New Generation of Wear OS Watches

[psionandy]

IIRC (and according to my Kickstarter history) the Pebble launched at $125 in 2012 - the equivalent of ~$140 today. That's only $20 off from the list price of the much-more-capable Ticwatch E2.

*runs off to start googling Ticwatches*

 

[The_Chief]

Well, the Darling Bride sent her Fossil Sport back for a refund.

It probably wasn't the watch's fault, but the whole reason she got it was to track her steps and fitness. When she kept noticing two dozen steps and 600+ calories before she even got out of bed and put the watch on, it didn't bode well. Maybe Google Fit sank the watch... but now I have this Artifex stand for it that I get to sell.

Meanwhile, my Summit 2 is doing great! I love the watch, it's smooth as silk, and I rarely even bother with Google Fit. I'll use the stopwatch for my walks, but that's about it.

 

[ocnbrze]

i have the LG urbane and Samsung's Gear S3 frontier and i love them both. I do prefer Samsung's Tizen OS then Android Wear OS. its fairly accurate. Samsung Health app is pretty good, especially when i go for walks or even on hikes. it tracks my mileage, steps, heart rate, and time. i just use it to kind of gauge how well my walk or hike went. i can easily get almost 2 days worth out of my gear s3.

 

[psionandy]

So.... way down at the other end of the price range.. the Xiamoi Mi Band 3 can be had for the price of lunch and a couple of beers...

Is it as nice as a android wear watch? or even a pebble? Hell no.

Does it do the core of what i need it to do.. time, step tracking, find phone, notifications.. vibrate on ring? yes... and the heart rate thing is a nice addition.

And if it can last a week on a charge.. then its 90% of what i want it to do... at 10% of the price... so i can live with that

(and I suspect thats the way the wearables market is going to go.... which is why i was concerned about the lack of androidwear product at the lower end of the range)

 

[codesplice]

600+ calories before she even got out of bed and put the watch on

Fit approximates your BMR based on the details you enter into the app (height, weight, age) and so attempts to track calorie expenditure while at rest - or even while not being actively monitored. That can't account for the phantom steps, of course (location drift on the phone, perhaps?) but might explain the calories recorded while sleeping.

Either way, if the wife isn't happy with the way Fit behaves then it makes sense to return it and look for a more purpose-built fitness tracker.

 

[The_Chief]

location drift on the phone, perhaps?

I was under the impression that Google Fit uses the accelerometer to sense steps, not GPS. Since commercial-grade GPS is accurate to about 5-10 meters (military-grade is accurate to within centimeters), it seems like it wouldn't be usable for tracking steps around the house. If that's the case, it's not worth a fart in a hurricane, anyway...

 

[Hadron]

I'd have assumed accelerometer too: that's certainly what fitness bands and phone pedometers use.

 

[codesplice]

As I understand it, at least, Fit uses all the sensors it can to try to get a composite data set rather than just depending on a single sensor output. Without location data it might use steps to approximate distance; without step counter data it might use distance/pace to guess at the number of steps.

Unfortunately Google hasn't really told us specifically how Fit calculates things so all I can really do is guess based on what I've observed.

 

[The_Chief]

Now that my Summit 2 has been broken in a bit, I'm on the verge of returning it.

I put it on at 8 AM this morning. Wi-Fi and NFC are turned off. It was in airplane mode for awhile. I did nothing special; I wasn't on it constantly; my watchface has ambient mode. By 2 PM the battery was 5%! So this $1000 watch can't last six freaking hours of normal use? I could buy THREE Huatches for the money!

I sent a message to Montblanc... either this one has a bad battery or the watch is gorgeously designed and poorly engineered. Fortunately, Bloomingdale's has a generous one-year return window: so I have plenty of time to exhaust troubleshooting resources before I send it back.

 

[ocnbrze]

$1000.....yikes!!!!!

i love my gear s3 i can get easily day and a half out of one charge.

i just need to get a new band for my watch.

 

[olbriar]

Yep, something isn't right. The battery has to last a 12 hour run or it's no good to anyone.
My S3 uses quite a bit of battery when it's in stand alone mode. As long as it's BT connected to my phone, it lasts days. I hope you figure it out Chief.

 

[mikedt]

"Montblanc"...that's paying a significant premium for a name. Having seen the luxury prices they charge for their pens.

 

[psionandy]

My £20 mi-band is now down to 36% i may have to charge it this week

 

[lunatic59]

Interesting, @The_Chief. I would hope it's just a battery problem rather than a design issue.

Someone who shall remain nameless (@NightAngel79 ) has me watching more YouTube than I used to. And, being a watch enthusiast, I have been bombarded with recommendations for videos to watch that are about watches. I just watched one by The Urban Gentry (time index 16:49) where he's talking about watched you shouldn't buy. His #2 choice is luxury smartwatches.

 

[NightAngel79]

Interesting, @The_Chief. I would hope it's just a battery problem rather than a design issue.

Someone who shall remain nameless (@NightAngel79 ) has me watching more YouTube than I used to. And, being a watch enthusiast, I have been bombarded with recommendations for videos to watch that are about watches. I just watched one by The Urban Gentry (time index 16:49) where he's talking about watched you shouldn't buy. His #2 choice is luxury smartwatches.

Hehe, lol

Haven't watched the one you mentioned, but I guess it depends on what he means by 'luxury'. I know there are like 800 dollar watches, and **** those. I LOVE my $200 Fossil, and will be getting a next gen (5?) Explorist when they come out.

