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Pixel Watch 5

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173 pointsortusdux401 comments

I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?"

I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me?

I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

The same is probably true of watches. Alerts are nifty - but cumbersome for replies. The health stuff is useful - but only for a subset of users. Seeing the time is great - but if the battery lasts less than a week, who wants to keep that screen on?

I can imagine a power user could tell time down to femto second if you asked them.

to me main use case of a watchin is setting (cooking) timers. Maybe play 2048 if I'm bored and cant pick up my phone for some reason. Plus notifications about upcoming meetings.

I guess approve claude things. Plus regular fitness watch stuff that happens in the background. Idk what else can you do with it? I don't do payments because its awkward to tap wrist on the terminal, but I do have cards on it just in case.

I'm glad Pixel Watch got better since gen 1 because gen 1 sucked at being smart watch and at being a fitness tracker.

Yeah I sold my apple watch after about 6 months and got a good old F-91W instead. The most useful thing about it for me was having an animated memoji unicorn on my wrist to amuse people. Wasn’t really worth the trouble of charging it every night. I just want to know what time it is.

I think you're mostly right. I use it for a few extra things though. Stuff I can think of:

* Timers

* Alerts

* Step counter/fitness tracker

* My fitness app for weight training - I can start a workout on my phone and enter my set/rep/weight counts without needing to pull my phone out

* Phone calls when I'm on walks and do not want to the "full phone" experience, but also cannot be totally disconnected. This paired with Airpods is a pretty nice balance

* Ditto the above but for podcasts/music streaming - especially if wearing workout clothing and I don't have a comfortable place to carry my phone along.

* Basic replies to my "important people" texts - via Siri dictation mostly

* My "RFID" security badge to get into my home/office/etc. using Apple Pay

* Apple Pay

* Quick glance to check the weather w/ a main screen widget

* Quick glance to check calendar

I liken it to having a mini iPhone 4 strapped to my wrist. Useful here and there, and very nice for when I want to get away from my phone or it's too bulky to bring somewhere. Essentially a basic flip-phone for comms, and a connected streaming media player.

I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly.

I don’t care that the battery doesn’t last, I’ve got a wireless charger at my desk and at home and 30 minutes on that a few times a week keeps it alive for my usage.

> I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked.

I've noticed and interesting social shift in recent years: friends who get distracted mid-sentence by an Apple Watch notification, pause the conversation to check the alert, and then continue the conversation afterwards without realizing they had paused/were momentarily not present. It's fascinating because these people will not realize they were momentarily sidetracked, and remain convinced a watch keeps them more present than their hone.

There's a term waiting to be coined for this concept, but I'm not clever enough to come up with one...

Horolophasia?

It would be "horologoaphasia", you need the go and the a.

I started noticing this with smartwatches in 2019-2020, with my coworkers. They would just stop mid convo, check watch, and resume talking.

It's only about 5 seconds but it feels so weird on the other side. Like, sure, I'll wait for you. But it feels really rude when you do it 3 times in 5 minutes.

I loved my Apple Watch at first but due to exactly these sort of distractions no longer wear it and have more recently turned off most of the notifications on my phone. I am sick of my attention being stolen away by everything around me.

Why not just turn off the notifications on the watch, so you can enjoy it for what it's good at? I won't give up the functionality, but I am extremely selective about what it notifications it can put in front of me.

Because it's ultimately not very useful. Sleep tracking - I've become convinced this is actually a bad idea, and since I stopped I stress less about sleep and ultimately sleep better. Step tracking? Phone does that adequately.

I do wear it for workouts, but once it's closer to end of life will replace it with something dedicated for workouts like a Garmin that holds a charge for 14+ days.

I’ll add that if you care about working out with a watch to track heart rate, the Apple Watch is pretty dismal. I moved to pairing mine with a Polar H10 strap so that I could get much faster feedback on heart rate recovery post sprint. In addition to using an optical sensor, the Apple Watch may also be doing something to smooth out the signal. I just know that the Polar seems much more responsive and matches how I am feeling.

Chest straps work with ECG, so they're hard to beat for heart rate tracking. That said, Apple watches are some of the best wrist wearables for heart rate tracking. Most other brands aren't as accurate and many don't come even close.

Check out the Quantified Scientist on YouTube, he does some interesting testing on health devices.

Well aware of Quantified Scientist and it’s actually what I have pointed many Oura, Woop, etc users to in the past.

But as you say the always-on ECG of a strap like Polar H10 always going to provide a superior result.

I’m not using it for live-live data, or for mapping recovery times, I’m just using it to gauge 120 vs 140 vs 175 heart rate while running

Agreed on the sleep tracking, I don’t bother with that. I use it primarily for time, timers, outdoor temperature, workouts, Apple Pay, Tesla key card, and EKG. I have started leaving my phone at home fairly often. Which then leads somewhat regularly to me needing to use another feature of the watch - find my iphone.

Not the person you replied to but - I do my best to disable as many notifications as possible. It’s just DMs, group chats, email and banking.

Wristrot

I worked with a woman who, in 1-on-1 meetings no less, would stop mid-sentence when she received text messages and reply via her Apple Watch. It was maddening. I finally had to kindly ask her to be present and stop playing with her watch.

> I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

Nothing new here, but I have several friends who do this with their phones, and I honestly wish they had a watch instead, so they'd be absorbed for 3 seconds instead of 30 seconds.

I think it depends on the alternative. Compared to no interruptions, this kind of behavior is annoying. But if the alternative would be pausing to pull out their phone and look to see why it just buzzed/dinged, the watch glance may be the lesser evil.

More important to me, in either case, is to tame the notifications no matter where they go. It is your choice what gets to the phone screen or the watch, and if you are pausing a conversation to glance at the watch and then it does not cause you to need to do something else urgently, this is a strong indication that you should have that notification turned off. Let it go to a low priority queue you can look at later when you have time, not something that buzzes or dings at you.

People do the same thing with phones, too.

My reaction: I'll stop speaking once they are looking at their phone/watch. And I actually wait to start speaking again until they prompt me with a "what were you just saying," or similar. This awkward feeling of "oops, I stopped the conversation, so now it is I who must get it going again" works well. And if they don't "prompt" to continue the conversation? They weren't listening in the first place, or don't realize they were being kinda rude.

There's a krazam video satirizing that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJwPb_76jqU

Is that really new compared to the friend who will look at their phone every time it pings, or my parents who will stop mid conversation and answer a phone call?

The novelty of Apple Pay on watch wore off? I use this all the time but it’s not noteworthy or interesting, just a great feature that’s seamless and doesn’t require pulling out my phone.

> that’s seamless

I wish it were. The double click to pay is pretty annoying compared to “express mode” Apple Watch apps like Suica and UniFi Touch Pass.

It does give you the option to change cards when you double tap, before you pay.

But I think the real reason is that people would walk around with card readers and scan peoples watches to collect cash. I can only guess it doesn't happen in Japan for cultural reasons. You could try and do that with purses/wallets too, but since most people are carrying multiple cards, they interfere and largely prevent RFID skimming.

This is one of those things I thought would be great and never use. When I see people do it (very rarely) it gives 'glasshole' vibes (no offence). I can't bring myself to do it and I've been using Apple Pay on my phone since day one. It's a me problem obviously but given how people use phone payments for everything and so many people I see wear Apple Watches I'm surprised how infrequently I see people use it for payments.

You know the other killer feature of the Apple Watch? Find my phone!

See someone with an Apple Watch on frantically looking for something, just say "Hey you know your watch knows where it is". Just press the button, DING.

Guilty as charged. It helpfully points the direction and distance, so even if I cannot hear the phone ding I know how to get close enough.

As a Fitbit user, I would agree. Sleep tracking and heartrate monitoring are ok, but what's really cool are Tap to pay and Find my phone.

I find the whole “get the thing close enough to the reader” action to be difficult with the watch.

People at my supermarket still generally need longer to pay by watch or phone than me with using my card, so I'm not sure what to take away here.

I found it was even better to turn off all the notifications entirely, then you don’t get distracted by the watch interrupting you either. There are very few things I actually need to know about right now.

I'm really interested by what notifications people have toggled. I only ever have text messages and whatsapp (urgh, I know!) enabled and don't get a huge amount of notifications during the day to distract me.

Do other people have more notifications enabled? More friends messaging them? Or just a lower threshold for what counts as too many?

Messages and weather are basically the only things I allow to ping/vibrate, anything else only appears on the phone and I get it when I look at notifications. Email is pull only, have to open the Mail app to get messages.

The annoying apps are the ones I have to toggle permissions on and off for like eBay and Uber because occasionally they have time sensitive important info, but 99% of the time are bombarding me with useless spam.

The more power user things I do would be to change the complications on my Apple Watch to keep it in context such as AQI and or something like an ETF I want to look at or setup a world time. I frequently use the timer function on my watch and read my email and reply to emails on my watch. Less obvious is the synergy with the ecosystem such as iPhone and Mac unlocking and keeping track of the weather and using Apple Music on my watch instead of my iPhone to keep tracking my battery and flight tracking.

I also use it to keep track of ChatGPT and Claude and I think one of them I can approve tasks with.

Some of this lack of features is self-imposed by Google.

Until they allow Gemini to use MCP servers directly, it's hard to be a power user with a Google Watch. I still dream, thwarted by Google, of being able to actually talk to my watch to have it do useful things. But since "do useful things" for me mostly requires triggering actions outside of the Google ecosystem and their very small approved list of integrated partners, it's pretty useless for anything more advanced than setting a timer.

Your observation is spot on. I wear my Apple watch all day everyday. Put it on charge every night without fail. Some years back I used to use it as step counter and for payment. These days I don't count my steps and use the phone for tap payment. I guess the watch is just an ornament or habit or ritual. I'm not sure.

> Alexii

Assuming “Alexa” is first declension, plural is “Alexae”

Given the letter X it's probably Greek, so it would be Alexai. Which is coincidentally about pronounced the same.

Listening to power users is the product management equivalent of armoring the places on the fighter plane where you find bullet holes. You should of course be looking for where the planes that didn't come back have damage.

Smart watches become shelfware pretty easily. Especially when you don't have the Apple Watch cachet.

Great analogy - This phenomenon irks me, and I would never have thought of using survivorship bias as an apt description. Some of the most valuable feedback you will ever receive is from people that don't use your product/feature.

But if you go too far in that direction, you end up at the Mozilla school of design. Alienating your core users, and designing a product for users that aren't there. Look at them now.

The custom complications on WearOs watch faces do it for me. I can see my investment portfolio value change right from my wrist.

If you need (or want) to see your investment portfolio that often then I don’t think you and I have the same definition of “investment”

> I can see my investment portfolio value change right from my wrist

Great way to drive yourself crazy.

My hot take is that the "killer feature" of a smartwatch is that it's quicker (and less disruptive in social contexts) for glancing at notifications. I can't look at my phone in a meeting (nor should I!), but I can spend literally a single second glancing at my watch without anyone batting an eye.

To be clear, reducing the friction to becoming mentally enslaved to notifications is not a good thing.

That seems extremely overdramatic for what amounts to a personal choice that doesn't disrupt anyone else.

Whether or not it disrupts anyone else isn't relevant to the point here. Your mind and focus are sacred, and surrendering to notifications is damaging to your brain. You have the right to damage your brain all you want, and I have the right to think less of anyone who does so thoughtlessly.

You're certainly welcome to whatever religious beliefs you want. Ultimately you have no clue how much I think about or don't think about anything, which means the only real thing you're describing here is a dogmatic view of how everyone else should live their life based on what you think is "sacred".

Personally, preaching and condescending to people about one's subjective worldview feels like a far worse thing than what we're talking about here.

