I turn off notifications (because if I get a message on my watch, what am I going to do with it? watch is basically read-only)
One use that comes up a lot: setting a timer. Being able to ad hoc set timers with your voice is huge - without it, my coffee would get cold, my laundry would stay wet, and my kid would be late because dad got distracted by a HN comment.
1. Notifications. Most useful in noisy environments such as grocery stores, airports, shop floors, or any place you may be wearing hearing protection. Also great while working with your hands, like car work or cooking and directions while driving. It’s best to limit them to the apps that matter, and only when you need them.
2. Biometrics.
However, after this watch finally dies, I don’t think I will be going back. Big reason is smart watches are not stylish at all. For men watches are our only fashion accessory that we can freely wear in all occasions. No matter what band or watch face you use you are stuck with a black square attached to your wrist. Also smart watch battery life is a bit of a bummer, it’s hard to beat self winding or solar powered watches that you never think about changing as long as you wear them.
It helps mine runs a bit fast so I'm early to things. If it ran slow I'd probably have replaced it years ago. As is, I'm going on 10 years with barely taking it off my wrist and never charging or replacing a battery, and I'm not the first owner.
For people who like to leave their phone in random places around the house, the watch can help in locating it. You can also almost always turn off the alarm on your phone w/o getting out of bed (provided you sleep with your watch on and the phone's bluetooth didn't decide to randomly disconnect).
All this said, I think that smartphones, in general, provide very marginal utility. A little bit of convenience here and there but nothing groundbreaking. If phones had better GPS antennas and a framework to attach devices like pulseox or sphygmomanometer they'd be preferable to the watch because the display is bigger and the input is (slightly) more convenient.
I do also love the idea, though. I think part of the limiting factor is that you can’t attach sensors or peripherals to it. Even with a hackable watch like in TFA, there’s only so much you could add without it getting bulky. And the screen is too small to do much with.
Also, a lot of smart watches come with a pulseox, so, you can look up your pulse any time you like :D Not super useful unless you are working out, but there's that.
I used to use it for running but it performs that job very poorly compared to my $200 Garmin.
Smartwatches are a godsend: I can set multiple alarms with chosen intervals, volume and ringtones, that never stop and place the phone easily at the right distance.
I could even improve on that and the same could be said of most phone apps. Recording and positioning are the most interesting features if they can be decoupled from big brother's eyes.