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Comment by SparkyMcUnicorn | Hacker News Reader

I have this watch, and got it to tinker with since it had some fun sensors, mic, and speaker.

Haven't turned it on in a while, but the battery life was definitely measured in minutes. It will not last anywhere close to a full day, even with a bunch of optimizations and certain things turned off. Even with the display off, ESP32s drain tiny batteries.

It's only practical for tinkering, and an M5Stack is definitely a better choice for that.

EDIT: Checked my notes. I was able to get it past the 24 hour mark with some work.

This repo has some helpful info: https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/TTGO_TWatch_Library/blob/m...

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Thanks, I almost bought it since it is only $40USD. Yet another sad case of you get what you pay for.

You saved me from disappointment!

You can get a Mi Band for about that price, and it's a good smartwatch with great battery life (admittedly the software isn't the best).

What issues with the software have you had? I’ve got one and really haven’t had any problems using it in combination with my iPhone.

Occasionally it won't sync a workout when I ask it to. There was a confusion of which app to use and which accounts you need to sign up for (Zepp versus whatever the other thing), and it seemed to ask for a bunch of info. Up until the 7 you couldn't turn it off. Mostly it just feels clunky. It does the job but it's not what I'd call delightful to use.

I also forgot to mention that it's quite ugly and looks very cheap. I personally wouldn't wear it even if it did have good battery life.

Got a galaxy 5 watch a few months ago, which was a much better purchase.

I picked up a galaxy watch 4 on a whim and I gotta say wearos is a trainwreck. Half the value is getting notifications to your wrist but you have to have corresponding linked apps on both the watch and phone. And typing on a watch is a nightmare -- you're paired to my phone! Why aren't I using that keyboard!?

Honestly the Pebble was not that high of a bar. Keep the screen on and send me my notifications and I'm happy.

Pebble was peak smarthwatch experience for me. Simple, straightforward, e-ink display. Super bummed that Fitbit bought them out. My Fitbit Versa is _almost_ as good as the Pebble but it's still trying too hard.

> Half the value is getting notifications to your wrist but you have to have corresponding linked apps on both the watch and phone

At least with my experience with Wear OS 3.5 and 4, this isn't the case. You can get notifications from any app and don't need two apps to do so.

I must be doing something wrong then. I wasn't getting any useful notifications on my watch until I installed all the corresponding watch apps to the phone apps. The watch runs WearOS 3.5. But either way: getting a decent experience should not be this hard.

I've got it the way I like it now but it was a lot of installing software and playing with settings. Which is fun! But it means I would never recommend WearOS to somebody who isn't geeky about Android.

How's that one been re battery life?

Somewhere around 2 full days. I usually stick it on the charger when I sit down at my desk, and less than 30 minutes is plenty to get it back to 100%. 0 to 100 might take around an hour.

I too was interested in that watch. The software looks a bit fancier than my PineTime. It turns out that the PineTime is actually amazing based on battery life alone. It currently costs ~US$27. It's slightly less chunky (37.5mm x 40mm x 11mm) and a bit better looking. Has BLE, heartrate, 3-axis tilt sensor and haptics but no speaker. Battery life has been consistently 8 days between recharges for the last year or so.

Software is okay although I occasionally get annoyed by Bluetooth connectivity issues using Gadgetbridge. But part of the reason I bought it is that it's hackable, so the software is totally replaceable.

I think sometimes you get more than what you pay for. And sometimes you're paying for shareholder dividends and outrageous CEO salaries.

I had no idea Pine64 had a smartwatch (and earbuds?!)

I have a Fitbit Versa that's really starting to show its age, I might have to check the PineTime out. I also have a Bangle.js which was a fun Kickstarter buy, but it's a little too chunky (I see they now have a v2 of it now which looks slicker)

Their blog is a hilarious adventure through all the Pine* items they've released, their eInk venture and the earbuds are particularly interesting to me...

I have the Bangle.js V2 and can confirm, it is a slimmer and slicker overall design, feeling more like a Fitbit Versa. Honestly, it's been a boredom breaker since it's relatively easy to dump new code on to it. My only complaint is the vibrating motor is almost too weak for me to feel when sleep, and as such, is not a reliable silent alarm, so I swap back to my OG Pebble at night.

Esp32 isn't a very low power device. You'll never build anything with a battery life measured in months off a coin cell with it.

Lol not true, you even have a low-power core (https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/...) in each esp which lasts on a coin battery for years.

Sure it won't last long if you use pause and you are connected to wifi. You have boards with a power management chip that allows you to do even more smarter things, for example https://www.hackster.io/news/smart-bee-designs-bee-s3-is-a-1...

The ULP coprocessor only claims a power consumption of 150 uA (which is huge compared to actual low power devices - EFM32, which is an ARM Cortex M3 MCU, runs on just 1.45 uA)

Combine that with the fact users see real power consumption up at 450 uA [1], you won't be writing a program that lasts more than about 3 weeks on a regular CR2032 coin cell.

[1]: https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/7882

This was then resolved (id depends on the use case also), also you are comparing Low Power CPU (ARM Cortex m0-m3), which you need to pair with something probably esp32 to connect it to the internet.

That's a 2 year old github bug being fixed, not the actual usage people obtain in the wild.

Here's [1] a commercial ESP32 board that draws 1.5uA, and, as others point out, comes with vastly more hardware at a lower cost [2] than the EFM32 arm core you listed.

[1] https://www.tindie.com/products/kdcircuits/trigboard-ultra-l...

[2] $1.10 for ESP32-C3 on digikey, vs $1.34 for EFM32PG22C200F64IM32-CR. The ESP-32 is better for pretty much every spec possible.

Yeah, por ir on deep sleep and wake it up briefly once a day and try not to use wifi

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