I was able to get a Groupon for a $60 Pebble Time. It's a pretty good watch / fitness / sleep tracker / iOS notifier. With a 7 day battery life it's a win on all fronts. It looks like a fisher price toy at the price point of a fisher price toy. That said mine was refurbished. I would not be happy paying $150 new. I've seen iWatch as cheap as $212 but the 1 day battery kills it. Supposedly Pebble2 will have more advanced tech with good battery but we'll see. They have a really good looking round watch but the battery is inexplicably 2 days. With GoldenEye007 watch face:
I agree: the <1 day battery life kills the Apple Watch. I got so annoyed with charging mine all the time, it ended up just sitting in a drawer for months. Then it went on ebay because I realized I was never using it. It needed to be charged just as much as my phone, but didn't do much of anything that my phone couldn't do better. 10+ years ago when I regularly wore a watch, I tended to just leave it on my wrist for long periods of time. I couldn't do that with the Apple watch. When traveling, it became another charger I had to worry about packing. Hopefully battery life improves a lot in subsequent generations of the Apple Watch. Also, having it turn on and off all the time when swinging the wrist was very weird. It got super weird when driving at night, and it would come on when turning and light up the car. I quickly came to the conclusion that old analog and digital watches were superior for telling time. The time is constantly there and doesn't come on in a distracting way. Ultimately, the Apple Watch feels like having a small cellphone strapped to your wrist rather than a watch. It has the same annoying problem that you do with checking time on a cellphone of coming on in a distracting way and the brightness being annoying and bothering other people when it's dark. Pebble is probably a better option with its superior battery life and much cheaper price. Both Pebble and the Apple Watch look like 1980's calculator watches, and won't win you any points for aesthetics. And they don't really do anything useful other than tell the time and track fitness. Even the 7 day battery life could stand to improve IMO. They need to integrate kinetic charging into these things. In general I would say that my smartwatch experience has led me to believe that smartwatches are currently a solution in search of a problem with no killer app. Old school watches make for better pieces of jewelry, have extremely long battery life, and are better at telling you the time. Phones are equally good at telling the time and have better apps.
I can't believe how out of whack the prices are of glorified 90s era toys. I've seen fitness trackers for $250 from Fitbit. The Huawei watch cost $400 new and the Apple Watch was $600 at one point.... I understand the technology may be expensive but the benefit it provides consumers is minimal bordering on useless. The Pebble should be $35 new, with the 'high end' from Huawei/Apple at $150 max. Everything you said is dead on. I've already encountered the random back-light while driving problem. Luckily the screen is nowhere near as bright as an Apple watch. The notification on the Pebble seemed nice at first. I set my iPhone to silent and the watch vibrated with a Tapatalk alert for this thread. But then when my Facebook/WhatsApp chat groups started going, I had to silence the watch altogether because it kept buzzing at my wrist. I think I'd prefer a semi-smartwatch. Basically an old school chronograph with activity tracking + notification light. I wouldn't actually mind if you could only see the activity/notifications on the phone, if the battery lasted 2-6 months. Sample notification (no back light):
Dead on…except for the fact that you can turn off wrist raise activation if you prefer. Minor exploration of the watch settings and a couple of Google searches will solve all the "problems" you guys bring up.
Nope. I don't want it off. Except when I want it off. It's a so called smarty watch and should know I'm in the car like my phone does. The biggest problem is battery life and Google won't solve it. @chi i looked at one from Fossil and Razar but the battery life is still 7-10 days.
What do you think the battery problem actually is? http://www.cio.com/article/2919703/smartwatches/apple-watch-disable-activate-on-wrist-raise.html
lol at dual handed operation to save 15% battery life. If I have to raise the watch and tap the screen to see the time, I might as well throw that shit in the garbage and use the phone. All that to barely squeeze a 2nd day of operation before you run to the charger at 0%. These products are toys for adults, they need to get to at least 14-30 days battery to be viable. But whatever, I'm not going to argue indefensibly shitty products with you. If people are paying $250 for a Fitbit, they will obviously pay a lot more for Android and iPhone wear-ables. Maybe practicality isn't the top priority and the market research shows it.
Again, what's the problem? The author says he ended the day with 25% battery without turning it off, and 40% if he did. Apple doesn't claim the battery lasts multiple days under typical use.
Battery life is a general complaint against smart watches. I'm not singling out the Apple but mentioned it specifically because it's popular. I don't care what claims they make its not a viable product with 1-2 day battery life. The marketing dept sells it as a productivity device to save time. What do busy people like to do with that extra time? Charge their watch, apparently. Even this pebble looks on track for only 5 days which seems like a big disappointment. I'm not going to want it to die on me so I'll have to charge it the 4th day. It seriously is that big of a bother to me.
Back in the day I wore a water resistant Swiss Army watch and rarely took it off. It probably stayed on my wrist for weeks at a time. I used it when I would go camping and didn't have access to a charger for days at a time. It didn't need to be taken off when bathing or swimming because it was water resistant. Smart watches need to get to the point where they rarely need to be taken off and are highly water resistant or they will continue to be seen as novelties/toys. 1 day battery life doesn't cut it.
Weeks at a time? I literally go years at a time with my watches. They come off when the battery dies. I could never do a smart watch that only last a couple of days. Give me a week and maybe.
Wearing the watch for weeks or years without ever having to charge isn't a selling point. If that's what you want, then you're not in the market for a smartwatch. But that doesn't mean a full day of battery life is actually a problem for people who ARE in the market for a smartwatch.
Smartwatches are a flop product so if they want better sales they will have to cater to the masses. Activity and sleep trackers are all the rage now. Smartwatches have the tech but not the battery life to participate. The smart-enough devices like Fitbit Blaze will continue to eat their lunch. The Pebble is down to 10% after 72 hours. I am going to charge it up and try a watch face without weather tracking. I've noticed the weather feature seems to continually use location services on the iPhone and drain the phone battery faster. Pebble accounts for 20% of my total phone battery usage.
Smartwatches are doing fine and gaining some ground on the standard fitness trackers etc. http://www.businessinsider.com/smartwatches-are-siphoning-demand-from-fitness-trackers-2016-4-22
We shall see... Fitbit outsold Apple watch 22M to 12M in 2015.... I have a hard time believing the other (Android Wear) bridged the gap to a near 50/50 against the other popular fitness trackers. That chart looks sketchy as hell. Would be nice to get actual numbers from Apple, but they are to embarrassed to give sales data on the watch.
Again, that is an estimate since the real figures are an embarrassment... $6 Billion has got to be retail sales to public. I doubt that is Apple Inc. sales into the supply chain. So basically est. 12M @ $500 average. Very generous, as the $250 sport is routinely on sale likely making the average price much lower. Still it's the best selling single device. The other bigger flops would have to close the gap at 2:1 against fitness trackers for the chart to be accurate. If it was based on $ value I could see it happening. But it says unit sales. Not buying it.