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Comment by mrinterweb | Hacker News Reader

I noticed my mouth had been hanging agape for a while while reading this. This is huge news. I feel like Pebble is the smartwatch that got it right the first time. So many smartwatches try to replace the phone instead of being an extension of the phone. Pebble seemed to better understand what is important than most smartwatches by being the extension of the phone, a focus on battery life and always on displays.

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I literally just bought a LTE watch because I hate phones, I never use mine, and I keep forgetting it anyway. I'd rather have a watch with an eSIM

I would do this too, but in some venues you have to pay by scanning QR codes, which makes it impossible without camera.

And I don't want this:

https://wristcam.com/blogs/learn/do-apple-watches-have-camer...

They have QR payments, but no NFT? That doesn't seem right.

Outside the US, third party payment apps are popular, since they often don't require a credit card. But since Apple refuses third parties access to the NFT hardware, those apps almost universally have to use QR payments. It works OK, because most payment terminals have a display with sufficient resolution for a QR code anyway.

Outside the US, modern banking is available, and credit cards are unnecessary.

In my home country of Smugistan, greatest country in world, banks unnecessary. Check-outs take money directly from brain waves using technology invented by Smugistanian super computers. Money is crypto backed generated from farts released by citizens of Smugistan. Also, farts smell like roses.

How do you use "modern banking" to pay contact-less for a coffee using an iPhone, and can you use the same method to send a friend $5?

There’s an account number on the register, you send money to it by app or web. For others a debit card will work. Apple is not required.

You can send a friend 25 cents for half a cookie or ten thousand for a deposit on an apartment, all free.

NFC payments with cards. Payments based on proximity. Payment requests over chat etc etc.

Please. By all means, get out there. And look around and be amazed by how inventive people are.

How cultural differences form technological preferences. How people in one country send eachother billions a year via Tikkie, in another country pay at all shops via their chat app. How unbanked in many places pay with SMS credit. Or how many people pay fast and easy with QR.

Your bubble isn't "the best for everyone" it's just one of many options. One that you and your peers probably prefer.

But this is exactly my point. Those apps exist, and are popular. But they can't use NFC because of Apple's limitations on hardware APIs. So, QR payments are popular.

All those apps would use NFC for many of those use cases if they could. Which brings us back to the start of this discussion: which use case has QR payment, but not NFC (and thus requiring a camera in addition to a NFC chip in a smart watch)? Answer: the huge (international) market of non-NFC payment/ticketing apps.

A trust box, for example. Or a simple donation option. The ticket (pay what you want) at my favorite punk gig in town. Etc.

In e.g. the Netherlands, the majority of payments go via a payment system iDeal¹. Its easy to start an ideal payment with a QR code. It's, by my knowledge, impossible to do so via NFC - other than via Apple Pay or Google Wallet.

Then, there are vast fleets of phones out there that don't even have NFC. I wouldn't be suprised if a majority of phones in use today don't have nfc chips on board.

And, a large section of the population won't switch on NFC even. For battery. For privacy, for fear etc. If not for scanning my glucose meter, I would've switched off NFC by default. I'm no tinfoil hat, but 30+ years of software development and hackery has kept me weary of such stuff.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL, which, as former developer in dutch fintech, is far from what the name suggests ;).

If your world is limited to the US and western Europe, sure.

> you have to pay by scanning QR codes

I've never encountered that, but that sounds like a venue that doesn't want my money anyway.

It happens a lot in societies where people know and trust each other.

Often you can even buy drinks by scanning a QR code, paying, and then grabbing a drink from the fridge. With nobody else involved.

While not disagreeing with what you said, such "grab a drink from the fridge" things are always in a monitored environment. There are no unlocked public fridges even hyper-high trust societies like Japan or Dubai.

No. In baltics, northern EU you can encounter countryside unsupervised apples, tomatoes and even honey where you take it and put money a box. No camera.

Also, even with cameras, it is little help of I am a tourist. In Switzerland, I was in such a store in a mountain village.

I visited there once - no point trying to find me if I stole something.

Same in Farms around Vancouver, Canada

Would you wear a Pebble too?

The Withings ScanWatch was the right fit for me. Unfortunately the HR sensor stopped working recently and the water resistant seal broke, and it's out of warranty, so it's in a drawer. But IMO that was the right idea: analog time, discrete notifications, ppg/ekg sensors, 2-week battery life.

I like my Fossil watch. Similar to Withings, less health features, marginally smarter. Analog watchface in front of an eink display, 3-4 weeks battery life. Of course they got discontinued as well.

These are truly the best! And I've done a lot of research. Nowadays there are some smaller luxury brands that are closer with feature parity but not quite. The original Fossil team spun off to develop some kind of general watch platform, so I'm hopeful we'll see a remake by the time my fossil kicks out.

Mine broke down but I got it repaired by Fossil after some time for 60 Euro. Meanwhile I bought a Garmin, now the repaired Fossil sits in a drawer. Not sure what to do with it. Maybe gift it to someone, but softwarer support is probably getting worse.

I love my Withings watch but I wish I didn't have to use their app and could instead get the data directly. I tried to reverse engineer their bluetooth based protocol in the past but didn't get far because I don't have much experience with bluetooth.

