There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and cost mean nothing.
I think the smart watch is purely an example of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.
In case you are like me and didn't immediately get the reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Claimed_use_in_terr...
Folks find utility in owning a Pebble, and as an extension, in how they choose to integrate tech into their lives. Do you want to be the guy in the recent xkcd cartoon[0]?
Are these features for everyone? Probably not. But it seems closed minded to reduce the purchase of what is in actuality a pretty cool device to "purely conspicuous consumption".
Going back to my airport example, I generally put my phone in my computer bag when traveling to avoid accidentally losing it. This is a case where not having to pull out the phone right away is extremely useful.
Other activities that benefit from not taking out the phone: grocery shopping, shoveling snow, working out, cycling, riding public transportation, cooking, and I could keep going.
Constant distraction is another conversation altogether, but I generally don't find this to be an issue by configuring my notifications to only show things I probably need to know about right away.
Why are you commenting on this thread beyond sharing your initial negative opinion here?
To put in Monty Python terms, "Are you here for an argument?".
Also, what if you get a phone call when your phone is downstairs and you are upstairs?
Limited utility.
You would once have been called a materialist for owning your own set of cookingware, I think, but you'd hardly want to live without one now, would you? And you wouldn't call someone who buys a brand new set of kitchen knives "conspicuous".
I don't find much value in the Pebble so I don't buy it, but I definitely see a time when I'll want one of its kin. I'd pay to have data on my glucose level, heart rate, blood pressure etc available to me and me only, i.e. not sent to a central server.
But anyway, time will tell.
The pebble demands your attention. That is all. It does nothing that something else doesn't do already, costs a chunk of money, needs constant feeding and attention. At least a smartphone was a consolidation of communication and entertainment devices. This is a portable distraction. A poor one at that.
Do you think it's healthy to constantly stare at your heat rate, glucose level and blood pressure and micromanage every parameter of your life?
Also in a decade, you will pay a subscription fee for that data from the central provider that your watch talks to. That model is established already plus it will probably be linked to your health insurance profile as well by then. You'll wear one to keep your premium down...
Almost everyone I've heard from -- in person and online -- that has had a Pebble or similar smartwatch has said that getting notifications on it reduced their gadget-focussed attention compared to having only a smartphone, and cited that as the primary benefit.
So, while I think it could be, for some people, a new distraction, I don't think that's generally the case, and is, in fact, the opposite of what it normally is and what is motivating people to buy it.
I don't see how wearing a watch that gathers biometrics would be unhealthy. A small bracelet without any display would be fine with me. At the moment, I don't need this - I'm in my prime. But once I get older, I might benefit from having a small buzz on my wrist alerting me that I'm working too hard mowing the lawn, or whatever.
I'm also against a model such as the one you describe, like I have made clear in my post.
I've literally flicked through thousands of them and found maybe 2 or 3 that didn't look completely awful. Do people seriously like watches where the manufacturer's name and various bits of other assorted useless text take up half the face?
There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and cost mean nothing.
I think the smart phone is purely an example of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.
Ideally, most of the functionality of a smartphone will be realized in a watch/bracelet. Then, you could just access your data using various cheap dumb-terminals (e.g. tablets and phones). And, by "cheap", I mostly mean something that you could afford to lose since it wouldn't need to have a large cache of your data to be useful.
In other words, we're still keeping the consolidation, just moving it to a different place.
Saying status does not matter is of course an attempt to signal high status. No one's out of the status game.