I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C
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shkspr.mobi
This is so annoying. Back when USB-C was less prevalent, I bought a pair of wireless earbuds over another for the same reason as the title - because it used USB-C. But then I cannot charge it with my macbook, unless I add a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
Like the post mentions, I think this happens because the devices are missing two resistors that are needed to indicate, when connected via a USB-C to USB-C cable to a charging brick, that the device wants 5V power. Resistors are cheap and I think the only reason they get dropped is carelessness.
The whole point of USB-C is that you can charge any device with any power supply.
Even some mainstream products have this issue. I have an automatic door opener from a large company and the battery pack has the same issue. It is shipped with a special cable you have to use as no other USB-C cable works.
Based on the table of contents the most promising section is "2.3.4 USB Type-C VBUS Current Detection and Usage" but it doesn't actually talk about anything you actually need. You're supposed to click through to the section "4.6.2.1 USB Type-C Current" where it shows the reference circuit, but it doesn't tell you the values of Rd, which are in section "4.11.1 Termination Parameters".
It's a 300+ page document where you must already know what you're looking for. If you didn't already know that you need two resistors, you wouldn't be able to figure it out with the spec alone.
Of course, a person can still get it wrong...
I’ve seen it on plenty of higher-end devices as well; and even worse.
The worst offender I’ve encountered is the TermoWorks Billows. ThermoWorks is a well established brand that makes high end thermometers and is considered one of the best on the market. So I was quite surprised to discover how their ‘Billows’ product is powered.
The device itself needs 12v and has a USB-C port for power. You’d think it would do USB-PD to negotiate it’s power needs so you can just use any old USB-C adapter. Not the case. It comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable and requires a special adapter with a USB-A port on it that puts 12v on the pins that normally supply 5v.
I have no idea how they came up with this abomination. Why even use USB-A connectors if it’s not going to work with a standard USB-A adapter, and why supply an adapter that’s basically going to kill most USB-A devices you plug into it? If you have a custom adapter anyway, why not just use a simple barrel connector? Why put a USB=C port on the device if it can’t use USB-PD?
I can imagine some Chinese ali-express product using such an abomination to save a few cents on components, but why would a well-respected brand like ThermoWorks ship such a thing? It boggles the mind.
and marketed to gullible Americans.
That said, thermometry is pretty easy and well understood and you don't need crazy accuracy for cooking, so 'low-end' is fine really, just don't pay high-price for it.
The thing is that there are lot of dollar stores in the West that want cheap shit for the paupers. And that is were the bad reputation comes from.
The number of times I've heard people complain about "cursed" M-M 3 prong AC power cables suggests that there is no amount of idiot-proof proofing that will keep a determined American safe from themselves.
Not sure what you are trying to imply here. Products manufactured in China are of poor quality? iPhones are made in China and it would be a challenge to find any device with higher build quality than that. On the flip side, we all know how terrible the quality of US made cars is.
You can find it here: https://www.thermoworks.com/12volt-ac-adapter/
It came with a power brick that I happened look at and noticed that the output voltage was listed simply as 12v (instead of all possible outputs like usbc bricks normally do). I hooked it up to a USB-PD breakout board I had and tested it. Sure enough, it output at 12v regardless of what is asked for.
Luckily, the device itself actually did USB-PD, so I was able to throw away that monstrosity before it fried anything. Annoyingly, the device only supported 12V, which is hot or miss on being supported by chargers, but at least a mismatch there isn't going to fry anything.
I have about 6 devices with this problem, and I consider it unforgivable.
Not only did you not include USBC charging, you went out of your way to trick me and lie and pretend you did. I would have preferred just using micro usb at that point.
Powkiddy committed fraud and said the RGB30 can charge from USB-C, but they lied, it can only charge from USB A to C cables. Using it is a massive pain because I have to get adapters I shouldn't need. I'll never buy anything from them ever again.
This is because the cable is 2 sided so it can't assume polarity
So it's a tradeoff for not having to guess how to insert the cable
Not really. The USB-C connection pinout is symmetric about a 180 degree rotation, at least as far as power connections go. It's entirely possible (and common, e.g. when using passive converters) to just put power out of it constantly. The main reason for the signaling resistors is to avoid having power presented on the pins when it's not connected, which is more about avoiding corrosion or wear due to small sparks on connection.
