Pixel Watch 3
blog.google
blog.google
Some users believe it to be a hardware issue but it's still unacknowledged by Google and the forum thread where people have been discussing it has just been locked recently. Just mentioning it for awareness and visibility.
- https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Android-App/Google-Pixel-Wat...
- https://support.google.com/googlepixelwatch/thread/242833127...
I guess if I need a smartwatch, I'll dust off my old Garmin. Several other recomendations in this discussion I could look into too :).
that's a feature, not a bug
Google just have an incredibly weak product team, across both hardware and software.
They seem to be let off the hook with things like this when other companies are dragged over the coals.
Their Pixel phones have tons of issues that never get acknowledged or fixed, as do most of their products.
I've stopped considering anything google makes as a viable purchase unless I want to be a beta tester the whole time.
Why? Because notifications are not shown by default. The watch vibrates but nothing is there on the screen but the watch face. To trigger a notification to actually show, you need to rotate your wrist down (if it is up) and then up again (impossible if you are carrying something). Then you have to wait for it to recognize the gesture. Then you have to wait for a fade animation to an intermediate screen that shows half of the information about the notification. Then you have to wait for a fade animation to the final screen that actually shows the notification text. And if you lower your wrist at all during or after this process, the notification disappears instantly and won't come back without the use of both hands to activate the touchscreen or crown. And in many cases the information shown is useless, like "so-and-so sent a picture." Show me the goddamn picture then!
It boggles the mind that anyone could think this is a good experience to ship at all, let alone for three generations! Especially when Pebble had it right 10 years ago. You show the notification on the screen first, then you vibrate the watch, then you leave the notification there for at least 30 seconds so it can be read. You show the whole notification at once (as much as possible on the small screen, of course), and you also show a small clock at the top so you can still see the time while the notification is shown. How hard is that?
Of course this isn't the only way the Pixel Watch software sucks. The whole UX is pretty terrible, like they had some ideas and went straight to final implementation, never bothering to iterate based on user feedback. Low information density, low customizability, feature-poor, unresponsive interactions, blocking animations. It's everything bad about modern UI in a tiny frustrating package.
I don't know what is wrong with all the tech reviewers that fail to call Google out on this stuff. Maybe it's better than Samsung or whatever but that doesn't make it good. At least the hardware is nice. Though, like all smartwatches except the Pebble Time Round, far too thick.
It's crazy how they can't manage to make these work faster. There's more than enough processing power in there, but the software is just so bloated.
My director wore an Apple Watch and had an iPhone for personal use, and I am pretty sure I saw an Apple Watch on my VP too. Nobody was expected to eat the dog food and so few did. This was crazy to me coming from Apple- I remember several internal sites would ask you to file a radar (bug report) on why you switched to chrome from safari if you opened them in chrome. So many crazy issues I saw and reported didn’t actually matter to many high ranking members of the pixel team because they didn’t use the devices after 5pm.
There is a lot of incredible talent in that team but I think Google needs a minor culture shift to compete with Apple here.
Clearly there was no pressure to use the Google product so they used a wide diversity of devices and services, and I saw this as a healthy thing.
I think it's unhealthy for those in charge not to use the products they sell, especially when talking about consumer goods.
Then it stopped. And if I’m going to spend my own money, Google has to compete on features just like anyone else.
If you aren't willing to dogfood the the product line you have ownership of and prefer to use other products, you shouldn't have ownership in it as you have no vested interest in really making it better.
I think if you work on a team for some product, it would be good to be a user of that product. Especially if you are at a high level driving product decisions.
I think if you don't work on a specific product it is good to have diversity. For example GMail developers should probably use a mix of OSes and web browsers. But most Android GMail app developers should probably be using Android GMail.
But of course you don't want to be blind to other players, copying good ideas is good. So you do want to regularly interact with the other options as well. But I don't think only using the third-party option is a good idea either. If you only use an Apple Watch you don't know how the Pixel Watch works and how it has different interaction patterns (which on its own is probably a good thing). Maybe the product leads of the Pixel watch should regularly alternate between their own product and other competitors.
You can get all the awareness you need from using the competitors product as a daily driver for a couple weeks, instead of using it 24/7 and being totally unaware of the problems using your own product that only crop up after heavy use.
Having said that, I don't think I've been happier than with the GW7 I have atm. It does what i want, I can wear it all day and all night and charge it back to 100% in the time it takes me to have a shower get a cuppa and be ready to walk out the door.
