before Apple Watch I used (in order) a Jawbone Up, a Fitbit don’t know the name and a Garmin Vivofit. All three are by far way crummier than an Apple Watch. Both in comfort, build quality and functionality.

One of the few things I used my smart-ish watch for is tracking my sleep.

Without a large screen and turning off all notifications, I get about 3-4 weeks of battery with my current watch. Personally I rarely take it off.

I’d like at least a week of battery if I were to adopt any other smart watch. For me personally, I enjoy thinking less about the battery of a device that I mostly use for passive personal data collection and telling the time.

What is years ahead? It has a better SoC than competing watches for sure but what's the point? I wouldn't be surprised if the first Apple Watch has a faster SoC than my Fenix 5 Plus but other than the time it takes for it to make up a random running route I don't really care because the device feels snappy. My Pebble felt snappy too. I think other than EKG (don't care about that) my Fenix has all the same sensors, GPS, NFC for payments, HR monitor, accelerometer, altimeter, WiFi, bluetooth etc. I do wish it was a little more open like Pebble to get some of those weird little apps back though.

To me, a power hungry OLED touch screen seems like doing the important things wrong. It's harder to see in the sun, doesn't work with gloves or when it's cold, you need to actually LOOK at it to do something like pause music or change the album.

A better SoC usually means better power efficiency, where the speed means it can get through tasks faster under the same wattage, so it helps battery life.

Which is then completely blown by the screen anyways? It's not like you're tearing up complicated calculations on your watch. This makes sense on other devices but not so much on a watch. My Garmin lasts a week with the screen always on, several hours of GPS on and music playing during workouts. The most draining thing is music.

Yes but those screen features are what some people ask for (and always on can be disabled).

The watch also does do quite a bit of processing on device, especially cellular ones. It's quite a different beast than the Garmin, even though they have crossover

The functionality. I can use it as a flashlight, call, dictate messages, listen to music without phone, control my phone camera, use it for 2FA, map navigation, notifications with images and control smart home stuff. And yes, much of this convenience is due to the walled garden. I never had issues reading the screen, which I did have with my color screen pebble.

I can do most of that on my Garmin. Really only stuff that requires mic is not doable because it doesn't have a mic. And I guess notifications "with images". Heck some of it like 2FA I did on my Pebble!

I can’t compare with the Garmin, but the Pebble experience was subpar. I stopped wearing mine after a few weeks and gifted them to my mother after a while (she loved the pebbles but had constant issues with connectivity on Android). On the other hand, I expected to return my Apple Watch (it was an impulse buy due to a discount). But it really grew on me. It’s actually a “it just works” product (which I can’t say of a lot of Apple products these days). A friend of mine has a Garmin, but afaik he can’t do much with notifications. On the other hand I have quick replies, voice to text or depending on the app quick actions. That’s just not in the same ballpark. Do I need it? No. But it’s really convenient once you got used to it. I don’t know how many times I set the timer with Siri because my hands were full or dirty. If a second SIM card wasn’t so pricey in Germany I would probably get one and leave my mobile at home most of the time.

Yeah, quick replies only work if you have Android with Garmin and other smart watches because Apple doesn't let them.

The only thing I really hate about the Garmin is that they kneecap CJK support by region locking it.

> If a second SIM card wasn’t so pricey in Germany I would probably get one and leave my mobile at home most of the time.

This reminds me: it's silly that the Apple Watch eSIM has to be from the same provider as one's iPhone, and some providers which offer a phone eSIM don't support provisioning it for the Apple Watch, and vice versa.

I know you said you don't care about camping, but I have to point out it's simply not as big a problem as people like to imagine either. I take a battery to charge my phone for maps anyway. The big difference between charging my watch camping, and charging my watch at home, is when I'm camping, I put it on the charger and take it off when it hits 80%. I don't just leave it there while I sleep.

5-8 days on 1 or 2 powerbanks is normal. Most people hiking more than that are going to find somewhere to stop and charge (and restock food) at least that often anyway. Truly hitting wilderness for 2+ weeks is the actual edge case where I'd want to leave my watch at home.

You must not care about sleep tracking? That's why I find battery life annoying on the apple watch, it always runs out by the end of the day. Luckily, it does charge really fast so 30 min before falling asleep and its back on.

Do you have series 6?

Yes I do, and I use it for a number of things including sleep tracking which its great at.

I love my Apple Watch but the battery life thing is annoying because I do want to wear it to bed so the alarm can fire without waking a sleeping companion.

The sleep monitor is amazing this doesn't work for me.

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