 

[lunatic59]

There a lot of watch snobs out there. If you don't at least have one Rolex, you are a [insert denigrating epithet]. I buy watches like wine or cigars ... i buy what i like and i know I will enjoy without much consideration for price or prestige. While I have a lot of respect for brands like Montblanc and Tag Heuer, I'd be afraid that while they can style a damn attractive timepiece, they aren't the best with the tech side of things.

 

[Deleted User]

There a lot of watch snobs out there

And the real purists shun electronic technology completely. Has to be mechanical.

 

[lunatic59]

And the real purists shun electronic technology completely. Has to be mechanical.

I hope they all trade in their PC's for one of these ...

 

[NightAngel79]

There a lot of watch snobs out there. If you don't at least have one Rolex, you are a [insert denigrating epithet]. I buy watches like wine or cigars ... i buy what i like and i know I will enjoy without much consideration for price or prestige. While I have a lot of respect for brands like Montblanc and Tag Heuer, I'd be afraid that while they can style a damn attractive timepiece, they aren't the best with the tech side of things.

A fair point. I was skeptical of 'watch makers' getting into smartwatches, until I saw them. I realized that the software is the same no matter what, I might as well have something that looks amazing and stylish (for me, lol).
Sure the software needs to improve, but I love the looks of the Fossil. I'll pass on the $1000 stuff until I'm independently wealthy, then perhaps get a Rolex, haha

 

[olbriar]

I don't fault @The_Chief for purchasing a watch that he really likes. I would do the same but I'm notorious for breaking wearables in my rough lifestyle. It's much better to toss something cheap than something high end. I would want whatever I purchased to function properly, however. I can't imagine the level of frustration if my high end purchase failed to perform.

I've never experienced a problem with my S3. Can smartwatches be rebooted or FR to clear problems? An app or something running wild has to be the culprit on his watch. It surely wasn't designed to consume that much battery in such a short span of time.

 

[codesplice]

Every Wear OS watch is pretty much the same on the inside. A $150 smartwatch and a $1500 smartwatch aren't differentiated by the quality and precision of their movements (or, really, their battery life). The only real differentiation is in the design and build quality of the shell - and I've got to say, the shell of the Summit 2 does look sharp as hell to me. A lot of smartwatches can look and feel like toys, while the premium ones are all business.

They do the same things for the most part, but I totally get paying premium dollars for a premium look and feel if that's what you're into.

@The_Chief that all being said, (1) you should be getting well more than 6 hours of battery life and (2) Wear OS makes it pretty difficult to diagnose battery drain sometimes. Are you using any third-party watch faces? I've found that those often absolutely annihilate my battery.

 

[The_Chief]

@The_Chief that all being said, (1) you should be getting well more than 6 hours of battery life and (2) Wear OS makes it pretty difficult to diagnose battery drain sometimes. Are you using any third-party watch faces? I've found that those often absolutely annihilate my battery.

I never had an issue with this third-party watch face (Black Metal HD) on my Huatch 2 Classic. I could easily make it to bedtime with everything turned on. I'm pretty convinced that the battery life issue is that Wear OS is not yet optimized for the Qualcomm 3100 chip, and it's drawing power trying to figure out what Wear OS wants it to do. I hope that Google is getting enough feedback about it that they're working to optimize Wear OS for this processor. If not, Bloomingdale's offers an eye-popping ONE YEAR return window. Plenty of time for Google to get this right.

Meanwhile, the new build for Wear OS has a new feature ready to go: in fact, it has already rolled out to some users. It's a server side feature, so Google need only flip a switch for this feature to open up. It's Tiles, sort of widgets for the watch. A swipe left reveals Google Fit... another swipe left will reveal up to 6 Tiles with easy access to important information. So we need to stay up to date on the latest Wear OS version, and keep trying to swipe left and left. It will just show up one day.

NOW - I know it's a $1000 watch. Yep. But it's what I wanted. I sold some stuff to get the money, so I didn't borrow a dime to buy it. I love this watch: I love how it looks, how it feels, how responsive the controls are. The battery issue is not a fault of Montblanc's, I'm sure, so they've done everything right. If it's too expensive for you, don't buy it. I like it, so I'll brush off any criticism about why I would spend so much on a smartwatch. It's really okay to have nice things, as long as nice things aren't the end-all of one's ambitions. I'm not a status seeker or socialite, but at his point in my life I like nice, comfortable stuff. And I don't mind spending extra to get what I want.

 

[mikedt]

With me, it's just the mention of the name "Montblanc" puts me in mind of nouveau riche. Along with other designer brands like Bulgari, Gucci, Prada, etc. and Vertu phones. Could be I've seen too many upscale malls and airport duty frees...and all the knock-offs of course.

 

[lunatic59]

the name "Montblanc" puts me in mind of nouveau riche.

Really? It makes me think of the pens used by Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, JFK, Churchill, just to name a few. The fact that they've branched out to other luxury products doesn't really surprise me, although I'm not sure I associate the brand with watches. I did a little checking and discovered that Montblanc is part of the Richmond Group now, a Swiss holding company that owns more renowned Watchmaking brands like Cartier and Baume & Mercier.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

But @lunatic59 the first thing to come to mind is pens. How do you get from pens to watches? Same mass?
To be truthful though I've never used a Montblanc pen: so...