If you have an A end and a B or C end, you can assume that the device on the A end is supplying power and the device on the B or C end is consuming power without breaking anything. The A end cannot supply power to it's device by design, so an A to C cable cannot be used to power the A device from the C device, regardless of whether the device on the C end can supply power.
But if you have two C ends, you need some way to establish which device is the supply device and which is the consuming device, because the cable can be used to connect two devices which both can supply power (e.g. a laptop and a phone).
To clarify (and to tell my own tale on the topic):
The power pins on both sides should be connected in both a plug and in a socket. However, when it comes to the USB 2.0 data pins only the socket end must be double-sided (short A6 to B6 and A7 to B7).
Back when "Type C" was new, I wanted to build a project with it, so I got one of the first socket breakout boards available. I built a mechanical keyboard out of aluminium with a slot milled to fit that breakout board. After everything was painted and soldered did I plug it in and it did not work ... It took me a while of troubleshooting before I retried it with the cable plugged in the other orientation. The breakout board had connected only A6/A7. B6/B7 were not available.
USB-C gets complicated at the high end, but for basic functionality I think the standards committee did a very good job at making the cheapest way to do it the correct way, e.g. a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adaptor can be entirely passive, it just needs the right resistor in it.
How does that work? is each USB-C host port, or downstream USB-C hub port required to contain a stereo DAC? Does the standard impose performance requirements like dynamic range, noise, minimum sample rate,...? Does it also mandate the jack can be used for mic / line-in? Does it similarily stipulate inclusion of an ADC in each port?
The data pins are repurposed for analog audio, so it won't work with hubs. You'd of course need a DAC for output and an ADC for mic input, but the point is to replace a headset jack, so you'd have those already.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%... (PDF, page 309)
By 2019 or so, when USB-C was five years old, somebody on any product design team should have been aware this is a common problem and checked for it when selecting components.
If you still have them, you've forgiven it.
Return them and complain about it, or the manufacturers have no way to tell it bothers you.
It would still suck to have to use a special cable for charging, but at least it's better than not being able to use any modern charger.
(it just connects CC1 + CC2 with the appropriate 5.1k resistors)
What's the deal with Amazfit? I have an Amazfit GTR and it's been rock solid for a couple of years. Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could do was 24 - 48 hours, and it did it for like £60 instead of £200. It still works too!
The Bip in particular seemed so ahead of what the average person expected from a smartwatch due to state of Android and Apple offerings at the time.
There is an implied question there, but you may want to get a bit more specific. The deal seems to be that you get a really good fitness watch for a fraction of the cost of Android and Apple offerings, if your statement and my first review of their website is accurate.
Fair point, I elaborated a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854032
You're right in your assessment. My "what's the deal" was more asking "how did such a small unknown-to-me company do this with similar or better results to the worlds largest hardware/software companies (Apple/Google) in 2015/2016?" It sounds like they did it with even more specific and low level hardware and software, which makes it even more impressive.
Like I said, my bip did GPS, bluetooth notifications, hardrate tracking and most of the other things an iWatch did, but it had 20x the battery life and cost 1/5 of the price. I find this an unbelievable achievement that I don't understand, and it's rarely talked about.
I don't know about Amazfit, but I have a Garmin that also lasts weeks. There are some differences: WearOS/WatchOS watches essentially use a more power-efficient/less powerful version of a smartphone-class SoC. They have to because they run a full Linux/XNU kernel and a pretty complete userland. Watches with weeks-long battery life typically use something that is more akin to a powerful microcontroller with operating systems tailored to such low-end hardware.
Besides that some watches (like several Garmin models) use transflective displays. They do not have to actively emit light during daytime (in contrast to OLED), sunlight is reflected. In contrast, OLED displays have to be more bright in sunlight to be visible.
This is what I'd assumed. But then I also assumed that's actually an exceptionally expensive and high resource approach to take compared to using higher level smartphone chips. By using lower level hardware, they're having to do more bespoke hardware design, and more bespoke low-level firmware and software creation, and also support all of that extra creation. This seems like the super expensive, heavy, slow way of building a smartwatch.
So I guess the "what's the deal" what's trying to understand how some random knockoff looking company ("Amazfit" in 2016) took the super expensive, heavy, slow way of building a smartwatch, and got better results than some of the largest most notorious software/hardware companies on the planet.
