My Pebble mood tracker app from 2016
nothingeasyaboutthis.com
nothingeasyaboutthis.com
But after about 6 years of ownership, I noticed that my battery could only hold a charge for 3-4 days, compared with 10-12 when I first got it.
Then I realized that I wasn't regularly paying attention to the sleep tracking data. And the Bluetooth alerts were a little noisy, especially since I'm in front of a laptop for most of my workday. And once Pebble went out of business and the Rebble app store became more of a gamble, I realized it had been a while since I used any apps.
So about a month ago, I bought a simple $40 Timex watch. And it dawned on me that it has the three things I really want: a clock, an always-on display, and a super long battery life.
I'm not entirely abandoning my Pebble. It's still nice to wear when I'm out and about and don't want to constantly check my phone for notifications. But it's nice to know that when it finally wears out for good, I've got an acceptable backup.
Battery lifetime on a charge is... I don't know, maybe I charge it once a week or every 10 days or something like that?! It's not so often that I find myself doing it conciously, I just sometimes take it of at night and leave it to charge.
Was around 150 € which I found okay.
However the biggest problem is that the eInk screens seem to be a major failure point - even when working normally it seems to suffer massive burn-in making it unreadable after a few months.
My first watch had the screen die due to what I believe was trapped moisture (the weep-hole on the back is easily clogged) and just a few days ago my current watch also had the screen go bad.
It's really sad because the feature-set is almost precisely what I want, at exactly the price I'd like to pay
I have had it almost three years though and I can still read it unless the ambient light is too dim.
I find it useful to quickly answer phone calls and to control music/podcast replaying and of course the heart rate and sleep tracking.
It is a good device even with this problem - I will probably buy another to replace this one, possibly when they release their next update.
So finally I removed them all excepot for two that weren't as intrusive and also were very useful for me: phone calls and meeting/event notifications from calendars. That way I could keep my phone "silent", and also don't miss meetings (I have very bad time management abilities)
Cheap Casio Watch:
- Never have to charge it
- Continuously shows me the minutes and seconds on the stopwatch
$700 Apple Watch Ultra:
- Needs to be re-charged daily
- Refuses to offer a minutes and seconds mode for more than 10-15 seconds at a time (it will keep counting, but will just show the minutes unless you continuously keep raising your wrist)
- Refuses to offer a settings option to adjust the above behavior (presumably because Apple's UI in general is basically "would you like 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 60 minutes?" with very little thought given to the idea you might be able to actually comprehend how many minutes you want and that it might not be one of the Cupertino options)
Also since I'm already rambling -- just to ramble a bit more:
- Receiving "now's a good time to be mindful" or "time to take a break and stand up" alerts while I'm driving and (maybe because of the specific distance from my house) particularly when I'm about to merge onto the nearest freeway .... when the watch has a GPS and knows how fast I've been moving and where I am ... kinda leaves me speechless.
To balance:
It is still useful overall for seeing Maps directions displayed directly on the watch face -- and this would be the major use case for me. But it's enough of a PITA to keep it charged that I generally just use my phone instead anyway.
So far, I've learned that the biggest benefit of mood tracking is the process of tracking: taking a moment to reflect on how you feel, name the emotion, and think about why you feel the way you do. The next big opportunity is to teach people effective strategies for dealing with their emotions in a healthy way (even if that just means accepting the emotion without judgement).
As an aside, I also loved my Pebble and physical buttons :D
I found a small bug in the analyze tab though. If you look at e.g. weekly and select a tab that is not the left most one, then scroll down, then tap the top of the display (the universal scroll to the top feature of iOS), the content disappears.
The fact that it can easily last a day on a small fraction of the battery has often unexpected benefits too. Forgot to charge? np, just charge while doing something else for ~10 minutes and it will get you through the day anyway. Even less if it just needs to last overnight to use as an alarm the next day.
RIP Pebble. You were always doomed because you couldn’t have the kind of OS integration a first party device could, but you were the little watch that could.
But they were really slow to embrace fitness usage and a lot of people found them less attractive than the Fitbit.
Sadly, it isn't possible to develop apps for it, though. To this day, there isn't a watch that adequately replaced the full glory that is the Pebble.
I went for the Instinct because I use it heavily when backpacking in the wilderness, and it's the most rugged. Plus, it's inexpensive enough that if I bash it against a rock or something and destroy it, it's not a crisis.
It’s bizarre that xiaomi and amazfit make nice looking watches with 8x as much battery life as an Apple Watch. What is Apple’s problem?
I would have stuck with the amazfit but the physical buttons won’t control music (and I don’t trust their data policy enough to wear a gps-enabled device on my person 24/7).
https://watchy.sqfmi.com/ https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/SQFMI/SQFMI-WATCHY-10?q...
i dont need it i dont need it i dont need it...
EDIT: Okay I lasted 5 minutes. Looking forward to assembling it :)
The software is basic, but I was able to recompile it and re-upload the same day it arrived in the post. If that appeals to you, you should get one!
I have a fantasy about creating some kind of habit tracker app for it. One day...
They're building a developer API to measure wellness and mood without user input.
I'm considering maybe trying it in an app we're developing, but I have no affiliation with them (aside from being in the same part of the world Aus/Nz).
> Our models are trained on a validated clinical rating scale but instead of needing the user to fill out a questionnaire the models predict the score based on the user’s digital phenotype. > Sahha produces this digital phenotype by producing a holistic picture of the user’s movement, sleep and phone usage.
I don’t believe this will do anything helpful for my interests, though I can see how this could be used in a surveillance method to adjust things like insurance pricing.
I used to drink more but seeing broader studies and anecdotal notes like this helps me socially and culturally moderate in a healthier way.
You could make each step give haptic feedback, which seems to be standard behaviour for stuff like time pickers
"Pebble Smartwatch: From $230 Million to Zero"
One Time Steel is kaput (don't wear Pebbles on hot jacuzzis), am using the second and the others are in the drawer waiting for their turn.
I hope to have Pebbles for the rest of my life.