A dear friend was one of the first people I knew to get an apple watch, that mf will stop midsentence (his or anyone else's) to stare at his fuckin watch like once a minute. Convenient, sure I guess. "Non disruptive" - nope.

Maybe I'm just less popular than your friend (or have better filters set up for my notifications), because on average I look at my watch maybe three or four times an hour. On the other hand, even with no phone or watch around, I will break eye contact in a conversation several times a minute, as do plenty of other people I know. At least for me, life is always full of potential distractions regardless of whether there are devices around, so focus is something that requires energy, which means I plan around when I have it for spending time with people. I'm skeptical that if I got transported back to medieval times or whatever that I'd be able to spend all day interacting with people without being similarly "disruptive".

It's a matter of degree. Breaking eye contact to glance at your cat or out the window at the weather is not as disruptive as stopping to read text.

If you can’t use your phone in a meeting, what utility does seeing a notification serve anyway?

Other than to distract you.

Some things are important enough that I don't want to have all notifications turned off (e.g. in the case of emergency), but I'm much more distracted by a lingering notification that I haven't been able to glance at, determine that it's not urgent, and then move on.

As for distractions, I think you're both underestimating how long I'll be distracted by glancing at my watch and overestimating how interesting something has to be for me to find it distracting.

(I'm sure some people reading this will have the urge to chime in with claims that the only reason I ever have trouble focusing is because of all the notifications and devices in my life. They're free to believe what they want, but unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to make myself available to them for diagnosis like I did for doctors who saw me for the 18 years of my life when I had no laptop, smartphone, or smartwatch and treated my ADHD)

> Alerts are nifty - but cumbersome for replies.

IME this is the best use case. My wife uses her Apple Watch for this throughout the evening while she's cooking dinner or feeding our 1yo. For a couple years now, she's been doing this bc her job comes home with her since she's kind of a big deal at her large institution, so text messages all the time.

This. Totally.

I would say I'm quite a power user usually. I very carefully explored every feature my apple watch has and tried to incorporate as many of them as I could. Very, very few features stuck because they were genuinely helpful. Almost everything being pushed is a gimmick or a feature bullet point from some product manager.

The actual good stuff:

Time

Workouts

Payments

The occasionally useful stuff:

Notifications

Noise DB levels to see if I need to put on ear protection

Workoutdoors app for on-device maps and path breadcrumbs

The once in a blue moon stuff:

Music controls and on device playlists

On device audiobooks

Weather complication

Voice memos

Alarm

Shortcut to call my husband

The feature I tried to get working but gave up on: Tap to talk to ChatGPT and get a 100 word or less reply

Truth! I bought my Apple Watch so I could skateboard with my AirPods in and not lose connection. But the connection is a pain to make happen, not intuitive, and sometimes just doesn’t work. I like the watch for trying to keep me reminded to stay fit and active, but I have been considering just not ever buying another one and going without. I turned off all notifications on it because it’s useless.

Personal favorite: unlocking my laptop

The only thing I miss from switching to a Casio

I keep laptop unlock off. Touch ID on the MacBooks more than suffices for this.

I’ve had multiple instances of my Mac unlocking while I was more than 5-6 meters away. At some point I decided not to trust the time of flight calculation and disable it.

Walking navigation is immensely useful for me when I am going somewhere in an unfamiliar town or neighborhood.

This, but the music and podcast functionality is just frustrating. In my more than 5 years of being an Apple Watch user, I have been let down too many times

It seems just unwilling to sync anything to the watch, so there’s nothing to listen to when I go for a run without my phone

It’s just baffling, the watch has like 32 GB of storage?

I exclusively run listening to podcasts from my watch for years with no issues

Find my phone

Camera remote

I listen to lots of music. Music controls are super useful to me.

I mainly own my watch for notifications and calendar reminders.

Timers, again every day.

To each their own.

Interesting that the alarm is such a far down feature for you. I use a galaxy watch 4, and i dont think i can ever go back from a silent alarm. Nicer to wake up to, and doesn't wake up everyone in the house as well

Can't speak for the OP, but I, for one, don't wear a watch while sleeping. I use a Junghans alarm clock from 1989.

I use my watch for time, step counting, and ringing/vibrating. Having my phone on silent and not missing calls (not messages, messenger are not allowed to send notifications to my watch) is such a step up for me :)

Silent alarm is an awesome feature. But it scales with battery life: on a watch with ~48 hours of battery you want to charge daily. And the most convenient time for that is in the night, which kills the silent alarm feature

Once you get to a week of battery life like a Garmin or those cheap armbands without screen that becomes a much better feature

I tried it a few times when I absolutely needed a silent wakeup. It’s very occasionally useful. But then you have to charge the watch for awhile before bed, wear it overnight, then charge it again in the morning. Not something I’m going to do for my regular alarm.

I would happily ditch my phone entirely if i could have ms authenticator (needed for work), signal and my train ticket app working on it, alas no. Maybe someday.

MS Authenticator used to dispense codes on the watch app, but since about ~2022 MS decided that they would disable this feature.

No reason was ever given, especially as they actively removed an otherwise working feature, so I can only assume “user hostility” and/or “classic incompetence”. Probably both, being Microsoft.

I think you can get most of that working on a pebble.

Time is definitely a killer app on watches

It wasn’t obvious to me! And I’m kind of not even joking. The time has always been on my phone. The watch seemed unnecessary. But having a clock in your face does change your perception of time so it is a killer app after all.

Payments should be the obvious feature. The commercials for various smart watches show the same thing: somebody buying a coffee with just their watch.

But the reality is different. On my smartwatch (an older Samsung, but same Google OS merged with Tizen) there's a PIN required if you enable payments on the watch. I understand why, the secure element requires it. But it makes every other feature of the watch useless to me. I don't have any secrets I want a watch to protect. I want to be able to time workouts while standing on a treadmill.

They could solve this, only have large amounts require the code while letting me buy a coffee without it, but I'm sure there's some line in an agreement between Google and the banks prohibiting this. The risk has to be transferred to the customer, even if the likelyhood of somebody buying a coffee with my watch is low.

Product design should consider all of these things, but getting out the next smartwatch without thinking it through is more inline with quarterly objectives. There isn't even a Steve around to piss off enough to do something about it.

>But it makes every other feature of the watch useless to me

How exactly? Samsung watches only require the pin to be enabled if you want payments enabled. You only have to enter the pin if you have taken the watch off. As long as it can detect that it remains on your wrist then payments continue to be enabled no pin required...

The Apple Watch doesn’t require any pin. Once the watch is unlocked it can be used to pay any time. Quite nifty.

I would have agreed on instinct but everyone replying with which features they actually use seems like it pretty much makes up all the major available features. Maybe having all these features is necessary to appeal to every individual’s needs rather than one power user who uses them all?

I stopped wearing my pixel watch as soon as fitbit air came out and I could put my real watch on again

I don't have a Pixel Watch, but I do have a Garmin one which I use for:

- Watch stuff (alarms, etc.)

- Health stats tracking (HRV, sleep, steps, training readiness)

- Offline navigation when hiking in the mountains (its really nice to have a route available right there on your wrist)

- Workout tracking - the watch can receive accurate HR data from my strap during swimming or other activities.

- Scuba diving - the Descent is a diving computer tracking nitrogen loading and making sure I don't get decompression sickness. It also receives tank pressure information from the air tank and calculates consumption and air time left. It can send messages to other divers and show their air status as well.

- I can read notifications so my phone is permanently set to silent.

- On the new models (sadly my Descent doesn't support that yet) you can call for help through Garmin's satellite network if you get hurt away from coverage.

I don't think these features are gimmicks - they make my sports activities safer, help me communicate with folks in dangerous environments and prod me to do more sports.

How close does another diver have to be for a message to send/received?

Spec says about 30m (it's relayed via tank pod transmitter using sound).

This is why Pebble watches are great. They do the basics better than Google and leave out the expensive battery drains.

Pebble is the ultimate smartwatch because it knows what it is. Its a watch first and foremost, readable in any lighting conditions, waterproof, battery lasts for weeks. They made a watch first then added only the QOL features that most people need.

Interesting. I'll check it out. Thanks!

Many of the Garmin smartwatches also have all of those features.

I've been really enjoying the reboot of Pebble with their new Time 2 for a few months now. I'm using ForecastWatch 2 watch face which crams calendar, watch and weather data into one screen and it's perfect. Lasts weeks on charge too. For apps their built-in workout apps etc are perfectly fine and I built some of my own apps quite easily.

My only complaint is that app limitation are apollo moon lander level of bad, like 128KB code and 256kb resources. I'm not particularly versed in optimizations patterns in here, but building fun stuff is really hard with these limitations. So what you have to do is roll a "companion app" android app that does all compute on the phone and streams it to the watch but that sucks.

> but building fun stuff is really hard with these limitations

What is your idea of fun stuff? Code and data is cheap enough with these constraints, though fancy graphics are what will eat your budget.

One obvious app I tried to build here is a calendar with a daily message and I've tried to include a little graphic emoji with each day. You can't do that because you can only fit around 100 emoji graphics and the font on Pebble Time 2 only has 50 emojis. So at best you can get 150 icons which is not enough for unique icon for each day. This is kinda sad in 2026 ngl.

Should be doable with the vector graphics system they have, or compressed images depending on the size of the images used.

Point me to your project on GH or wherever if you want me to have a look, I've optimised a lot of code in this life.

If the trade off is excellent battery life (low hardware capability) vs emojis, most people are going to pick the battery life.

This practically means you can't ship any runtimes, standard libraries, nor any big libraries with your app. Your app has to be just the business code and all the extras has to be stuff already on the watch. Crucially, size requirements like this doesn't mean you can't write slow python apps or whatever, so long as the watch ships with a python interpreter.

I suspect 10MB might be more friendly in the current day and age.

It already comes with a standard library, but, since the drawing algos left a lot to be desired, my watchface ships with its own image format and rendering code to allow for handling of transparency and blending modes (since you can not only use the integrated render utilities, but simply draw directly to buffer with whatever you bring)

So all in all: it has been done.

That being said: you mention python, and I'm not sure where this is coming from. When in rome, you don't drag your favourite language throught the streets unless it is roman latin.

I assure you it's most certainly not waterproof in any reasonable sense of the word. The seals and glue on that thing is nowhere up to the standard of modern smartwatches.

BUTTONS! Real buttons!

I can dismiss/decline/silence popped up on my Pebble without breaking eye contact with the real life human I'm talking to.

In a car, I've handed my watch to my kids in the backseat so they can control music playback. There's no accidentally closing the media app because they fat fingered a stupid teeny tiny touchscreen. Nope. Just regular buttons that anyone with functioning hand-eye coordination can use.

And unlike the Garmin Instinct, the buttons are actually ergonomic. The Instinct was literally painful as you had to contort your hand. And on top of that, the UI was totally insane. I was never quite sure how to interact with it and frequently had to experiment to do basic actions. Nothing was consistent.

My Garmin instinct is kind of the perfect dumb smart watch, it has a very simple calculator style rendering and the simplest speaker possible. Alarms are vibrations and water proof to a reasonable depth, battery lasts 2 weeks. Really have no reason to upgrade

Power users are buying the pebble time 2 because they can modify it to do whatever they want with high sp#cificity

I had about 3 apple watches before i was smart enough to stop wearing them. i recognize the health needs for some people so no disrespect, but for myself and I am sure many others the S curve peaked on them pretty quick and it's not worth having another device you need to keep charged on you.

Almost nobody needs these psuedo fitness devices.

Just walk outside, enjoy the sun, fresh air, talking to family and friends, walking the dog.

It doesnt matter how many steps you take, Do what is right for you.

