Comment by Lazonedo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lazonedo | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not very convinced of the utility of smart watches, at least not the wear os incarnations - I will not make a generic statement because I have no way to know if I would like the Apple Watches and I am not willing to buy an iPhone to get one.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and it's.. alright. I mean, the software works smoothly, I don't have any complaints to make in terms of defective behavior or UI. But past the time of novelty I barely use it as a smart watch. Just a watch I charge every day and which I won't replace once the battery ages too much or it breaks. I'll go back to a regular casio at that time.

It works for checking notifications but in many cases I'll want to do something after a notification (like, if I get a message, most likely I'll want to answer it, at which point I am going back on the phone where typing is comfortable, and what value did the watch provide?)

It doesn't add anything to some of my physical activities the phone didn't do - like tracking my bike rides on a map, and when I want to look at past results I'll also be using the phone - a bigger screen is always better. Tracking my heart rate - one of the watch exclusives - hasn't changed anything to my life. Anyhow, I will always be taking my phone with me anywhere I go, so the watch feels quite redundant. It can do things without having to take my phone out of the pocket, but do them worse for the most part.

I'm sure Fossil's bad deals with Google and the rise of Samsung contributed to their ills, but I also have a feeling this is a market that will have very little user retention in the long term. People buy their first smart watch and then might not decide to get another one ever. Unless they find a way to severely ramp up the utility in a way that can convince a large amount of people.

I've worn a Garmin smart watch for the last two years, exclusively for activity and sleep tracking benefits. I was an Apple Watch wearer for years (pre-ordered a Series 1 way back when.)

The apple watch, for me, was too distracting. Too many notifications, too much temptation to glance at the watch during meetings, during dinner, etc. I ended up selling the latest one I had and going back to dumb watches for a while. I felt phantom notifications on my wrist for about two weeks after I got rid of the Apple Watch.

So, when I decided to get a Garmin, I bought the dumbest smart watch they had (Instinct Solar 2) that could do activity/GPS tracking and never turned on message notifications, etc. I did enable their Garmin Pay thing and linked it to a card, because I usually run without my phone, and figured it might be handy to be able to stop by a coffee shop or something.

Anyway, smart watches are terrible.

One of the things I never understood is what do you do with information such as heart rate, sleep quality, total steps you made, and so on... What is the use of all that? One of my brothers asked me a few months ago if he should buy a smart watch and I told him "what for, what are you going to get from it?"... He then acknowledged that I was kind of right. Just suggested him to use an old casio watch and what he probably needed was just a simple chronometer. That's the only metric I have been using when going out for a run. I can't possibly see what's the benefit of other metrics offered by smartwatches. And they have the disadvantage that you need to regularly recharge them.

You use the information to monitor and guide your training, for one thing. A lot has been made about how smart watches aren't particularly accurate when measuring things like sleep or HRV (as compared to laboratory equipment,) but there is a kind of stochastic reliability good personal monitors provide. When my garmin watch says I'm fatigued (because of low HRV) or haven't been sleeping well, I see a difference in my athletic performance and can adjust accordingly to avoid injury.

It may not be super accurate at monitoring HRV, and might not even really be monitoring HRV, but it is monitoring something that correlates highly to how I feel and am likely to perform.

This is pretty much my view of smart watches too. The way I see it, the coupling with the phone removes the purpose of the watch.

I'll elaborate a bit: current smart watches seem to work a bit like a remote control for my phone: There's a Spotify app for wear os, but it only works if the watch is connected to the phone via Bluetooth, which means I have to bring the phone. Similarly, I can take phonecalls from my watch, but only if the phone is within Bluetooth reach.

I'm not sure why I need a remote control for something that has to be in my pocket anyway..

If the watch was more independent, it would be more useful. There are times when I don't want a bulky phone in my pocket, but a watch on my wrist is acceptable. Mostly various sport activities.

What would make a smart watch useful in my opinion is the following:

1. SIM card(preferably digital) so the watch has it's own data.

2. The ability to "disable" my phone so that all notifications and calls are forwarded automatically to my watch, even when the watch is not within range of the phone(this is gonna be a challenge technically, godspeed any engineer who tackles this)

3. "Full" apps, that work independently from the phone, so that my watch can in standalone do things like play music(probably via Bluetooth headphones) accept phonecalls, and bonus points if it can make phonecalls via voice control.

Once I can leave the phone at home and replace it temporarily with my watch, the watch will be useful to me.

For me, there are regularly situations that I get a message on my phone but it is not convenient to get out the phone. Looking at the watch is then quite handy. Similarly in a noisy environment I sometimes miss a notification. The buzz of the watch is nice.

Navigating with a phone always feels a clumsy. I find that also more convenient with a watch.

When it comes to heart rate, it is just convenient that the watch can constantly monitor heart rate, stress, etc. Sometimes you feel a bit off an wonder why. If HRV is suddenly lower then it might be good to avoid a hard training session.

I didn't think I'd find my Apple watch very useful, but it actually is. In situations where it may be awkward to take out (or even carry) your phone, the watch can act as a mini-phone. Going on runs without a phone is very liberating, while retaining the ability to track your run and stream music to Airpods. It does a decent job of tracking pool swims as well, thanks to being waterproof.

Not life-changing, but adding enough convenience to be worth it.

For runners and other athletes (depending on the sport), it seems fairly useful. I struggle to think of other use cases that justify it.

Obviously, a smart watch is strictly better than a regular watch in the sense that it has more features, but I think the downside of having to charge it so regularly makes the value-add not worth it. I am always sad about the downfall of Pebble watches, because the e-ink screens were excellent and gave you a watch that rarely needed to be charged and still gave the benefits of a smart watch (however small they may be).

I only have to charge my Garmin watch like every 10 days...

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