Ultimately, they took the pebble approach, and pebble also got a huge amount of backing and extra funding, time, support etc. and seemed to commercially fail. But Amazfit is still going strong.
I’ve since moved to using COROS watches. Not as cheap but really good. Always screen, weeks of battery. Even GPS functions are efficient . Recently did 11 hr hike with GPS and only used about 23% battery.
The Apples, Galaxies and Pixels offer always-on, but they dim down a lot in order to not drain the power, which kind of defeats the purpose. A memory LCD screen on one of these watches would be perfect for me.
USB (abc, micro etc) are everywhere. Any house, hotel, office, glove box, has some lying around.
But when I forgot my Fitbit charger, I couldn't get one anywhere. The only option was a large electronics store where I could buy an entire new Fitbit. I didn't shove out €200 just to get hold of a charging cable.
The EU should quickly impose rules on waterproof chargers like they did with USB chargers. It will settle worldwide just as fast as the USB enforced standard.
ADDED: Oh, seems like some people like to pretend that the results of "some other" companies getting this information are totally, totally the same.
Because labor is much more expensive in America. This is not a mystery
No more safety and environmental regulations. Children can work full time. Union bosses get sent to the gulag. Forced labor camps for the homeless and criminals.
Why should I care if the Communinst Party of China is spying on me? They can't get at me. I have no connection to China. I have no property there and don't know anyone there. What are they going to do to me?
Bottom line is that everyone on the planet should be concerned with their own government's intelligence angencies more than any others. It's the people who can get at you in meatspace that you need to worry about.
But they REALLY care about the activites of Chinese people living abroad.
The CCP was operating secret 'police stations' in the UK and most likely elsewhere outside of their jurisdiction.
[0] https://news.stv.tv/west-central/chinese-secret-police-stati...
You're also welcome to disassemble the APK to show where it is sending data to.
But, as I say, it works just find with an Open Source alternative if you prefer that.
I'd trust the CCP a million times more than Google or Apple.
Let me try to translate: I do not know fuck all about what it really asks but will let sinophobia and hypocrisy out in full colors regardless
Like every app made by a US corporation does?
And before someone cries "whataboutism", I'm genuinely curious why as someone who isn't Chinese, and has no intention of visiting China, I should be more worried about the CPC than the CIA.
This line kinda got me down, because, well, last night I went out for a few pints and paid €16 for two drinks; Here we have a miracle of modern technology available shipped to your door for about the same price of what it now costs to just go out and do the thing people have done when socializing for the last 1500 years.
We're subsidizing the costs of all this modern tech by heavily taxing ourselves on the things once taken as nearly the bare minimum lifestyle.
In the past goods were expensive; living was cheap. Now goods are cheap; living is expensive.
One caveat I want to call out though is of course the skyrocketing housing cost which also impact rent (or opportunity cost of they own) for the pub and thus the beer price as well. This is where I really don't understand how NIMBYs continue to get their way.
I contacted Garmin support since I've seen that in some of the cases they offered generous discounts for newer models or even gave them for free, but in my case they offered me to pay almost a full price for refurbished Instinct Solar gen 1, that most probably would have the same issue after some time.
So if a £16 generic competitor can last 4 days, what's Apple doing wrong? Why can't a £450 Apple Watch (non-Ultra) last a full 24 hours on a charge?
If Apple had two lines of smartwatches, one for city/work crowd with the WiFi, Bright screen, NFC, powerful processor etc. but with tiny battery life. And another for hike/off-grid/travel/festival crowd without wifi, a slower, blander screen, slower hardware, less features but over a week)weeks on one charge.
Would people not buy the second option?
They've seriously stuck themselves in a pickle with their WatchOS offering. They can't move away from touch-screen b/c they've committed to "being able to enter a PIN" from the device (so they can offer AND PROTECT on-watch payment capabilities).
They can't move away from touch-screen b/c they've duped all the uber's and door-dash's, and big-bank.com into writing "watch apps" that assume a touch screen.
The Garmin Fenix has the best response to this that I've seen so far, a "pinch-to-activate" touch screen on some of their watches with "enough" buttons (Up, Down, OK, Back, "light"). You can use the watch normally without fear of accidental activations and when you start up the map-type-stuff, it'll either auto-activate a twiddly touchscreen or you can "pinch to activate" (hold two diagonal buttons for 2-3 seconds) and then start messing with it (or are able to turn it off w/o issue).