Its giving me interesting data on sleep and heart rate etc etc (though if I'm honest I'm not sure I'm really using that data for anything)
No sport? I recommend a classy automatic wristwatch. Your movement winds it up. No charging. No apps. No updates. No battery. The spring is wind up by wearing, eight hours of wearing usually last for 24 hours. So sleeping without isn’t an issue and in worst case you can wind up manually. Best purchase of my life.
PS: Teached me also other things. Mine has an “old” acrylic glass which I considered first as drawback. It isn’t. It doesn’t break up easily like gorilla glass. And no notifications.
Generally, just turning over my wrist to look at it works exceptionally well at showing everything, a firm tap works when that doesn't.
The 1 to 2 weeklong battery life is also great.
It's really one of my favorite watches.
My wife has the pixel watch 2 and holy cow does the battery on that thing suck. She never uses the sleep function because the damn thing is empty at the end of every day. Like 14 hours of battery life max in normal usage.
Now I just glance at my wrist and ignore it most of the time. I also leave my phone lying around all over the place. I used to religiously carry it with me which made it much easier to get distracted.
Like the other guy said, when your phone buzzes and you open it up to see what it is, now you're on your phone and you can easily get distracted and spend minutes scrolling. With a watch, half the time or more you can decide it's not important enough to even touch your phone. Much easier to let it go.
Plus you can wear clothing that doesn't accommodate a phone without needing to put it on the table.
If you can't see that there is more nuance than that, I'm not sure how to make you understand it.
This aside, I really dislike watches and would prefer to not wear one
Terrible UX. Cycling through the modes steps you through the settings mode. A destructive / disruptive function should never be part of the normal functional flow.
I recently got an A158W (the shiny version of an F91W) because I want to drop a Sensor Watch board into it. I'm going to make damn sure to modify this aspect of the firmware.
I can also unlock my house via my watch, but again, it’s just more convenient than using a phone.
Had a Citizen that was radio controlled, meaning that the time would update itself using a radio signal. Automatic calendar (accounts for leap years, etc.), time zones, etc. Solar powered (no battery change). Scratch-proof (no protective film needed). Had it for 10 years (unfortunately lost it) and never needed anything else.
If they ever figure out a way to measure blood sugar or blood pressure, that would actually be useful. Until then I would much prefer a thinner and more comfortable watch without the protruding sensors.
Some of the smart features aren't quiet as good... but like everything I've needed has worked great (like tap and pay).
One is literally just the vibration motor on my wrist, so I can turn off all sound and vibration on my phone without missing calls and texts.
The other is "Extend Unlock" (formerly "Smart Lock") which makes the bad fingerprint reader on my Pixel 7 a non-issue, and is just generally convenient.
Funnily enough they're trying to replace "Extend Unlock" with a new feature called "Watch Unlock" and (quite predictably) they screwed up the implementation so bad it's not worth using at all. It's slower than entering my unlock code and annoying because it vibrates the watch every time my phone unlocks, with a random delay. Luckily they didn't actually remove the old "Extend Unlock" feature, they just hid it. I suppose someday they will remove it and I'll have one less reason to wear a smartwatch.
I personally don't have a problem with that behaviour and find it to be a natural gesture. Maybe the Pixel watch isn't as good at recognizing it.
If you ever used a watch that did show notifications automatically with an always-on screen and then went back to one that doesn't, you would probably notice that it's way slower, and also there are many times where you can see the watch screen but it's not convenient to do a gesture.
Don't get me started on the insanity of making round smartwatches. You wouldn't make a round phone.
A huge part of it was a similar notifications issue to what you describe - get a notification, raise wrist, and have to wait for a stupid animation to play before displaying the notification.
There were a bunch of other problems, including some unbearably stupid ones like it would only work with Alexa and not assistant (wtf who owns fitbit?). I took it back and managed to buy another original Sense. (I posted about them on the Fitbit forum: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Sense-2/Is-Sense-2-a-downgra... which seemed to get a bit of agreement from others).
My conclusion was that literally nobody working on this watch or responsible for its success actually used one.
After my third one broke I had some time where I tried a Galaxy Watch, played with an Apple watch, and finally settled on nothing until there was something that lasted longer than a day. Fitbit Versa being the spiritual successor I moved to, but its frustrating that Google picked them up after i bought it and slowly the software is becoming less reliable.