Enjoy your life, life is not spreadsheet or powerpoint.

Obviously nobody needs these devices. I enjoy having the stats.

I like cycling against my previous speed or do a cycling trip guided by a GPX track.

I like to be able to call my wife when I'm on the bike without stopping and taking my phone out (often I cycle without my phone).

Sure, you do not need it like food, but it is pretty handy.

I do turn off pretty much all notifications though. Getting distracted by a watch is annoying.

Location (room number) of next event/meeting/lecture can be useful.

The killer feature of modern watches is the vibration alarm - you can wake up even if you use earplugs/headphones/noise machine and you won't wake up anyone else along with you. Health stuff like sleep tracking is likely useful for the vast majority of population, at least to everyone who needs time and thus lives on a schedule of some sort, without the possibility to fall asleep and wake up whenever one feels like it.

I too don't see how the ability to run apps is of any value so I use "sports" watch instead of a "smart" watch, which gives me better screen and better battery life in exchange of a smaller number of apps I won't ever run. Though the battery life is not an issue and smartwatch users I know charge their watch while in the shower.

> The killer feature of modern watches is the vibration alarm - you can wake up even if you use earplugs/headphones/noise machine and you won't wake up anyone else along with you.

I came here to say exactly this. That's not the reason I bought a smart watch in the first place (I didn't even know that was a feature), but it's the only reason I still use a smart watch now over my old Seiko.

It's a lot of why I got a Coros watch (the other reason is for running/health tracking). I stay in hostel dorms pretty regularly, and being able to wake up for that 6am flight without waking up the whole room is so nice.

> The killer feature of modern watches is the vibration alarm - you can wake up even if you use earplugs/headphones/noise machine and you won't wake up anyone else along with you.

Probably depends a lot on the person. A phone already does that for me, and doesn't have the associated uncomfortableness of wearing a watch while I sleep.

Indeed, I didn't see studies so my theory is that most people find sleeping with a phone in the bed much more uncomfortable than with a watch on the wrist.

Phone in the bed? My phone is not in the bed. It still wakes me up when vibrating.

If it's not in the bed then its vibrating not going to reach you, what wakes you up is the noise it makes while vibrating on some surface and this noise is heard by others just as well.

> He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?"

If everyone on the Pixel Watch team was like that, that could explain why they haven't found any success breaking out from the crowd. Smart watches should discreetly enhance one's life, not be a list of features to be built and used all the time.

I've been an Apple Watch user since Series 5, and I mostly use the watch as a normal-ish smart watch, with silent alarms, iPhone music control, and two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly as the "power user" features I'd use most often. I barely use any of the apps, and still have trouble navigating the grid.

> two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly

What is this “two-finger-tap to feel the time discreetly” and how does it work?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/watch/apd2c755c294/wat...

Ahh to be an arrogant Google employee. Must be nice to have such confidence from getting hired for a company which made a good product 25 years ago.

This is the core of why I've enjoyed my Garmin watch. It tells time, displays texts, has a quick and easy flashlight, tracks workouts, even acts as a dive computer. I get minimum two weeks of usage between charges. It's not something I have to think about on the daily. Now, on the rare occasion I'm not wearing it, I notice its absence.

I agree with personal experience. I also noticed that many nurses were Apple watches. I guess they are more convenient for people who need to work with their hands.

Garmin Fenix 8. Love it. It’s for trail running, payments in a pinch. Love the industrial design, far more than Apple Watch Ultra or certainly any Android watch.

I’m a power user given its narrow focus, but no, I don’t expect it to have my airline pass or auto download ABetterRoutePlanner. I’m happy it doesn’t or can’t.

I bought a Slow Watch precisely because a real watch power user only needs a one handed watch for the 24 hour day.

</s> but not really, I do own one and it's _amazing_.

Maybe it’s niche, but if you do endurance sports like triathlon, you can easily become a power user. I think I did. You constantly look at your watch during workouts. It does navigation on trails, it measures your heart rate, tracks workouts, keeps pace during races. The metrics it gathers about hrv, sleep, rest hr etc are vital to adjusting the routine. It acts as a data recorder for multiple sensors: hr strap does a million running metrics, a separate strap does hydration, on a bike there’s a power meter. It supports my routine alerting me about the fast, timing my morning porrige (14 min). It’s my payment method on long rides when I need water and could play audio if I wanted to. I care about advanced features like multi-band gps and handover with my bike computer. It’s a vital tool, I need it for so many things. But vast majority of smartwatches do not cater for this crowd at all. Even the Apple Ultra feels like a toy. Garmin upper end stuff is where it is.

Yes, before I read the last sentence I was going to comment that this niche seems entirely taken by Garmin/Suunto/Polar.

Exactly. Beyond all that, I also use my Garmin smartwatch as a scuba diving computer to track depth, time, and decompression.

I've got a pixel watch and would love to use it for navigation while running but (admittedly without much in the way of trying) haven't stumbled across a way to do this. What do you use to make it do that? Strava?

I assume you could set up a "walking" journey with multiple stops as waypoints on your phone then when you press start your watch should pick it up and give you the direct route between each waypoint. Not sure if that would sufficiently provide what you were hoping for.

> Garmin upper end stuff is where it is.

The problem for e.g. Google is right here.

The Garmin stuff is so good at its niche (and passable at the other "nice to have" stuff) that the market is already segmented. If you're this kind of "power user" you're already in the Garmin ecosystem.

It's tough for me to imagine what a Pixel Watch could possibly do to win me over (and I say this as somebody who has a Pixel phone and even had an Android Wear device early on).

Tbqh, it's the problem for Garmin itself - they want to sell new Fenix every year but the old one is already very good so they are segmenting their own product by holding off updates on the old watches for now but it's only going to work for so long until there is either nothing to update or they push down their value under that of competition's. E.g. Google could give Garmin a scare of its life if they made a watch with a MIP display, ANT+ support and power profile to run GPS for 8-10 hours - I'd buy such a watch from Google instead of Garmin just because Google is going to support it for longer (not that Google is known for longevity of its support but it's still better than Garmin's).

Surprised no one has mentioned Gemini. That's the highest value add feature for me. I have pixel watch 3, which I got cheap second hand. Gemini is a little laggy but still useful. If the experience was similar to the latest open AI voice model when used on a phone, it'd be incredibly useful

The ii plural is for Latin words. Alexas is perfectly fine in English. And so is octopuses, where you probably first heard about it. No need to over complicate things.

^ Great observation.

I have a Garmin Fenix 8, but if it would not have a flashlight, vibration alarm and sleep tracking, I'd happily swap it for a mechanical watch as a daily driver.

(obviously still using the Garmin for workouts)

Kinda curious why You didn't go for the Fenix 7 / 7Pro line? AFAIK the "big" addition on the 8 was phonecalls/microphone on the watch and some increased water resistance for diving. All that for maybe 200-300USD price hike.

I actually had Fenix 6 before and did and impulsive upgrade to Fenix 8 while diving on holidays. I'm very happy with it, including the microphone, sometimes even use it to take calls, it is surprisingly handy when e.g. holding a kid in one hand.

How do you like the AMOLED screen? I have a Fenix 6, which has the old screen. While it doesn't have a flashlight, I'm very happy with the ability to toggle the backlight on with a single button, which is more than enough for me to see in the dark where I'm going.

I feel that I'm lucky as my Fenix 6 still works as I would not want to switch to an AMOLED screen, which draws too much power to be kept on 24/7.

I would have preferred the old one because of battery life. I wear watch to know the time by just glancing on it, so always on is a must for me. It looks nice though.

Still, even with always on, I do 4-5 days between charges with normal use. I recommend watch face 'portal hybrid', which seems to have a slightly lower refresh rate (who cares), but you gain a day of battery compared to stock.

Yes exactly, what i regularly use are: track workouts, steps, sleep, card payments (sometimes a backup), flashlight, hiking navigation (convenient than checking phone), alarm and camera remote. I cant stand anything with less a week battery life. so far Garmin works fine for me

I love my analog watches too dearly to give them up for a smart watch.

However, I just realized that analog watches also have "power users", and I am definitely not one of them.

My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph") has a stopwatch with lap memory, a tachymeter, support for multiple time zones, and a bunch of other features I have not thought about since the week I purchased it.

I don't really know how to use it all. I just like the watch.

>My favorite watch (excuse me, "chronograph")

EXCUSE me... It's a time-piece!

Was going to reply that I would probably consider myself a power user of my Casio W-736. Features I use:

- Check the time (many times daily)

- Count-down timer (many times daily)

- Stop watch (weekly)

- Check date (a few times per month)

- Secondary time zone (rarely, since the people I care about are in the same time zone or 6h behind and easy enough to convert in my head)

I've had a fitbit in the past but had a hard time with having to charge it regularly, which often resulted in forgetting it at home. The added features did not outweigh the risk of being without it every now and then.

Spot on, my smart watch is an Amazfit, the built-in apps for sport, driving the music player, and reading msgs are enough.

I agree reply is useless, it isn't even possible on this one, however it is good only as a reminder as sometimes I miss relevant calls or msgs.

I have used smart watches since the Timex and Casio had agendas, or games, never cared for an app ecosystem beyond what was already on the phone.

Also never changed the Amazfit skin since the day I bought it, and settled on a classical analogue view.

Often I rather use a plain mechanical watch, or no watch at all, don't get the app ecosystem on a miniature screen.

I don't feel like power users are catered to either. Like if you have a Google workspace account (if you're not a company, that's a power user) then you can't do "remind me to X". That's reserved for non-power users.

... At least last I checked.

> I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me?

When you're deep in a conversation with someone and suddenly their wrist vibrate, they lift their hand up slightly, tilt their head down, seem to stare in the void and keep saying "uhu, uhu hmm, uhu" while pretending to still listening to you.

That's my experience with smart watches power users

"Power user?" Having a Pixel Watch 2 (or 3), I keep thinking no one working on this device really uses it. It's supposed to be a sports and health device but the stopwatch app doesn't even support laps.

Got my PebbleTime 2 about two months ago. I like it for tracking my exercise, heart rate, calendar, and time. My favorite is the alarm which is capable of vibrating when the watch suspects you are not at the deepest point in your sleep.

I feel people like that are unpleasant to be around. Sorry for you friend.

Is anything with the pebble time able to capture heart rate for historical data analysis? Anything that can show graphs that you know of?

I've got the pixel watch and I'm using Fitbit for this currently, but it's way too expensive for all I'm using it for. I really just want historical heart rate at the moment plus basic exercise tracking, and of course being able to tell the time. Media controls are a huge plus as well.

I used to consider myself a watch power user. I've started with LG G Watch in 2014 and had almost every generation in between, and from a lot of different manufcaturers Huawei, Skagen, Samsung, etc. I've even wrote and published a couple of Android Wear apps back in the day. I love the idea of having a computer on the wrist that I can program.

But in the end, what I'm using it for is notifications, time, timer or stopwatch, and glanceable weather forecast. (And I don't like the weather forecast on android/google wear)

Everything else, like sleep tracking, exercise, heart rate tracking, is a nice to have that I would look at from time to time and then do nothing with that information.

Anyways, a month or so ago I bought an amoled esp32c6 watch devkit for ~30 EUR, wrote firmware in rust, wrote a small android app to sync notifications, time and weather forecast, and I'm good. It's buggy and I need to polish it up, but it's exactly what I need. And if I ever need something else, I can just add it. Of course this is an extreme approach. It would be much easier to buy a cheap fitness tracker that does all this and has much longer battery life. I just like to be able to tinker with things.

That sounds like a cool project! Did you write it up anywhere at all? (or have any plans to?)