They can't move away from bright color screens because then people can't have pictures of their kids on their watch, and at that point it's no longer an "Apple" product.
Which relates to the cost and battery life of the Apple Watch, it's a mainstream device that many people with varying disabilities can use. It has a full-fledged screen reader in its operating system, in addition to the development costs to support multiple interaction modalities, some will not be achievable with lower-powered, less specialized processors.
Of course if they want to use it with an Apple phone, it will have artificial limitations[0]. That, rather than adding a product line that doesn't align with most of their market is what Apple should fix.
[0] https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
Comparing the flagship model to the much cheaper SE, what they're buying is:
* a larger, brighter, always-on display * additional health sensors, monitoring * can go deeper underwater * longer battery life (if you choose low power mode) * faster battery charging * more powerful processor * twice the local storage * Ultra wideband radio (enables directional device finding) * microphone with voice isolation (better sounding calls, voice recordings) * made from more recycled materials (which may make it more expensive)
I'm happy with my non-cellular SE, I do which charging was faster but I don't know the Series 10 charges that much faster and I wouldn't pay an extra ~$150 for that anyway.
For example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tot-mini/id1644609331
Whether it's a good idea to use a tiny watch screen as your text editor, on the other hand...
I don't think there's an app that lets you just edit arbitrary files which can be read by other apps or transferred to/from the watch with something like ssh, just these weird canned things that depend on network services run by Apple and/or the particular developer.
If it's low voltage then you should be fine. I'd still be wary of large lithium ion batteries, though.
I probably would hesitate to buy large-battery-powered things from them, for now. Like e-bike etc. Also would hesitate to replace my circuit breakers with zigbee circuit breakers that can also measure power real time, for example.
But there are a lot of good quality stuff that doesn't fit into the dangerous category.
I bought a lot of sensors/smart home stuff, small home stuff like drip irrigation tubes/drip heads, apple find-my compatible trackers, poe cameras, 80x80 fans, label maker tape, poe extender etc.
All numbers spit-balled.
Took a week or so to arrive, and prices fluctuate all the time. So slower than Amazon shipping - which is usually same or next day.
I bought a lot of 5-10$ things that costs more than 3 times on amazon.
Aliexpress is much cheaper even if you include shipping if there's separate shipping fee.
Amazon is convenient for speed + returns.
Consequently, pretty much all open source projects for cheapo china smartwatches apparently only support devices that are so old that you don't even find them anymore on aliexpress or other such shops.
I'd be interested to know for what currently easily available cheap (i.e. not in a much higher price category) china smart watches there is an open source alternative firmware that does not miss half of the features.
Or the whole stack: https://open-smartwatch.github.io/
If a few people in the bay area wanted to do a group buy, you can get up to 5 watches for that same $25 shipping fee...
In the case of Amazfit (which I presume is similar here) you can set it up to turn on when long-pressing the dial, it can switch between white and red light by turning the dial, and it takes a few seconds to reach full brightness instead of just switching on. Meaning you have a chance to change it to red without waking everyone up in the middle of a camping trip.
Surely people who wear watches on their right wrist prefer the wheel to be on the left side and the LED is on the same side.
The straps are usually standard watch straps and easily changed.
They tend to be less powerful than other smart watches (in particular, you won't be able to download arbitrary apps to the watch or deeply configure it), and if you want a dedicated health tracker, you're probably better off with a minimalist Fitbit or something similar, but I really like them. They strike a nice balance between providing me with useful things, and still looking like a decent looking watch.
The main companies in this space are Withings and Garmin.
You'll get decent tracking and alert management if that's what you're into. I won't be top notch but 95% there, and it will last for a week or two on a single charge instead of dying everyday .
Then after a week or two you'll know if you really cared about these numbers, how it helps you or not, and how you feel about the form factor.
Mine if off in a drawer most of the time and I get it out once every few weeks when hiking, but there is no sunk cost for something this cheap, and now I know I wouldn't have kept wearing something more advanced either.
But, yeah, no denying it is a chunky monkey.
Many smartwatches are simply too large, compared to regular watches.
I had an Amazfit GTR-4, bought a Whoop because I wanted to wear classical watches and I really can't wait for my subscription to expire so I can go back to Amazfit.