My wife's will keep unpairing from her Pixel, mine is insistent on moving the account from Fitbit to Google but the "account migration" fails so once a month it just logs out.
I actively avoid new Google products these days.
So if I didn't specifically look at and flip through the watch, and instead looked at my phone there would be zero indication I had a appointment coming up.
I'm happy with my Withings Scan watch now. I'm largely passed active-smart watch territory and only passively check the stats on it.
I'm surprised to find myself somewhat disappointed, and preferring my Pixel Watch, though I'm still giving myself some time in case it's just familiarity. But a few things:
* The available watch faces are pretty underwhelming, particularly digital ones. There's only a single one that actually includes the seconds, as far as I can tell. And the only one with lots of complications is Modular, which sticks the time in the corner, and has a big unwieldy complication in the center. My kingdom for Pixel Watch's Utility.
* No watch face store!?
* I can't seem to set up a minimal all-red face for night time, like I had on the Pixel Watch.
* The heart rate complication is just a picture of a heart that I click and it takes me to a widget that measures my heart rate. I had a real time glance on Pixel Watch, right in the complication, always up to date.
* The sleep tracking is weird and confusing. I need to set up schedules and such? On the Pixel Watch, it just tracks my sleep automatically.
* Subjective, but I still like the size and shape (round) of the Pixel Watch more than this Apple Watch, for now.
Sleep tracking should be pretty much automatic. I don't have any fancy schedules configured, although maybe at one point the phone did ask me what my usual sleep times are. It just automatically collects sleep stats and puts them in the Health app.
The round watch face preference is definitely a subjective thing. I can't imagine how it works as a practical matter since so much of what makes a smartwatch useful benefits from the rectangle form factor and space.
> * The sleep tracking is weird and confusing. I need to set up schedules and such? On the Pixel Watch, it just tracks my sleep automatically.
If you switch to Sleep focus (side button, moon, Sleep) it'll switch to a more minimalistic face and turn off the Always On Display. A quick tap on the screen would still show the time.
I bought AutoSleep [1] back when in the day when watchOS still didn't have sleep tracking, and still use it daily. It's fabulous for automatically tracking naps.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/autosleep-track-sleep-on-watch...
Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.
>Plus, a new better Battery Saver Mode extends battery life to up to 36 hours across both sizes, without compromising any of your health and fitness tracking or safety features.
I don't know if 48 hr battery is that much better. Charging it everyday is easier than remembering every other day. You basically have to jump from 24hr to a week battery for people to truly care.
I pointed out the 48hr life because I loved the MS Band, and I can't think of anything it didn't do that any modern smart watch does for me that I actually care about. And it got the same or better battery life as is typical in the market today. And on much worse hardware.
There's a setting under Notifications & Alerts > Smart notifications > Status (switch to off). In the Garmin app
I'm not that deep into the fitness scene, but I'm convinced by the 14-day battery life. But I also understand if you find the look a bit unfashionable.
A common complaint I hear is "yeah but there's no apps! how do I add extra functionality to my watch?" .. they just don't believe you when you say "it's already there"
Smart watches are general purpose devices, more sandboxes than anything else.. where as Fitness/Sports Watches (Garmin/Coros/Suunto/etc) already have everything you need for Fitness/Sports, and things you didn't know existed. What's happened is that it's trivially easy for Fitness watches to add some smart offerings (Calls/Texts/Notifications) and also some apps...then it is for Apple/Google/Samsung to add fitness things.
Sure Apple and also Google did add in some training load/status/etc stuff.. which is great cool... but it's also still a device that I have to charge daily, instead of monthly. And then, when theres a fitness metric or long term stat I want to see, i have to give some third party developer my health data to do it.
An example of that last thing. I have a friend who's a triathlete, I'm going to travel to run a Half Marathon with him, he uses an Apple Watch SE, I'm on a Garmin Fenix 7x.
He's jealous of all the long term stats I have, like all the training load over time, adaptive workouts, etc etc. He's on that cusp of ditching a smart watch and getting a dedicated fitness watch. When I see him, and he sees what I can do on my watch.. he's gonna love it.
I've got one for my smoker, a fireboard app. Useful to see the temp on my wrist when I've got a brisket finishing
All the smart features i want on a watch is, Notifications, to know when someone is calling me, payments, and to find my phone.