Yeah it is quite fun, I've also replaced the speaker that the devkit comes with, with a little vibration motor, which adds a small soldering adventure to the whole process, but it wasn't that hard.

I didn't write it up anywhere, I might at some point, but free time/willpower I have to spend on it is minimal. Although I have an itch to make a v2 with a combo of rp2350 and nrf52840

If you're interested here is the devkit I was using it's this: https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-c6-touch-amoled-2.06.htm

Apart from some unfortunate GPIO pin selection they made, and a bit of bugs and missing features in esp rust hal, it wasn't that bad to work with.

She's using it for payments, that's probably more than a lot of people! I set them up on mine but rarely bother, the phone is my payment device.

I wear my Apple Watch because it's a fancy health-monitor and I am anticipating atrial fibrillation in my medium-term future (thanks, dad's side of the family!). So it's nice to have a thing that is checking for signs of that and recording a few metrics. I might even upgrade to one with a newer sensor for BP etc before long.

Beyond that and checking the time though, I have almost no use for it. Plus I've had to turn off nearly every other feature and integration I could find because they were annoying.

Gestures which fire when I'm doing the garden, stopping the music I'm listening to. Button long-press actions which get activated by clothing. I eventually had to turn the watch over so the buttons don't get hit by glove-cuffs and cause random stuff to happen when I move around.

I consider myself a power user, and I still can't find a use for my watch beyond fitness tracking when I have my phone in my pocket anyway

Im still giving myself the illusion that tracking my sleep is doing anything relevant.

I sleep bad -> buy watch -> watch tells me I sleep bad -> win/win?

In the gym, i use the timer. But is it worth it to carry a watch all the time, keep it charged etc. for a timer? I'm considering buying a timer for the gym.

We just do'nt need a lot of tech in reality.

Yeah, I agree - I think smart watches haven't yet evolved out of just being a fun tech gadget. If you just want a timer, I'd recommend just getting a cheap digital watch - you can get a casio for like 20 euros/dollars/pounds/etc and it'll give you a timer and the time/date and not much else. No cool tech gadget, but it 'll stay charged for 10 years rather than 2 days.

My watch tells me I sleep amazing and I wake up feeling like crap. No idea why, but also have no idea what to do about it.

Having a Garmin, ruined me with awesome battery life, but after I melted it, I was using Amazfit ActiveEdge (can't find straps, the watch is still ok), which made me realize, I'm fine with it, both serves what I need, with over week of battery life. And, that matters the most at the end. Having ADHD, a smart watch is a life saver. But charging it everyday? Nope, who have time for that!?

Alarms are crucial, I have 8 alarms set, just to remind me of passing time.

Calendar is also very useful, for quick glance, externalizing of information is really important when you have a bad memory

Sleep tracking, at least I know how long I might have slept. Surprisingly, Amazfit detects going to sleep very consistently and reliably then Garmin (not counting, sleep level detection accuracy) which did surprise me a lot

Activity reminder, it reminds me I'm sitting for too long, and have a goal set. Which is really useful for me.

Steps, weather, notifications all are pretty important, to keep me off mobile. If I open the mobile, it's given I'll lose focus and lose a large chunk of time.

> But charging it everyday? Nope, who have time for that!?

I wear my Apple Watch to sleep, and take it off to charge whenever I'm in the shower.

That's just another routine for me.

Well, from an ADHD book, do not remember the exact statement but goes like this, "But doctor, how do I remember to take the medicine that is supposed to help me remember things"

If I have to charge it every day, it will create another thing that I will forget to do, and make it ultimately useless for me.

And once you get used to 10-15 days of battery life, charging your watch every day feels absolutely absurd.

> What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

There is IMO a design flaw that tanked adoption of not just Alexa, but also on-phone voice assistants.

People would want to use reliable equivalent of "computer, play music" or any kind of "computer, do X". But what is on offer by all major companies is, "${brand name}, do X on ${brand name} with ${brand name}". No thanks.

More broadly, I think this is rarely noted explicitly - user interfaces are ultimate marketing platforms, because you get to inject your marketing literally between the user and the task they're doing. Whether purposefully or intuitively, companies understand that, and the UX goes to shit as they design the product to also be a marketing platform.

I got a pixel 4 after some surgery basically for the fall detection. Otherwise it's mainly doing what the Fitbit I had 8(?) years ago did for me, with added GPS. Pulse, steps.

As an ADHD-haver it's good to get notifications to the watch so that I can avoid unlocking the phone and risk falling down a rabbit-hole. I think that's under-sold.

What I want is a decent (by which I mean SIMPLE) pomodoro app for it, and I'll probably have to write that myself. Does that make me a power user? I was surprised that finding such a thing would be difficult.

I tend not to use it for payment because the ergonomics are terrible. Someone needs to tell that team that having the face on the inside of your wrist is entirely valid (especially if you don't want to be whacking your shiny watch face into every passing door handle), but that makes you do contortions if you want to get it close to a card reader. Not only that but the way screen locking works is ungainly enough that the fact you need to use it more with the face towards your body makes it a constant annoyance. I've unknowingly reorganised my widget order far too often because of this.

I'm fully locked into Apple Watches as I'm using these features regularly. Not sure whether that counts as a power user.

- Time

- Notifications (also: dismissing a notification on the watch also removes it from the phone)

- Smart Stack (relevant info pops up automatically)

- Wakeup alarm

- Timers

- Payments

- Express Travel mode (yes, I'm aware of the vulnerability)

- Siri (especially great with the upcoming Siri AI)

- Medication tracking

- Heart rate monitoring, Sleep tracking, Sleep apnoea detection, ECG

- Phone calls while the phone is in a different room

- controlling Home devices

- automatic tracking of hikes or walks

Charging has never been an issue for me. I put it on the charger while I sit at the computer or game console in the evening and when I go to bed later, it's fully charged and ready for the night and the next day.

For me, showing the time, calendar notifications and turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps is all the smartwatch has to offer. Sleep tracking is a good extra. That's it.

Pebble was great at providing that, with crazy good battery life.

This is why I bought a Casio G-shock smartwatch. I use my watch primarily as a watch: I like to track my workouts, and it is nice to get important notifications to my watch when I'm busy / trying to focus

Same here. I wore the Apple Watch for about 6 years. It helped me get excited about exercising and swimming on the daily, but the notifications and "focus modes" made it feel like a chore. I switched to the GShock GW-5000 and never looked back.

I primarily use it for steps, stopwatch/timers (the best part imo), quick weather check

that's about it

As an owner of a Pixel Watch 4 with LTE, the killer feature is the ability to handle calls/texts without an actual phone. With a smart watch, I can maintain important communications without looking at a device with a screen large enough to show me an advertisement, large enough to be useful for doom-scrolling, large enough for consuming slop, etc.

I have a Galaxy Watch 7 that I keep on silent ("Mute all sounds"). I think I'd be considered a heavy user. I don't use it to do a lot, but I've come to rely on the things I do use it for and I use it frequently.

I use it:

  - To tell the time
  - Set one-off timers/alarms
  - Recurring silent/vibration alarms throughout the day
    Wake up, start work, mid-morning break/checkpoint, lunch, end lunch, mid-day break/checkpoint, 30 minutes before "clock out", end of work day, and medication reminders
  - For silent/vibration notifications (HEAVILY filtered. Mostly messages from VIPs, security camera notifications, reminders, "rain in 15 minutes")
  - Set reminders "Remind me tomorrow morning to schedule a vet appointment"
  - Add things to different shopping lists (grocery list, shopping list, etc)
  - Quick, short-term notes ("10 M4x20mm screws")
  - Casual health tracking: sleep, step count, activity minutes, etc

Almost every one of my interactions with it is via voice/Gemini.

They might just get a stroke if they'll hear what I use my smartwatch for. Hop on my bike, press start, and at the end of the ride press stop, then look at the result on my phone (sometimes). And if I don't forget to put it on I read the time. I have navigated with it once in the first week. But luckily it's not a Pixel Watch.

For you and me, using a thing regularly for longer (than people around you) and possibly for more than one purpose makes for a power user.

If you're on the Pixel Watch team however... "power user" takes on a different meaning

The most important thing I bought it for was Health Tracking. Although I still don't understand why it ask me to do tacking sessions when I am simply walking faster.

2nd most useful feature is vibrate alarm.

Telling time not even that important on my list.

I don't do payment with watch. Since I think the motion of making my wrist to the counter is awkward. Since we are always on our phone it doesn't make it much simpler.

Most useful bit of the announcement, coming to all Google wearables it seems:

Blood pressure, sleep breathing, and insulin sensitivity trends

  > Built on state-of-the-art Health Foundation Models trained on billions of minutes of sensor data from opted-in users and rigorously validated against gold-standard clinical measurements, these models power three new monthly trend summaries: blood pressure trends, sleep breathing quality trends, and insulin resistance trends. Rolling out soon — with your first detailed summary arriving after one month of wear — these reports illuminate metabolic, respiratory and cardiovascular shifts early, giving you clear insights to help you take control of your long-term health. Plus, monthly summaries will soon be available across our wearable portfolio, including the new Google Fitbit Air.

That is pretty interesting. I am keen to know in the end whether better models or better sensors win this game.

"insulin resistance trends" - whaaaaat? how would they do THAT? That would be huge for so many people, including diabetics, obese people or women with PCOS (PCOS alone affects more than 10% of women of reproductive age)

Is that measurement accurate? Like, a person starts taking Metformin -> and a few days later the watch detects a drop in insulin resistance?

It does monthly trends: https://m-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/452350-image/in...

That image also implies that not only does it know trends, but it also has an absolute good/bad value.

Yeah, I was researching this just last week and there is tons of funding going into wearable blood sugar monitors but nothing wearable sized coming out (several lab sized ones though).

I’d love to read more about what this is, and what technical signals / data they’re using.

FDA compliance has been tough for optical measurement of blood sugar and blood pressure. I'd imagine that this is why they are doing a monthly averages and keeping their claims subdued.

I'm quite curious. Friends I've talked to have been very pessimistic about accurately measuring blood sugar via a watch.

If they are actually able to get an optical measurement which is good enough for MoM or WoW trends, I'd agree it's pretty big even if they can't provide anything precise enough for real time / daily use. Just being able to roughly validate diet changes for women with PCOS could be very impactful and that's the smallest of the 3 populations you called out.

Yeah I find this one interesting. It's been rumoured for pretty much every Apple Watch for a decade, so they're clearly throwing tonnes of resources at it, and every year nothing materialises. This is one sensor feature that could really impact a lot of people.

No, it's not a glucose sensor. Extrapolating from the Google research published in Nature a few months ago on how they estimate insulin sensitivity using wearables (and not just BMI, age, etc): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10179-2

Insulin sensitivity correlates with obesity, activity, sleep, etc. so it's not impossible that a wearable can give some degree of prediction. I guess it's mostly good motivation to support habits that increase sensitivity (physical activity, low stress).

Definitely not. Get a cheap CGM subscription if this is something you want to monitor and you need any sort of real data. They’re easy to apply, update quickly (within 15 minutes of a Hcg spike you will see it in the data) and you can derive A1C from it. Actual insulin resistance itself still requires a fasted blood draw at minimum and is not really recommended (too many methods with different ways of measuring each of which is clinically significant but needs interpretation — or you can do a 3-4 hour research lab test but the value is pretty limited).

Any time you see “trends” in a press release you should be very suspicious. It’s a sign that they can’t pass regulatory scrutiny and are trying to apply the research anyway. Your scale cannot measure fat percentage, your Samsung watch cannot measure blood pressure and your Garmin cannot measure VO2Max. These are all things they’d like to be able to do (and “trends” can have some value if they’re used correctly) but they are not the thing itself.

Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless.

