Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

After the disaster that was the Galaxy Watch 4, I've given up completely on Android Wear - it is just too slow, even right out of the box, and the battery life is abysmal. Going flat at 7pm without anything extra installed and with 4G off is unacceptable.

So I'm trying to move to a simpler watch with just basic smart features and longer battery life, but one where I can customize the watchface with code.

I ended up going with Watchy: https://watchy.sqfmi.com/

And it's cool, but it's extremely basic, a bit bulky and ugly, and has all the drawbacks of E-Paper.

Pebble would have been perfect. If they still sold them I would buy one today. It's tragic the company went under so quickly.

Maybe I should get a Pebble. But I don't really want to buy a second hand smartwatch, and I don't see the point in investing into something that will never be updated and has no official support. All this update does it make the phone companion app work on a Pixel 7.

RIP Pebble. I hope someone makes something similar.

You might want to look into the Amazfit and Mi Band Devices that are supported by Gadgetbridge[1]

I haven't looked into the process of watchface creation but there is a huge collection[2] that can be installed via Gadgetbridge. It also has the benefit that its privacy friendly without any cloud connections and fully opensource.

[1]https://www.gadgetbridge.org/ [2]https://amazfitwatchfaces.com/

> After the disaster that was the Galaxy Watch 4

Wait...what?? I've used all the Samsung watches, with 3G/LTE, and the 4 is leaps and bounds better than anything that preceded it (and is for me quite usable and hassle-free).

What features are you looking for? I moved away from the 'Smartwatch' arena to the fitness watch (Suunto Baro or Garmin Fenix). It allows notifications/messages, music streaming, fitness tracking. And the battery last 5-7 days (depending on what you use and how often, for example if I fitness track often the battery life decreases due to extra monitoring, etc..) I found it a good middle ground between a full blown smart watch and a dumb watch.

And it's cool, but it's extremely basic, a bit bulky and ugly, and has all the drawbacks of E-Paper.

Can you elaborate a bit about the e-paper part? I always believed that watches were the perfect place for e-paper. Low power, durable, always-on, wide viewing angle, no need to constant refresh.

I thought the smaller the display, the better suited it was for e-paper.

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