I then looked at what http requests their app makes which was more straightforward and actually interesting but still not what I wanted... I hope I will find the time to try again soon.

Their app syncs with the Apple Health app (which is better), so that's what I use (and one reason why I like Withings)

I have one, I use it nearly every day, battery can last upward of a whole month. They stopped updating the original model though which is frustrating because newer models have more features, but im almost certain the hardware is virtually identical.

I would like more transparency on how long each device gets updates for, similar to how Apple handles their products.

I don't like analog watches. I wish there was a watch like the basic casio I use but smart, but not huge and rugged like a G-Shock. If pebble releases a modern version of their watch, I might finally buy a smartwatch.

I released a free watch face for the FitBit Versa (pre-Google) which emulated a Casio-style LCD. I can't remember the name, but you can get paid ones which look decent:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.azya.fitbi...

What are you looking for in a smartwatch?

Casio has smaller G-Shock smartwatches (not just the giant circular ones) that track your activity, heartrate, etc. But if you want smartphone notifications, then yeah, sadly you are out of luck.

I am totally with you overall, though. I feel that if someone were to nail it, it would be Casio.

The GBD-200 I have can receive notifications.

Is it this one[0]? I saw it earlier, but I didn’t realize it could receive notifications, and the product page doesn’t mention it either.

Were you referring to that icon in the top left corner of the display that looks like it could be a notification counter? If yes, then that’s a fair point, but just being able to see the number of notifications is not the same as being able to see notifications (especially since it doesn’t seem like it would even tell you which app the notification is from, let alone what it was).

I would love to be corrected in case I am wrong, because it could be entirely possible that I am not even looking at the correct watch.

0. https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GBD-200-1/

What I encountered with smartwatches like the Xiaomi Mi Band, is that they display notifications but their font has a tiny subset of emoji.

So when friend send a simple "thumbs up", it displays the Unicode replacement character.

How does the Casio do it?

https://www.sensorwatch.net/

I haven't made one myself because last I checked it was a hassle to ship, but this might be what you're looking for, F91-W exterior with minimally smart replacement innards.

Sounds like a Garmin Forerunner (255? 265?) with a custom watch face might fit the bill.

Amazfit watches.

I really like the Withings, but I've killed two of them in about a year each (shattered the face on one, failed seal leading to water ingress on the other). Meanwhile I have a draw full of older watches/smartwatches that are all in perfect working order, so this feels like build/QC problems specifically on their end.

I prefer technology that hides from view, so the Withings watches suit me as well.

The biggest downside is that the battery does not seem to be user-replaceable, so the 1 month of run-time I used to get slowly fades down to about a week or two after a couple of years of use. I can't go away for more than a week now without bringing the charger.

I agree (a ScanWatch 2 owner here) that batteries should be user-replaceable. And that the fact that it is missing from my watch is a negative thing.

However, it is a very minor thing when the battery lasts as long as it does. If it holds 80% capacity like most other batteries today at 300, or more, cycles it would take over 10 years for the battery to degrade significantly considering each cycle is up to 30 days.

Mines 8 years old at this point (so old it's a Nokia branded one) and it still lasts 3-4 weeks. I wonder why it's held up better?

The idea is nice. The implementation is a bit gaudy design-wise (subjective, granted) and flakey on the hardware side, with the HR sensor accuracy being the main issue.

I loved my scanwatch, but it lacked the feature set of any smart watch for fitness tracking. I hope daily for them to release an improved version.

Have you reached out to them? I've found their customer support even for out-of-warranty items to be fantastic.

I hadn't; I should try.

You should have a look at he Garmin instinct 2x. They've nailed it.

Bah! They nailed what exactly? It's so mofing complex to use I hurled it at a wall (literally) and then gave it away to my son. A $600 CAD watch that I could not stand to use without seething.

You might want to invest some of that money in anger management classes

Ha! It's a testament to their great hardware though! I did not even scratch the watch by throwing it full force again a hard surface.

If a smartwatch requires anger management classes in order to use successfully, that might indicate something about the watch. :P

... or expectations.

I have a Garmin Instinct 2. They definitely did not nail it. It's horrible in all respects. It's HUGE, physically painful to use, and the UI must have been written by 10 different teams who weren't talking to each other.

The Apple Watch Ultra has worked wonders for me in terms of battery life and “always on display”.

My only wish is for an easily serviceable battery.

> The Apple Watch Ultra has worked wonders for me in terms of battery life

It's not really playing in the same ballpark, though, is it?

48 hours of battery life is indeed very good for an Apple Watch, but I used to charge my Pebble maybe once a week, and my Withings Scanwatch about once every 3 weeks...

They don’t have to be the same to allow for the same freedom. Personally a 36 hour battery is just not a problem for me - I charge my watch when I shower and occasionally for 15-30m before bed. I’d be taking a real watch off during those times anyway.

I’d much much much rather have a device with a 2-3 day battery life that’s more powerful than one than runs for 2 weeks. 2 weeks gets into the “will I have to charge my watch randomly today” category of use, which is exactly the same problem a lot of people have with EV’s

And not that expensive :(

The Fitbit watches are the closest thing I've gotten to a Pebble (and I'd be wearing a fitness tracker anyway), but they're way more locked down.

BangleJs is totally hackable

Pretty sure I yelled something like "yoooo no way!!" :D too awesome.

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