I can imagine that would be okay if the watch lasted for a full month, then you could buy two watches and swap them out every now and then.

> Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless.

Seems like it'll work with the Fitbit Air too. That has a 7 day battery life.

> 7 day battery life Been using the fitbit air since day 1 and it never died on me. Charge it when I shower. The only issue is the fabric strap is getting dirty, and the sensor gets a bit dirty (dead skin, etc.) compared to an Apple Watch.

Other than that, it's spectacular, and now with Apple Health, it's on par if not better than the Apple Watch. apple health only synced to the 4-5 of July, though. :/

This. I don't see the point of using a Pixel Watch or an Apple Watch or any watch that has 1 or 2 days of battery max.

My 3 year old Garmin has 2+ weeks battery life and is tracking activity, ox (ok, it's not medical grade), sleep, etc.

Also it does _not_ have a mic (something we're going to pay extra in a few years the way things go) and is not connected to anything wirelessly. No need for another device to set it up and you decide when you get data out using USB.

Just charge it at night? I don't see why you need more than 2 days battery life.

How do you track sleep then?

I take mine off to charge whenever I'm in the shower.

Ah I don't. Can't sleep with it on.

I just charge my watch while I'm in the shower. It's more than enough.

Noninvasive blood glucose measurement has been a holy grail for wearables for over 10 years. People have thought they were going to crack it but the research just hasn’t panned out. You’re much better off getting a cheap CGM subscription, especially now that they’re available OTC most places.

Pebble Time 2 is still miles ahead being a watch, and only a bit behind being a computer. BUT, it has a sunlight readable ALWAYS on display, really good battery life and is open source. I still don't understand people charging their battery every 2 days or less. It's a problem guys. My Wear OS watches, even my fancy 2 screen one that got about 4 days or so, eventually ended up in a drawer. Never to be used again. Not so with my pebble, where I literally made an automation to remind me to charge it, because I charge it so rarely.

For me, the appeal of the smartwatch is more advanced health tracking, custom applications, NFC, and GPS. As far as I know, Pebble lacks most if not all of these features. I really want to want a Pebble, but it's far closer to a customizable watchface than even a Fitbit. On the other hand, daily charging of smart watches is completely outrageous.

They have some heart-rate and some health tracking an as others have mentioned, so many of the more fringe features are way less useful than a watch that lasts anywhere from a week to a month on a charge versus a daybor two with the ultra

Well, right, that's why I said "advanced" health tracking. A pedometer is enough to measure steps.

And then, I dunno. We've clearly made this trade-off before with mobile phones. As much as I like the Nokia I had that went weeks without a charge, I also rarely notice the charging time of my phone.

Lately I've been thinking about a mode in which a "smartwatch" serves as a fitness tracker, heads-up display, and wallet, while a real, mechanical watch, which never runs out of battery, becomes the timepiece (and fashion piece?)

PebbleTime 2 has a pedometer, HR monitor, and sleep tracking. You can set it to do continuous HR measurements during activities. This covers all the basics.

GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway.

Really the only missing part is NFC payments.

> GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway

Unless you go for a run, for example.

> Really the only missing part is NFC payments.

And custom applications, not the least of which are navigation tools like Google Maps or Citymapper.

> Unless you go for a run, for example.

You can bring your phone with you! Then you can combine its GPS tracks and the information from Pebble.

> And custom applications, not the least of which are navigation tools like Google Maps or Citymapper.

They won't work without the phone connection because Pebble does not have a cellular modem.

But there are mapping apps for the Pebble that use the phone's GPS: https://apps.repebble.com/maptastic_52e7521679f937c182000004 or https://apps.repebble.com/maps-nav_99279aadf6df4c0fadfdb39a

>You can bring your phone with you!

You can, but it's pretty awful. put it in a pocket and it flops around. Wear a band that slides in your phone in and get it soaked (i'm a sweat monster).

I own a pebble, but I'll gladly just run without a phone.

Have you tried one of these upper arm holsters?

Actually, you gave me an idea!

There are button-sized Bluetooth GPS loggers. They can record a GPS track, and you can later download the data from them. Since it's freaking GPS, it automatically has timestamps, so it's easy to correlate with other activity.

As a bonus, I think it should be possible to connect them directly with the phone.

BRB, I think I have a ESP-based Tiny Arudino somewhere...

Heh, I used to use bluetooth GPS tracker with my nokia 770. It worked well since I could place the gps where it got the best signal. I could start a track, have it record it, and then check in with the n770 only when I needed to see a map. That way I made the most of my n770's battery life, but still got continuous tracking.

Beware that they take much longer to start since they don't know the GPS coords of the nearest cell tower, nor do they download the GPS almanac over the cell connection. They will however remember the almanac so you can leave it on for 30 minutes and not have to redownload it the next day.

I have a small Meshtastic device, not quite button-sized but still tiny. The chip on it supports aGPS, so I can upload the almanac and prime it with the approximate location. I'm very familiar with this process, I wrote a small utility for my cell phone back in ~2010 after I screwed up its factory image by installing Cyanogen.

Nice, I have a few mestastic widgets, but do want something small enough for a dog collar. That way my wife and I can carry a radio and keep one in the car so we have a good chance getting in range.

Sad that most of ham radio, which has similar APRS for tracking, doesn't do async or multi-hop.

I found this one when searching for something similar: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GF6QL9S9 - it should even be hackable.

I have not tested it, but it should be hackable. I have a couple of discrete RAK chips, and I've ordered a PCB with a trace antenna for them.

Looks nice for some uses, but pretty big for a dog collar, almost 3" on a side. I've some long/thin dev boards that I could pair with an 18650 that should be closer to 1".

I'm planning to use a small LiPo battery with a JST connector. The whole footprint should be slightly larger than 3x4x1 cm. Still a bit too large for a pocket device, but perfect for a collar.

Sounds great, best I found so far is the RAK19007 (30x60mm), then add a GPS (RAK12500). It will be kind of long (60mm + case) but not too wide (30mm + 3d printed case).

Or the Mesh Node T114 Development Board V2 (23mm wide).

OP specifically called out GPS in relation to a watch as a desired feature. You can’t just summarily dismiss that with a hand wave of “you have a phone don’t you?”

It can mean different things: support for fully autonomous GPS or for the phone-assisted GPS.

> GPS is covered by the phone that you're going to be carrying anyway.

I leave my phone at home when I go for a run. Connect my headphones to ma watch (which as my podcasts and audiobooks on there), remove the house key from my keychain and carry nothing with me besides key, watch and headphone. Feels so much better than having a phone with me

That isn’t advanced health tracking. Advanced health tracking is when my Apple Watch watched my activity versus heart rate over time and warned me it saw signs of hypertension, which caused me to buy a wrist BP and do a health log for BPmin Apple Health, then produce a report and go to a doctor who prescribed medication for me. Does the PebbleTime do that?

Pebble Time has the HR sensor, and it has activity monitoring. You can upload the data into Google Health or Apple's health tracker. So it should work? It's the same data, after all.

I canceled my pebble preorder when I found out it can only record audio for a couple minutes at a time. A big use case for me is to record voice notes without going into the distraction center that is my phone, but often they can be 20+ minutes

Pebble's custom applications is far better than Google or Apple. It's much more hackable.

The other features are indeed worse or missing.

>> I still don't understand people charging their battery every 2 days or less. It's a problem guys. My Wear OS watches, even my fancy 2 screen one that got about 4 days or so, eventually ended up in a drawer.

It's funny because I can't understand this from the other perspective. You get up, take your watch off to shower (i.e. put it on charge) and by the time you've got ready it's done. I actually had issues when I got the Apple Watch Ultra and the battery lasted longer. I got out of the charging routine and ran out of battery at inconvenient times.

Can you sell Pebble Time 2 to me as Amazfit Bip user? All I need are notifications from smartphone, sleep tracking and pedometer.

I am on my third Bip, the last two I bought used for like 20USD, why would I spend in 2026 225USD on Pebble Time 2 with worse specs (thicker and it doesn't even have GPS) rather than just buy another used Amazfit Bip for 15-20USD (it can still last 4 weeks even with old battery)? Their pricing is completely insane. I don't care about their special OS and custom apps.

i own PT2 due to buttons but charging thing is not such a problem considering i take it off before the shower

30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker. I don't want to charge my watch every day.

I've been using the Garmin Forerunner for a few years now and the battery life is 2 weeks!

It's less of a big deal than I thought it'd be.

I switched from a Garmin to an Apple Watch - which has less battery life - for some development work I had to do and it turned out I barely noticed.

Charge phone, charge watch, charge headphones just became a nightly checklist.

I guess it's dependent on what you're using the watch for. I like the sleep tracking and various overnight metrics. Find keeping an eye on RHR and HRV is one of the best early signals for overtraining.

But unlike headphones and your phone, you want to wear your watch at night to monitor sleep

At least that's a major selling point for these smart watches

I charge mine (older Pixel Watch model) when sitting down and coding. Or when showering if on the weekend and not coding. It charges very quickly.

Just charge it while you're doing something lazy at night (reading, watching a show). 30mins and you're set.

> But unlike headphones and your phone, you want to wear your watch at night to monitor sleep

Some people do. Personally I've had a smartwatch for some years and have never been interested in sleep tracking.

I only put it on when I'm leaving the house, so it generally has plenty of time to charge.

I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that. I didn't know this going in. I had purchased the Pixel 8 I think it was and saw the watch was heavily discounted if I bundled it in so I did. Will never buy another one. I'm a heavily sleeper and need multiple alarms sometimes to wake up and would often use my watch alarm to supplement my phone. So it became a nightly routine of making sure I didn't forget to charge my watch before bed, lest it dies in the middle of the night.

I don't like having to charge my Apple Watch. I don't want to charge it when I'm asleep because I want sleep tracking. I don't want to charge it when I'm away because then I can't keep an eye on the time without getting my phone. I don't want to charge it when I'm at home because I could forget to put it back on before I go out or to sleep. If only there were a way to supply it power without having to take it off... or it could charge in less than like two hours...

Yeah, Apple Watch definitely needs faster charging. It wouldn't be as big of a deal if it both lasted longer, at least 3 days to get through a weekend, and could charge to a meaningful level in 15 minutes or less so I could just throw it on the charger in the morning and by the time I'm out of the shower and dressed have it be at ~80%.

What series are you using? I have the S11 and in 15 minutes it easily charges from 10-20% to 80-90% which gets me through the next 24 hours.

Series 9, which I'll probably be upgrading this fall anyway.

The 10 and 11 definitely charge faster than the 9, but also you need a decent power supply too, like 25W at least to reach the max speed.

Not the parent but I have the Ultra 2 and it lasts around two to three days on a charge, which is nice, but there's no charging routine that looks attractive to me. I end up sucking it up and trying to place it on the charger when I wake up, under the assumption that I'll pick it back up once it's fully charged (and not only the next time I go out or to sleep)

I decided I was just gonna get the Fitbit air as an accessory to a smart watch for sleep tracking. 7 days of battery life and a 5 minute charge for a full day battery is enough for that. And it's not nearly as clunky as a smart watch.

> I don't like having to charge my Apple Watch. I don't want to charge it when I'm asleep because I want sleep tracking.

Feels like I've been replying the same thing everywhere, but people aren't charging their smart watches while they're in the shower?!

I was very surprised by work put into making replacing the battery easy on the Pixel Watch 4. They designed in screw actuated clamps for the back face. Hopefully this carries over to the 5th edition.

https://youtu.be/3pQWBFBIU2U?si=HEefZLDiIurcBj5K&t=61

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Google+Pixel+Watch+4+Battery+Re...