The watch is amazing - it looks great, has a long lasting battery (2-3 weeks), quite a solid app to go with it, has GPS that you can enable when you need to and has mini apps on it that are sometimes quite useful (voice notes, timers, stretches, even a ChatGPT mini-app someone made). And it's a 3 year old watch - the new ones are even better and look nicer.
While they had some issues previously with algorithm accuracy for HR and sleep, last year it has improved wildly and the updates hit the old devices too, leaving it on par with top tier watches.
I really can't imagine getting a smartwatch whose battery lasts less than 2-3 days. Makes it super impractical for any traveling/hiking/camping or any kind of a trip where you won't have your charger with you.
We're obviously well into an Apple watch fashion backlash, to a point where "not obviously a smartwatch" in itself can help sell, and most of the really useful complications can present enough UI on a dot-addressable partial-face display. (By the standards of early digitals, this is luxury!) And with something like a momentarily backlit transflective LCD costing microampere-hours to run, weeks to months of battery should be achievable with careful programming.
Strictly, I don't suppose there's a reason why a hypothetical top-end model couldn't present a full-face display as at present, but with physical hands via a central holepunch, and a touchscreen integrated into the crystal as well as the usual physical controls. It seems like the best of both worlds, and I'd easily pay half a grand or more to find out, but now I'm just dreaming out loud.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-wa...
Now I have a real Withings, at 10 times the price of the fake, it honestly offers only a marginally better experience.
Also I'd gladly ditch USB C for a few programmable media buttons. Standardize on some sort of bogo pins and buy 20 adapters or split cables to keep the water proofing.
cool cool cool....
Also a smart watch without firmware updates seems like an infection spreader?
Given all the negatives (to users, not to the corporations you become a harvested product to), it simply does not make sense to have a smart watch, aka a tracking bracelet.
Given the small amount of memory and its inability to run 3rd party code, I'd be staggered if this could be used as a vector for anything. What's it going to do, spam ignorable BLE messages?
But it doesnt matter much, the battery lasts 3 weeks. Its a great watch if you like the old-style digital watch screens
I was exhausted with keeping up with Android, but was not buying n-number of Lightning cables until they released it on USB-C
Not sure what it’s like in other countries, but here in South Africa you struggle to find a smart phone cover for much less than that.
If you’re at the shops of the local scumbag company with a monopoly on legally distributing Apple products, they don’t offer a cover for less than USD25.
Apple Watch covers cost a bit less at only like USD15.
For screen protectors typical prices are around USD10, but you can point out the lunacy of what they’re charging for a single sheet of plastic and you can get that down to 7.5.
It’s super annoying how much we get ripped off here, having covers and protectors is basically essential and all the sellers here seem to have a secret pact to not charge anything less than completely outrageous prices.
You can have it cheap or fast.
We also have the problem here where if the shipper doesn’t use a courier service and tries to rely on the local postal service, it’s a bit of a gamble you’ll get the item at all, and if you do, it tends to take months.
Screen protector for R89 on takealot right now, that’s what 5 dollars? And was the first result, did not even need to look hard.
I find it strange that in this whole, cool, nerdy review there's no mention of whether the device is fully yours and works on your phone, or if the app is (like in most smartwatches) just a glorified browser tab for your health data stored plaintext on a free service
> You can always uninstall the app once done setting it up.
So no need to rely on 3rd party servers.
I also mention that you can use GadgetBridge if you want to store your own data locally.
That makes this a seriously good option, I was looking for this a while ago but didn't find anything besides Pinetime, so I ordered a Pinetime and found out the heartbeat sensor is about as accurate on my wrist as tarot cards (I know it works for a few people, but most seemed to have the same issue). Everything else I could find back then was cloud-based or didn't do health tracking (or, n=1, didn't support Android)
Not that I expect the watch in the article to be any better.
So Huawei are also easier to use without having to send your data anywhere.
> cost of a couple of pints
in 2025, I guess it can be a maximum of 2.5 pints. Because in Luxembourg, the price of a pint became 6-8 euros...
- In June 1954, the radio was upgraded to increase the range from 500 miles to 1,000 miles, then again in 1956 to 2,500 miles.
- In 1964, the 2-Way Wrist Radio was upgraded to the 2-Way Wrist TV.
- Tracy gave his young son Joe an obsolete Wrist Radio, which Joe was able to use to call for help when he was abducted and held hostage by dognappers.
We've been falling for this stuff for 80 years!