Everything else is something I do on my phone.
Apple Watches are more like mini-iPhones. For example, I can take calls from my watch without a phone nearby, which is more appealing to me than multi-day battery life.
Look, I’m not claiming it’s life changing. The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up.
It’s silly that I’m getting downvoted because it’s true. The Apple Watch and some android watches are more powerful devices more akin to a mini-phone. And because they’re more powerful they use more power. Do people really think Apple is purposefully gimping their own device or maybe there’s more too it than “these are all smart watches”.
I’m totally ok with charging my watch every night and the extra little conveniences I get from a more powerful device are worth it to me.
For a Garmin-style watch, the convenience of only needing a ~30min charge once or twice a month is pretty big.
If that matters to you then great but I take issue with putting all of these watches in the same bucket and pretending that they’re all the same except for battery life. It’s just not true.
I had an Android Wear watch years ago (2016?) that started with 36hr battery life and did great sleep tracking and fitness tracking. Between updates and battery degradation, after a year or so, it would barely make it 18 hours. Then I had to start charging overnight so it would be charged enough for my 5am runs, and so I lost the sleep tracking feature.
I like that my watch serves as a mini-iPhone, and I don’t mind charging it while I sleep. I like that I can install some of the same apps on my phone and watch.
What is weird is saying an Apple Watch is inferior to a 10 year old watch because of the battery life, when these are different devices with different purposes.
Think about this for a second, would Apple purposefully gimp their watch’s battery life or maybe, just maybe, there’s more going on.
Yes?
Design a device with just enough to get through the day, forces getting replaced in a few years when battery degrades. Apple is a hardware company with the capability to optimize battery life but they don't since 80% health on a batt that lasts a week won't force a replacement for most customers.
My other apple devices are the same way. I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
Your statement is ignorant.
Citation? In my experience this isn't the case. 2-3 years heavy use and the batt needs replacement (less than 80% design capacity). Can sometimes get as high as 5 years on a lightly used device. It may work longer but its not going to hold anywhere near design capacity. The dual-cell low voltage charging standards other manufacturers use seem to hold up longer since the heat is reduced.
> I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
Cool, stuff like my original SE's hold up fine (and got a security update like a week ago). I've just replaced the batteries 2 or 3 times because they age and performance declines. This is expected but I'm not going to cope on a battery with 60% of its design capacity and act like its just as good as new.
> Your statement is ignorant.
I forgot how hard some people will try to rationalize their behavior. I still think the statement holds true knowing how many people I've met clinging to devices with dying batteries and saying 'well I have an upgrade coming soon' rather than just replacing the fucking battery.
It's the same thing. I'm not going to wear two watches, a choice has to be made. Based on criteria important to me (and to the original commenter you jumped on) Apple Watch is clearly inferior.
Still enjoying my glorified fitness band watch with 2-3 week battery life.
I'm much happier with a watch that does fewer things but does them well. Only having to charge it for ~30 minutes once every few weeks means that I can just leave it on all the time like the non-smart watches I used to wear.
I don't think I'd want the extra battery life unless it was much longer. Like a month or more. Remembering to charge a device just once a week is harder to make a habit out of than just putting the device on the inductive charger every time I take a shower.
But I agree there is a huge difference between once-daily charging and once-weekly charging.
I will say it wasn't great when I had the non-Ultra. It was fine at first, the watch would last a full day, but like 2 or 3 years later it would struggle if I did a lot of exercise in a day to make it to the time I go to bed.
I also recently went on a 5-day backpacking trip and it was a struggle to keep my phone and watch charged with an external battery. If the ultra lasted even 3 days instead of just 2ish on a charge this would have made it way easier. By the end of the trip to save charge I just gave up charging the watch.
You can't just throw it on the charger for a few minutes before bed and awhile during shower in the morning?
That is a big deal to me personally, that's an extra routine I have to incorporate into my day that given the option I'd rather not.
I'm sure you get used to it and it becomes part of a routine but it's nice not having to deal with it daily.
I went even further and got a Garmin Instinct 2X Solar with a battery life of a month.
I didn't understand how annoying it was to always charge the watch/Oura ring/Whoop band/phone until I got rid of them (except for the phone, that's still annoying).