> I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day […] Will never buy another one

The later models are way better. When I switched from a Pixel Watch 1 to a Pixel Watch 4, my battery life increased by at least double. And this is me comparing both watches when they were new, before any battery degradation. The charging is also twice as fast with the newer models, so it's much quicker to charge if you forget it.

  I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that.

Good news: PW2 will reach End of Support come October, perfect time to buy the PW5! /s

https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1279...

Same my 4 year old Huawei watch still goes 2-3 weeks. It seems to be the devices with simpler OS's that last longer and the wearOS and apple equivalent struggle to do more than a day or two.

> 30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker.

Also quite funny considering they are highlighting the sleep features of the watch quite a bit:

"When it's time to recharge, Pixel Watch 5 and Google Health Coach elevate sleep tracking with 15% more accurate sleep stage detection, bedtime automations that automatically pause audiobooks when you drift off, and a dedicated bedtime watch face. When morning comes, Smart Wake ensures you wake up feeling refreshed. By monitoring your heart rate and movement during the 30 minutes leading up to your alarm, Smart Wake identifies optimal moments of lighter sleep to gently wake you before your set alarm time."

Sounds neat, but uh, how are you supposed to use any of that and also use the watch as a watch with a 30 hour battery life?

I just charge mine as part of my nighttime routine, sometimes it's only five minutes, sometimes it's 20. In the morning I just throw it on the charger while I'm showering/brushing my teeth. It's almost never full, but it never dies.

I thought about the Fitbit air, but being able to see your heart rate is kind of nice.

>Pixel Watch 5 and Google Health Coach elevate sleep tracking with 15% more accurate sleep stage detection

It's more accurate than what? Which is how accurate? This does not feel like a meaningful statement.

I'm not sure it's what Google does, but on YouTube, The Quantified Scientist compares smartwatches against a dedicated EEG headband.

My Apple Watch broke, I replaced it with a Casio with an Ollee Watch board. It doesn’t have the fancy features but it’s so nice to not have to ever think about the battery life! I wish the firmware was open source, there is a few features I would like to tweak a bit

Daily charging for normal use isn't so much an issue once it becomes a habit, but battery life during extremely long (24+ hour) activities is pretty much a make-or-break feature for me.

I've done some 50ks and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life, choosing a device that can't almost feels like admitting defeat. It's kind of stupid but I know I'm not alone in that thought process.

The problem is that 30 hours slowly becomes far less over time with software bloat and battery degradation. What I hated when I had a watch with a tiny batter like this is that if I wanted both sleep tracking AND the ability to track my morning workout, I absolutely had to remember to charge before bed. If I forgot, I'd wake up with a dead or almost dead watch and have to delay my workout.

I went though a number of android wear smart watches ~10 years ago and had the same problem with all of them. I absolutely loved my Garmin 945M. I had it for years with hardly any battery degradation and it typically gave me 70-80% of the advertised battery life for many years until it was accidentally physically destroyed (caught the watch on a heavy backpack I was taking off, which ripped off the watch pin anchor from the case).

The Fenix 6 I have now is not nearly so good. It advertises 2 weeks of battery and I'm at 53% after only 4 days or so. I blame this partially on their crappy iOS support where you cannot filter apps out, so every #$%#$%^ slack message I get buzzes my watch. I had a Pixel phone when I had the 945, where you can filter out garbage notifications. This is really Garmin's fault, since apparently Coros and Pebble can filter notifications on iOS. I'll switch to one of those when this Garmin dies unless they fix their iOS support.

I felt like you as well: I like to track sleep and my heart rate during sports and with the pixel watch it felt like I had to almost plan these events (and more annoyingly while travelling) around the charge state of my watch, until I realized I had two separate requirements: notifications (which I don't care about during sports or sleeping), and fitness tracking.

Unfortunately the solution ended up being paying google more money and getting a Fitbit air (which I can use for sleep tracking for an entire week-long trip without bringing a charger)

And only wear the pixel watch for my awake hours, which a 30 hour battery life is more than enough for, even if I forget to charge it for a night or two.

Another bonus is the Fitbit air is a lot more comfortable to sleep in, but of course I no longer care about the charge of my devices.

I love how light and comfortable the fitbit air is, but I find that the data quality blows. Both steps and sleep (pretty much the only two things it can really track) are not super accurate when comparing to other devices. Hopefully they can sort it out with software updates

> and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life

Hell yeah! Don’t let dreams be dream

The charger on the 4 both sucks and blows. Countless times I’ve taken it off the charger to find 0%.

The nice strap they showed in the adverts broke instantly when I took it out of the box. Two pins sheared right off the in the middle of the band.

WearOS Apps are trash.

I wish I had gone garmin. ;(

My experience is so different from this. I love the stock strap. I've never found the watch at 0% on the charger. The charge is magnetic, so it's really obvious when it's actually charging. The apps do everything I need them to do, but maybe you're asking more of the watch than I am?

My only complaint is that the charger has its own cable instead of a plug that I can use with whatever charger I want.

> > Countless times I’ve taken it off the charger to find 0%.

> The charge is magnetic, so it's really obvious when it's actually charging.

It's possible to dock it in the charger enough for the charging display to start showing, but not enough for it to actually charge. But the watch notices this itself after about 5 seconds, and it switches to "not charging" display and sends a notification to your phone. I've had my Pixel Watch 4 since January and I've only had this happen twice, so it's fairly rare, but certainly possible.

Especially when Garmin and some other watches last a week or more.

If it charges fast enough this shouldn't matter. You just charge it while you take a shower and as long as it charges enough for the day it fine.

You sound like the sales rep at the Apple store. I was perplexed.

Meanwhile, I had to wonder how many people take showers that are over half an hour every day.

I leave my apple watch on a charger for at most 15-20 minutes in the morning and that gets it from the 10-20% in the morning to about 80-90% which is enough to go the whole next 24 hours even with a 30 minute lunch walk and 2-3 hours of pickleball fitness tracking as well as having the always on display on.

Never once has this seemed like a problem or that I would want to wear my watch in the shower for some reason. It's shower plus getting dressed and brushing my teeth etc.

Apple Watch has never lasted the full night for me. I'm super happy with my Garmin Instinct 3. A full blown iOS device on my wrist was too stimulating anyways. I'll take charging once every ~25 days-ish over the color + capacitive touch screen.

The Garmin Instinct 3 is my favorite tech purchase I have made in a very very long time.

Yeah, I dunno, I have a S10 42mm. I charge it to 80-90% in the morning while in the bathroom, and it lasts me until the next morning with 10-20% left.

I have always on display on, and all the tracking stuff on like Afib, sleep apnea, wrist temperature, noise levels, fall detection, etc. I typically do a 30 minute walk during lunch that I do a fitness activity for, and a 2 hour pickleball session most days of the week where I also fitness track it. I do not use low power mode, and by the next morning it's got the 10-20% left. It only takes about 15 minutes to charge from 10-20% to 80-90%.

I usually wake up place my watch on the charger grab the clothes I'm wearing go brush my teeth take a shower get dress and get ready for the day then grab the watch off the charger and it fully charged everytime.

I don't get the people that need to wear it 24/7 for days at a time.

My watch (Garmin VivoActive 4) lasts ~1 week. The charger is one less thing I have to:

- keep on my nightstand

- take with me if I go away for a few days

It wouldn't be the worst thing to build charging it into my daily routine, but it sure is liberating to not need to.

> I don't get the people that need to wear it 24/7 for days at a time.

I think that's kinda expected when the device itself is supposed to give you the illusion it is always there tracking your health (even when sleeping)

With these health-tracker watches with weeklong battery life, and people leaving their watch on when they shower??

Missing 15min of data isn't going to change anything.

Not tracking every minute of REM sleep isn't going to change either, the unimportance of the data is not what they are selling though

I'm perplexed how anyone would have trouble charging their smart watch 30-45 minutes per day, unless they have an unusual schedule like (near-constant travel). This is something I almost never think about or have issues with.

For me it's a mix of 2 things:

1. If I do end up traveling, I now have to deal with remembering to charge my watch while sleeping on the airplane or something

2. If I go on a camping trip, extra long hike, etc, I can end up with a dead watch (12 hour hike with navigation, early start, so I don't get my morning charge, etc)

With my Garmin, I just charge it once a week or so, and all is good. I do think it comes down to what you're looking for though - mini phone strapped to your risk vs adventure companion.

Many people with long hair and lengthy (body) skincare routines take showers which take half an hour daily. Probably depends on what you include in the shower time.

This is almost fine until god forbid you forget to charge it. My old phone had to be charged every night (or occasionally every other night). Charging once a week at most is night and day difference. Charging every other week would be wonderful.

So I have to bring a charger when going camping/multi-day hike etc... This is a rather big deal-breaker. I can go up to the glacier for a few days of mountaineering with my Garmin and not worry about it. (the same as if I had an apple watch ultra)

My WiThings ScanWatch lasts a full month. But it's not a phone-on-my-wrist, it looks more like an analog watch and just has some sensors in it.

If all you're looking for is a step counter in your watch, check out Casio ABL100WE. The battery lasts for two years (CR2016).

I have the pixel watch 4 and I also hate charging stuff. But I put some double sided tape under the charging cradle and I just put it there at night which I think is good because then I always know where it is as well. So im used to it now. Plus you can buy an extra for travel ex. So im happy with it so far.

Yeah I've been using Gadgetbridge[1]-compatible Amazfit watches and they last at least a week and have most functions I want from a smartwatch. For more complicated stuff I just use my phone.

[1]: https://gadgetbridge.org/

Keep in mind Google owns Fitbit and Fitbit has watches with 7 day battery life.

Pixel is for techies, Fitbit is their health tracking product.

Fitbit is probably gone by the end of the decade.

The Fitbit app has been replaced by the Google Health app. Other than the Fitbit Air released this year and the Fitbit Ace for kids, the last Fitbit device was released in 2023. Both of those newer devices are reduced functionality versions of older Fitbit products.

Maybe. If they do kill it I'm sure they'll keep something sport oriented though.

The Garmin Tactix with solar is good.

> I don't want to charge my watch every day

Apple Watch SE 2 has a life of barely 8 hours :-)

I tested out Pixel 3 (or 4 .. i don't remember at this point). The 30 hours is when you have all the functionality enabled all the time. Like the always on display, always on notifications etc ...

I used to auto set the watch into DnD / battery saving mode at night, and used the "raise hand to turn on the display" functionality.. I used to get 3-4 days of continuous use.

Charging used to be like "put the watch into charger after waking up. It'll be ready by the time you get ready for office".

I did miss the 30 day battery life of my Amazfit bip and 2 week battery life of Pebble before that.. but charging once a week wasn't all that bad...

But again, I mostly used my Pixel watch as a fitness tracker. Didn't really care for most of the apps - except maps.

I have all the features enabled on my Garmin watch (vivoactive 5), including always-on display, and still get at least 4-5 days of battery.

AOD is a must for me, other thing can be disable, a watch that i cannot tell time at a glance is no more than a brick to me

My Fenix 8 lasts for about a month with 10 hours per week of training. 30 hours with everything enabled is pathetic for a smart watch.

fenix is huge so it's understandable

The mid-size Fenix that I'm talking about is 47mm. The Pixel 5 with this shitty battery life is 45mm. And the also-shitty Ultra is 49mm. So, no, size is not the difference at all.

Oh, for sure, but Garmin's watches do operate under a different principle. They got a lot of SOC's doing specific tasks more efficiently vs software and their OS is more limited in terms of apps. Android/Apple watches are more like miniaturized smartphones. To each their own. The only reason I don't wear a garmin is that the interface navigation is much less intuitive vs my pebble

I'm enjoying 20 days of battery life on my Pebble Time 2

I've been using a Withings Steel HR for 10 years now, the battery still easily last a month, activity tracking is good and has some basic notification support. I can't imagine having another thing to charge daily.

garmin watches are unbeatable for battery life - my Pixel 5 - would last close to a month. now it's close to 2 weeks since it's pretty old now :(.

but Garmin software sucks. my next watch will be an Apple Watch.

Apple watch, even with most things disabled barely makes it to the next day. Pretty but etrash.

My watch charges itself while I wear it and it only has three hands. That’s all I need from a watch.

Yeah, I bought a Pebble Time 2, and I can't imagine buying any other watch now. Having a 3+ week battery life is a game-changer.

Plus its screen is practically always-on, I've never seen any lag, it's half the price, and I have yet to feel like I'm missing any features over Wear watches.

If you disable heart/pulse tracking, it's 6+ weeks for me, just in case people are wondering.

You can get a forerunner that can also last many days and MIP display and it'll cost about the same. Now the question is rather what platform you like. I find PT2 Ui much more intuitive

I had an Apple Watch Series 6 for about five years and the battery degraded to the point it needed just about two charges a day.

Then I found out about the new Fitbit Air in June and picked one up. Advertised battery life is 7 days; I tend to get closer to 6. It does the sleep/activity tracking I want (though not quite as good as the AW if I'm honest).

The extra benefit is I've cut out smartwatch features from my wrist. I got tired of having notifications on a watch and rarely needed special apps or anything either. I really only used the AW for telling time, date, temp/weather conditions, and payments; but most of the time I have my phone or I'm near a computer anyway.

pfft, only 2 weeks + wearing garmin brick on hand? I would rather go with Pebble Time 2 than Garmin if I had to buy something new (used Bip for 15-20USD is still the best deal), it had decent thickness and better battery life

Amazfit Bip user (10mm thickness, still 4 weeks battery life)

If you care about privacy and owning your own data, then don't buy this, buy a watch with gadgetbridge support (https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/). I bought an amazfit active 2 a few years ago and it works fantastically with gadgetbridge on grapheneos. Easily gives me 5 days of continuous battery life as well.

I have a good experience with Huawei Band. Huawei doesn't even require to pair the watch with an official app! So I never connected it to the Internet or installed their app, paired directly with gadgetbridge from the first day.

Amazfit required a one time registration to get a one time code to unlock things, but I used a throwaway email id, and then deleted their app immediately. After that point the watch only syncs with gadgetbridge. The best part is that the watch has no internet capabilities, and gadgetbridge itself doesn't have internet permissions either so you know that absolutely no data can leave your device

So I kinda hate smart watches, a lot. Mainly because they are about notifications and apps, both of which SUCK to use on my wrist. Notifications are especially horrible (looking at you Apple, not able to disable reaction notifications in iMessage…), distracting, stressful, make it hard to stay present and focused.

What I actually want:

- sleep tracking - basic health tracking - maybe basic GPS to track hikes/runs etc

And potentially an easy way to see certain pertinent info. Like if I’m doing water sports, basic tide info, or my next calendar event, or when I need to get off the bus. But I don’t want an app, and I almost never want notifications. And definitely no clunky app to be distracted by.

Plus, I don’t want a big old screen. I don’t want to charge it a lot. I like my digital Casio a lot.

Feels like this doesn’t really exist

What you want is a Garmin Instinct, or equivalent. Not sure if it does the pertinent-info bit -- mine has Bluetooth off almost all the time -- but it does the rest of what you want, and will run for over a month per charge.

This is kind of why I’m still using a Fitbit. Google doesn’t really pay attention to them but they do the basics of fitness and sleep.

I need something basic to keep track of swimming pool laps. Is there a simple fitbit that can do it reliably and holds a charge for at least a couple of weeks?

I'm coming around to the possibility that I may want a Fitbit Air on one wrist and a dumb watch on the other.

Garmin literally made their highly successful wearable business around your requirements.

Amazfit Bip has sleep tracking, pedometer and notifications, it has also GPOS (which will significantly shorten battery life), release in 2018, it can still last 4 weeks on single charge, you can buy used for 15-20USD here in Europe

Don't expect advanced sport features like tide info or water sports, it has calendar events and can be used with open source Gadgetbridge app in phone.

I like how the footnotes are all broken. Like the repairability footnote links to charging. Lots of money was spent making that website.

I’m willing to bet AI made that website and nobody bothered to verify.

The accuracy tracks with my experience as a Gemini user.

Googlers earn top-tier salaries but don't verify their AI-generated stuff?

Maybe people really do deserve their layoffs.

The buck needs to stop with a human being.

Lots of tokens...

I reluctantly use a pixel with grapheneos, but anything that can only run google or manufacturer provided software without an independent 3rd party is trash, having looked at wearos while trying to refuse Samsungs terms/integration I also consider it a worse grade of trash than a phone since it can intentionally create codependency on other devices for management despite having more processing power than android 2-4 phones had.

It really does feel like such a waste. If I switch to Android I might as well toss my Apple Watch out and vice versa. Along with the fact they basically require the phone to do nearly anything.

I'm pretty happy with a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS and a Garmin that I never connected to a Garmin account. I use https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge instead (then synced to my computer with syncthing), and I don't miss anything from Garmin.

I'm 100% Google free, and far happier with tech that I ever was.

Gadgetbridge is great and can even recover a pretty good experience from the touch oriented watches/bands that look deceptively like smartphone equivalents.. But I think the actual smart OS level watches would need a replacement firmware first and the an implementation for talking to gadgetbridge.

Gadgetbridge is pissing me off because there have a forced always on non dismissible notification message that I can't get ride off. For example when no watch associated. So I have to manually kill the app.

I think that is a general Android setting as for any app that registers notifications: AppInfo -> notifications -> other -> scanning service

Pixel Watches have an unlocked bootloader [1] and publish factory images [2].

That being said, it appears that the main open source version of WearOS (AsteroidOS) only supports watches that are 5-10 years old [3].

I suspect that if you did try to flash this watch, you would experience a whole host of rough edges.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2022/10/21/pixel-watch-bootloader-unl...

[2] https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch

[3] https://asteroidos.org/watches/

Edit: past pixels watches have an unlocked bootloader, I assume this one will as well. I don't see this information in the announcement post.

I'm using a cheap samsung watch, maybe 4? It's ages old at this point, but I need it to get contactless pay, I'm a sucker for it. I have multiple company and personal and virtual cards on it, and I don't like carrying a wallet everywhere with me.

What's specially shitty with using a wearos watch with an android phone is that clock's alarms etc do not sync, at least not between grapheneos <-> samsung galaxy watch 4. I have to use use turboclock which has a wearos app to get wakeup alarms to my watch.

Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers. But having to charge every day seems like a major regression compared to Garmin. I do appreciate that they are competing on location accuracy, though.

Apparently the GPS is computed in the cloud, which means this only works given LTE coverage or if you also carry your paired smartphone. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/pixel/pix...

DC Rainmaker has done his own test: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/08/google-pixel-watch-5-gps...

I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-...

> From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right"

So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?

The watch uses a more advanced 3DMA model. There's also differential GPS and advanced algorithms to create significantly better results.

That's cool, I didn't see that mentioned in the article.

> Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers

Where are you seeing that? I only see $499 with up to $125 off for trade-in.

On credit its $10/mo for 24 months.

Google had a town hall a few years ago. The Pixel Watch (4?) had just launched and supposedly fixed a bunch of bugs like apparently you could not reliably record a run with the previous generation without that app crashing and losing the workout. Someone in the audience asked about this, and the PM who responded was wearing an Apple Watch. Apparently everyone on that team at the meeting was wearing Apple Watches or a dumb watch

They know this product is garbage

Heh, when I worked at HP, I bought a Brother printer.

Why aren't any smart watches incorporating e-paper displays? Seems like a perfect tech to use there, especially now that newer display tech allows pretty quick refresh rates.

Modest gain in battery life for a tremendous drop in capability.

I want all the things. Overlay an OLED display on top of e paper.

You might be interested in the new Pebble watches, which use e-ink displays.

WearOS watches are trash for me personally as they all require you to run Google Play Services on your phone, which I won't do. The only smartwatch I've had luck with is the Garmin series (Venu, Fenix), and since I really only wear a smartwatch when exercising, it's perfect for me. I find myself happier when I go with an analog watch, and all the notifications I get are never so important that I need to check them the second they come in.

I've mostly moved on to screen-less wearables for health metrics now. Not only do you get a ridiculously large battery life (measured in days) but I also found that it means more time and attention was put into the things I care about versus trying to support whatever garbage wearable OS they try to integrate with (or worse, roll their own).

My Garmin Instinct 3 Solar watch (which has a display) has a battery life measured in _weeks_.

My favorite Apple Watch feature is Camera Control for group photos. I love how you can see a live preview of the photo and it gives you the ability to zoom.

I also enjoy tracking my workouts, my steps, and heart rate.

Sleep mode is great to monitor my breathing, heart rate.

Quick notifications are great in case I have an important and timely email.

Pinging my misplaced phone is helpful too.

I think I keep my 6+-week lasting Pebble Time 2, thank you. It already does everything I could ever wish for.

For people who want all the niceties of detailed health tracking with good battery life already (should) have a suitable Garmin for them.

This watch isn't even part of the horse race.

Pebble Time 2 is still miles ahead in being a watch and only a little behind in being a full computer. But it gets way way way more battery life WITH an always on , sunlight readable display. AND it's open source.

I never understood these watches. I have Galaxy Ultra Watch and I found it is pointless (bought 2 years ago). Doesn't last a full day. So I cannot e.g. track sleep because it is charging or I cannot track something else because it is charging. Then too much information on tiny screen. I can just whip out my phone for that. I even preferred checking time on the phone.

Now, I got Pebble Time 2 and I think this is it. Just enough bells and whistles and battery lasts for weeks. Love it!

My Pixel Watch 4 lasts me two days (with AOD turned on), and I charge it while I'm in the shower, so sleep tracking is convenient that way.

I have been wearing my Casio F91W for so long I can't even remember buying it, and I'm not even a power user of this watch (never use the alarm or stop watch). I wouldn't even know what to do with a smart watch. I'm sure people do more with their smart watches but I have a hard time imagining they actually do a lot with them. Unless I've really been living under a rock?

Fitness tracking, accident detection and not needing to take your phone with you because you can still use your watch in case of emergency (if you have cellular connection).

> AI, Advanced Gemini, Google Health Coach

The fitbit users already have "google heath coach" in the latest googlified version of the app.

And https://www.reddit.com/r/fitbit/ is full of commentary on how laughably crap it is.

I'd pay more to avoid this kind of "feature".

Thank you, this made me feel glad I switched back to Xiaomi.

Battery life Time Vibrating alarms Sleep/Step tracking

Happy with these (and the ux and price)

As mentioned here (1) the IMHO cool and useful features are good battery life, heart rate and sleep tracking, "find my phone" and "tap to pay" / NFC payments.

Find my phone: because sometimes you'd rather not spend 5 minutes checking where in the house you might have put it down, so making the phone beep saves time.

Tap to pay: I live in a big city. Serious crime is low, but phone snatching is common. Paying without even taking a wallet or phone out of your pocket is ergonomic. People use it for public transport too.

However, Tap to pay requires payments infrastructure and certification. A watch that does it will always come from a larger corporation because of this. e.g. Pebble watches do not do it.

The "AI health coach" is pointless shovelware. The inevitable "AI feature" that no-one asked for. This is a failing of larger corporations too, so the sweet spot (if it exists) would be NFC without "AI health coach".

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49279527

Genuinely I'm more curious what amount (or lack of) governance their is in this version of gemini for health vs asking gemini directly.