I changed to a Garmin this year (started to do ultra marathons) and I've run out a couple of times because I just don't remember to charge. Especially when using GPS and bluetooth audio with it massively bumps up power consumption (which felt less like the case on the Apple Watch)
Still prefer the Garmin, but just saying that I don't think battery life is the huge feature that people think it is.
You would need to refactor the entire UI interaction model to properly take advantage of a circular face.
If you're fitness first, tiny screen strapped to your wrist second, they're excellent devices.
You can fit less information on it, even with the same number of pixels. There is nothing you can do on a round LCD that you can't do on a square. If you find it aesthetically pleasing, great. I like round as well. But for people who like round, and use round to display a clock face, try a mechanical watch. They are awesome. ]
This product seems destined for those who like something big and bright on their wrist.
In principle, this watch has no built-in GPS. One day's autonomy is therefore well below that any entry-level sport watches released in the last 5 years could offer.
DC Rainmaker confirms in its test that this watch is not equipped with a GPS chip. "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. "
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/08/google-pixel-watch-3-han...
It's not clear whether the watch has a single-band GPS or no GPS at all. The fact that they don't communicate one it is not encouraging.
That doesn't mean "no GPS"
Weird cherry pick from a larger quote that clearly implies it has GPS:
> Again, this is an area I’ll dive into during my in-depth review down the road, looking at both the heart rate accuracy in running, as well as various changes they’ve made around GPS/GNSS accuracy. Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. However, as I’ve constantly said: I don’t care how a company arrives hardware-wise at an accurate GPS track, as long as they do so. We’ve seen companies with multiband implementations do worse than other companies without multiband. So as long as Google can deliver accurate GPS tracks, I’m happy.
Please don't post false information. The specs are readily available.
Kind of hilarious to pair that with bragging rights on "all-day battery life."
I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time. My Galaxy S23 Ultra weighs almost 300g with the case.
I recently got wrist pain and some radiating pain in my pinky and ring finger. First I thought I'm getting carpal tunnel but that is quite literally the other tunnel in the wrist.
Took me a while to figure this out, but turns out holding a heavy phone in one hand, propping it up with your pinkie finger (bending the finger sideways) is not a natural way for the pinkie finger to function.
Stopped holding it like that and it seems to be getting better. Got a magsafe handle for the back of the phone which should arrive soon ... Hopefully it gives me more grip.
The standard Pixel a line is relatively small, ~6", but perhaps you're talking about going back to the under-6" range.
I definitely find the move to larger phones somewhat perplexing because even as a 6'4" guy it's pretty difficult to navigate that much screen space with one hand.
I stopped holding the phone that way, and it went away.
The phone being big and heavy is quite insidious. Turns out that "you're holding it wrong" can really be a problem... not for the antenna/reception, but for our own hands.
* small/thin/light
* Battery lasts multiple days
* notifications are main feature
Has anyone tried one of the hybrid smart watches like Withings ScanWatch series or Garmin vivoactive?
I've been eyeing the Garmin Venu and Vivo active as replacements though
Also, it wasn't fully waterproof (5 ATM is not enough) and I didn't like having to take it off to go swimming etc. My classic watch is 20 ATM.
- call uber
- maps navigation
- a camera. I need to be able to capture photos and videos things while out. even at lower specs i'd love this
dont really need a screen, its cubersome when you are outside for long periods of time and battery life on Apple phones isn't very good
Need something, I don't care if its big, that will last for at least a week, can do 3g/4g (5g is too much) SMS globally and calling internationally
bonus points for satellite connectivity and extended battery mode (where you can text your coordinates in mountains etc)
> Need something, I don't care if its big, that will last for at least a week, can do 3g/4g (5g is too much) SMS globally and calling internationally
That depends on if you feel that you need to keep everything that needs network running in the background all the time. I keep some things running in the background, but not everything. My aging iPhone 8 lasts me a week between charges, and it's got 4 years on its back and still using the original battery, now down to just under 80% maximum capacity. Really, the iPhones' battery life is fine.
Apple Watch managed to push instantly recognizable rectangular style. Galaxy Watch tries to pass as a regular watch, more or less successfully. And Pixel Watch? It looks either as a children's toy or as a cheap fitness band. It might be smart, might have the best software and hardware, but it just isn't something I'd like to wear, except maybe for a training session.
Pixel Watch 2 was significantly better than Pixel Watch 1 but still behind an Apple Watch SE2 which is $100 cheaper.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/general/how-long-will-my-g...