> Pixel Watch 5 packs 50% more RAM

a surprise, especially in this current market. But at the same time, why tf they need so much ram.

"AI"

Why no Qi support on any watch ever? Those chargers are becoming commonplace in hotels, cars and homes but every frigging watch have to have their own cradle for them?

It's a shame they weren't able to launch this with the previously rumored Tensor CPU: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-watch-5-tensor...

Ikr, I've been holding out with my 2020 Garmin venu thinking this would be a big refresh

i gotta say that new pebble is nice enough and integration cozy enough that this is less tempting than ever

i was wondering recently if i could ditch my iPhone for (just) an Apple Watch. i know i can't fully ditch it (an Apple Watch needs an iPhone for management). but, i'm curious about the concept nonetheless: what would it be like to ditch a smartphone for a smartwatch?

I have a friend who misplaced his iPhone for a weekend while away in another country and used his Apple watch eSIM for everything.

It wasn’t as convenient as having a phone but it was still far far better than being without anything entirely.

My eSIM didn’t work abroad innerhalb der EU, where roaming is otherwise seamless and free

I tried it a few years ago and it was just annoying enough that I went back to my phone after a couple weeks. If you search online I’m sure you can find write ups from people who tried this out.

Depends what you need to do.

I basically only use my phone if I need to do something that can't wait until I'm at a computer. I've got an LTE-enabled Pixel Watch that sometimes I'll wear without my phone.

If anyone messages me and I need to talk to them before I get home, I call them from my watch.

An Apple Watch doesn’t need a SIM-enabled iPhone for management. You can just use an old one if you have any laying around, or your current one after you’ve deactivated service on it. Just get a standalone watch plan, something like $80/year from US Mobile or other MVNOs.

> You can just use an old one if you have any laying around, or your current one after you’ve deactivated service on it. Just get a standalone watch plan, something like $80/year from US Mobile or other MVNOs.

I don't think this is true. It needs to ride alongside a telco eSIM (and only specific ones that support SIM sharing) that's already provisioned on the phone.

Don’t know what to tell you. I am using this as a completely standalone plan: https://www.usmobile.com/apple-watch-cellular-plan (see Standalone Plan section)

Ah, it seems like a hack that some telcos are doing to get around the pairing problem.

From the page you linked:

> Your iPhone and Apple Watch will have different numbers and Apple IDs, but will need to be members of the same iCloud Family.

And from this Reddit discussion, it looks like texts won't sync:

https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1q8wpie/is_the_st...

I’m not sure what the hack is. The watch is provisioned like a normal eSIM-equipped phone, since that’s what it is.

How could SMS messages from different phone numbers sync? That’s the whole point: It is truly standalone. In my case there is no issue whatsoever because the person using the watch has no cell phone (preteen child).

For the majority of adults who want the seamless Apple Watch approach where their watch and phone act together contextually, this is not a solution but it works great as a true standalone “phone on your wrist”.

As a GrapheneOS user, I've had to buy pixel watch 2 in order to be able to pay via Google Pay abroad (since I unfortunately happen to reside in an internationally sanctioned country, local cards work only inside the country, some crypto exchanges provide Visa/Mastercard cards, but virtual only, so Google/Apple pay is the only choice). I really wish I haven't had to own this android-certified™ device in the first place. Have had to disable as much GMS system permissions as possible, such as pulse, GPS, physical activity via ADB.

P. S. Since it's not even possible to add a new card if the watch is paired to a device that doesn't pass SafetyNet, I've had to add cards with a stock android device, and then re-pair the watch to GrapheneOS device. This almost seems like a deliberate choice by Google.

To de-Google, I have GrapheneOS + a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar: - 28 day battery life - NFC payments that work internationally - always-on monochrome MIP display that is very readable in direct sunlight - sleep tracking with silent alarms - phone ring alerts - very good GPS for outdoor activities

Best of all, since you only need to charge it once a month, the watch will last 10+ years.

I've considered Garmin for Garmin pay, but seems like it supports much less banks, and I didn't want to gamble with checking for myself if it'd work with virtual crypto cards. Not all of them support offline NFC payments in the first place, and those which support only advertise Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Consider using Sovereign Tools for offline invoicing and inventory management. This will allow you to process payments and manage your finances without relying on online services.

I just use garmin watches to track health stuff. I would literally jump for joy if there were a free alternative software and hardware stack to replace this watch or at the very least a cycling computer.

$500 Android watch that will be obsolete in 2 years. What a dumb idea.

Why do I feel like there haven't been any hardware releases since the Macbook Neo? Market is so slow, probably due to the DRAM shortages.

No new GPUs, CPUs, technologies, etc...

Interesting they are still going with round. Most of the UI shots look awkward on a round screen with anything not in the very center getting cut off a bunch.

Google is an ad company. They don't actually want to lose any of the phone screen time on something with lower revenue real estate.

The round just looks better and far fewer people actively use the interface on the watch other than looking at the time or marking a workout. I think the squircle watches like Apple's look odd.

I was discussing this with my wife 10 minutes before I saw this comment.

watch / time / clock looks and works so much better on a round interface. notifications / text / buttons look and work so much better on a square interface.

So, use a watch on one wrist (round, good looking, etc), and a smartwatch on the other wrist (square, functional, 'computer')

There's no way you can mold the two together into one 'have it all' form factor

There are a lot of mechanical watches that have rectangular watch faces, some of them very attractive and expensive.

In some basement at Google there's a group of traumatized engineers who were flogged mercilessly until they made a smart watch UI work on a round watch face because...??? I've developed Wear OS apps in the amount of effort that it must've taken to get to a sort of alright implementation of a UI that still depends on a lot of lists of things seems crazy to me.

It's disappointing that this is downvoted when the Apple Watch is an obvious example that rectangular works and is winning. When it comes to watches, I have to admit that I don't understand 99% of what is sold.

The Apple Watch design is probably horrible (at least I am ashamed of mine) but they get away with it because the design decisions are reasonable (bigger screen real estate) and the hardware and functionalities are ok. Battery is very limited but charges fast, etc

That’s called making the right trade offs and I think Apple especially has a very good track record of making the right trade offs in their products.

Is there any plans to have a Graphine OS variant on one of these?

Can someone please bring back original Amazfit Bip? I am now on the 3rd one in 8 years (the first body popped out in warranty (got money back), 2nd I cracked the screen cover glass and then water got in and battery swell).

It was superthin with MIP display requiring no backlight and could last 30-40 days on one charge, even now using 6-8 years old piece it can still last 4 weeks, which should probably answer my question why nobody wants to produce long lasting nice watch, you can sell it only once.

Imagine what we could do with MIP and new baterries in same body + imagine if it had open system...

Yeah yeah I know about Pebble Time 2, but it's thicker at 11mm, has no GPS like Bip + most importantly it cost way way more (225USD now vs like 80-99USD in 2018) for pretty much same specs Amazfit Bip had 8 years ago. Why something which cost in 2018 at worst 99USD now cost with worse specs (no GPS) 225USD? It's much easier and cheaper to produce it now.

Not sure, when it happened, or why, but, from always buying the latest iphone, and apple watch, tracking my "everything" from steps, to weight, to calroies, slack, mail etc. etc. on my write and phone, I find myself wearing just normal watches (g-shock square in my case), and just not caring about upgraing my iphone, and instead carrying my kobo with me instead of my iphone, paying with...a physical card, instead of apple pay. Don't get me wrong all of the tech is amazing, and I am a geek, but I am so sick and tired of alwayss being connected, and then paying a subscription for every little thing in my life, it's so freeing to disconnect. Been reaching for pen and a notebook more than notion, biggest hurdle there is, my handwriting have really gotten quite bad.

i spent an hour the other week looking for my pine watch charger, this may inspire another 20 minutes digging around the house

Well I'm certainly never buying a Samsung watch again anyway (and I usually like their stuff).

My GW4 classic has been dogshit slow for years now, they have absolutely fucked it up with no concern for older devices in the updates. And all fucken reddit can say is the usual tribally inspired "Well it's old and has a slower processor" yeah no fucken shit.

I'm not buying a brand new smart watch every 3 years, fuck that.

What an ugly design...

Still no camera

Too bad all your health data gets sent to Google.

You can disable all the health data stuff.

then what's the point of the watch? Can you see the data without a cloud connection? Can it be uploaded to your phone without going to the cloud?

Yes you can see most of your data without a cloud connection. But some features are limited and require the subscription. A google account is required though to use the app I believe.

Of course, getting more than a snapshot of the data is a bit of a pain. Fitbit has a developer portal and you can create a dev app key to export your data. There is at least one open source project that pulls this data down regularly and feeds it into grafana. I'm not sure if the pixel line of watches provides a similar developer portal.

EDIT: actually, you said cloud connection. I think in this case the data is still being sent to the cloud, hence the API to fetch it. But you don't have to enable sharing with other services or purchase the health subscription. So maybe the answer is still that no, you can't really do much without the cloud connection.

> I think in this case the data is still being sent to the cloud, hence the API to fetch it.

Correct. In every case all the data is sent to the cloud. That is where the data is crunched and transformed in actual metrics. You can do the test and block the internet to the companion app. You'll see that only instantaneous data is updated (heart rate, steps), but nothing else. There is no way to use a fitbit or pixel watch without the cloud. Google eventually gets all your health information, minute by minute.

Gadgetbridge can do some things, but not many (and nothing at all for most of Google/Fitbit's products). Which is fine if all you want is HR and steps and possibly notifications, but then there is no point in paying for a smart watch, just get a fitness tracker that is cheaper and has better battery.

I'm not saying you can disable the cloud upload (though apparently you can?), I'm saying you can disable the health tracking entirely.

I've never had any use for the health tracking - I use my watch for notifications, emergency contacts, and displaying the time/sunset/sunrise/weather/UV index. Different people use their watches for different things.

Once again another watch with a utterly useless one day battery, the absolute minimum acceptable should be 3 days to cover a weekend away, only really the ultras (apple and samsung) of the full fat smart watches seem to be doing this.

Still no rectangular phone option. WTF is wrong with Google?

Round watches are not cool. They end up inconvenient and uncomfortable.

I love the rotating dial UI round Samsung watches used to have.

This was my thought as well. That round watch gif that shows rectangular widgets is painful to look at.

I don't think I want anything google attached to my body. I don't need AI training on my heartbeat or whatever bullshit they'll come up with.

Their brand is so toxic with the forceful rollout of their AI stuff. Staying far far the hell away.

> * Up to 30 hours of battery life on the 41mm (40 hours on the 45mm) with fast charging.

Is this a typo? I get 20 days on the Pebble Time 2.

It would be neat to see the power budget breakdown. I suspect power draw is primarily the oled display, with the "more difficult" health sensors being second.

For devices that are entirely controlled via an MCU and lack wireless connectivity, that is probably true. However that's not true for the pixel watch. The cpus and dram take significant power.

Here we go: https://feng-qian.github.io/paper/watchenergy_mobicom16.pdf

If you turn off cellular and WiFi (making it pebble equiv, but not gaining you weeks of battery), it's mostly display and CPU. I'm guessing a good portion of that CPU usage is display related. Pebble uses e-ink.

Maybe there's really that much more going on with Android?

Google is a great company with some of the most capable engineering talent in the world.

I will never understand why they take this great resource and continually waste it on copying other companies (mostly Apple) and making such unoriginal products. Surely Google can pioneer on more than just the technical side of things?

Where specifically do you think they lack, and what do you suggest they focus on?

Compete with Garmin instead of Apple.

Garmin has less than 8% of the market versus Apple with 23% and the largest share. Why would they compete with the market loser?

Technically they are outstanding.

Watching the recent I/O event though, it was frustrating how much they were copying Apple.

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