Is there a standard for what "all-day" means? I think most would initially assume 24 hours, but thinking about it more, it seems reasonable to consider "can work from wake up to sleep" or "can work from sunup to sundown"/
I think all day depends on the specific device. For example, I would accept a 10 hr battery life for a laptop or wireless headphones as "all-day" because that will cover a full work day and people aren't expected to use those devices 24/7. 18 hours for "all-day" on a wearable seems reasonable if the expectation is that it will be used only when the user is awake. A complicating factor is that Watch OS 6 is supposed to include sleep tracking. Making that functionality native would seem to recommend wearing the watch 24/7 in a way that wasn't encouraged when that was handled by 3rd party apps. In my opinion, that changes the definition of "all-day" for this device.
EDIT: I am just catching up on all the announcements, while it was expected in the lead up to today[1] there was no talk of native sleep tracking during the event. I wonder if it will be rolled out quietly so Apple could have plausible deniability on 24/7 usage being "recommended" or if they decided to completely scrap it due to battery performance issues.
> Making that functionality native would seem to recommend wearing the watch 24/7
Exactly! At this point, my expectation is that I would wear the watch at all times except when I shower in the morning, and that is when I would charge it. But it won't charge that quickly. :(
Which means I either have to give up sleep tracking or activity tracking to charge it.
It sounds like they need to make it so that the bands can store energy so that I can charge one band and wear one band and then switch them each day.
Long time Apple Watch owner, currently using the Series 4 - charging while in the shower is exactly how I charge my watch. It has never run out using this way.
Shower takes 5m, shaving in shower +3m, dressing an additional 5m. Add in breakfast and/or coffee and you’re looking at close to 30m - grab watch on the way out - my series4 is usually fully charged.
Same here. I sleep with the watch on and charge it while I shower/get dressed. I usually get a full charge during that time and, most times, the watch lasts way more than 18 hours.
I also charge it while doing my morning routine, though that includes making lunches, some coffee, showering, etc. It can easily last through to the next morning, though occasionally I charge for a bit in the evening just to make the number look better.
I imagine as the battery fades this might be less workable though.
Nah, it's fine. I charge my Apple Watch for 15m before bed (to make sure it'll last the night) and while I get ready in the morning, and that's all it needs to stay on my wrist literally the rest of my life without ever coming close to running out of power.
FWIW, I’ve been using an Apple Watch for a few years now including nights. I just charge it while I shower/get ready/prepare breakfast (~45 min) which seems to be enough to last till the next morning. Not sure what the battery life on the new ones will be though.
While sleep tracking is possible the single most useful thing I could get out of a wearable, I just have never been able to sleep with a watch or band on. Until there's something as low profile as a reminder band (think Livestrong), I'm not sure if I'll be able to get sleep tracking (the Oura ring is promising, but the price point is too high for its limited applications to me).
Interesting, I don't mind sleeping with a watch band on and there are a few 3rd party sleep tracking apps for the apple watch already that are decent.
My biggest complaint is there's no way to disable the screen that's good enough for sleeping. In theater mode it still wakes up if you tap the glass and I accidentally bump it way too often when lying in bed. I really want a better night time mode where only pressing the crown will light up the screen. If they do add an officially supported sleep tracker I hope they'd run into this issue and fix it.
Oura ring is a wonderful sleep tracker. While certainly a tad pricey, its incredibly effective at its given purpose. I didn't realize 1) how much quality sleep impacted my overall health and 2) how consistently quantifying sleep quality impacts daily decisions (working out, drinking, eating, etc). Highly recommended.
When you wake up exhausted (or not) you can see what/when contributed to that.
I used such for a couple years. Best part was specifying what time range I wanted to wake up, and it would watch for the best actual time to wake me. Much happier mornings then.
I gave my old watch to my girlfriend and having her use it for sleep tracking has been super helpful in tackling her sleep issues. Once she saw her numbers for deep sleep every night, it kind of kicked her into action to address the root cause. Sometimes just quantifying something is really helpful. It's also been somewhat useful in comparing the various approaches (prescriptions, marijuana, vitamins, exercise, etc etc), because sometimes it's hard to judge how good of sleep you got one night if you're constantly getting terrible sleep every other night.
There is few literature on the effect of marijuana on sleep. It mostly looks like it decrease your REM sleep while increasing your deep sleep when you take any of it (the process inverse when you stop).
Actually, any open data or even feedback would be of help.
I didn't realize Beddit kept going after they were acquired by Apple. I had the first couple versions as review units but I ended up just stopping using them because they didn't tell me anything I basically didn't already know. Which is sort of how I feel about sleep tracking generally. I didn't get enough sleep last night? You don't say.
(I do think they're potentially useful for someone who feels tired a lot and doesn't understand why. I'm less convinced by the value of ongoing tracking.)
The Beddit devices I tried ended up breaking due to either wireless communication issues or sensor damage. I gave up on it. I’m thinking if I end up with a spare Apple Watch for whatever reason that I’d use the old spare while sleeping.
I don’t see an option I don’t need to wear, unless I’m looking at the wrong thing.
I have the same issue as the original poster in that I find wearing something on my wrist while I sleep uncomfortable. The Beddit is a strip that goes under my sheets. So I guess that’s why not.
Have you looked at the Xiaomi Mi Bands? They do sleep tracking, are fairly low profile and easy to find on Amazon for under $30. I switched my mom over from a buggy Fitbit to one last year and it's been better in every way. Given the cost of most of its competitors, it kinda boggles my mind that I don't see more of them.
I don't like the privacy policy of the Xiaomi Mi Bands. But what I found out, is that there's an excellent firewall on Android called NetGuard, and it can block network traffic on a per-app basis. So I just block the Mi Fit app, and it doesn't seem to influence anything.
I've had the Amazfit Bip (a Xiaomi brand) watch for maybe a year and it's still doing around 40 days per charge with an always-on transflective screen, without notifications.
I have a Watch 4, and contrary to how battery expectations usually go, the life on it is actually really solid. I’ve gotten close to 2 days on it before. I often wear it overnight, then put it on charge when I first wake up, it’s usually close/if not fully charge by the time I head to work.
I don’t have hard stats to back this up, but with the new watchOS 6 it recently improved quite a bit for me, also on Watch Series 4. It’s particularly improved with workouts, though I would still love to have a feature that can “Undo” pausing a workout or vice versa, undo a workout that ran 20 hours longer than it was supposed to. Don’t get me wrong, great watch, great improvements, just... not perfect. Also, being able to track my activity between sleeping periods instead of only midnight to midnight would also be nice to have.
Same here with my Series 4 Apple Watch. I can push close to 2 days between charges, which I think is great. It was frustrating having to charge my Series 1 watch at odd times every day.
Given that sleep tracking is one of the prime uses of my Apple Watch, I prefer to have it on my wrist all night, and charge during the late mornings usually, at me desk when I am in the middle of a block of coding.
I personally think the sleep tracking is being held back while they validate it. They’re going to look to categorize your sleep phases, and will probably try to get FDA certification of some sort. The play is to make the watch a diagnostic device, cover a lot of the basics for healthcare providers. My guess is that sleep tracking lands next year.
>because that will cover a full work day and people aren't expected to use those devices 24/7
Just expand that for a bit.
For people doing Coding, that might have meant every second of it, for normal people on a computer, There will be likely be 20%- 50% of times you idling ( in computer terms ) or doing something else.
So it is not just 24/7, you just aren't really using the computer for every minutes every seconds.
>All-day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) usage includes connection to iPhone via Bluetooth during the entire 18-hour test. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection and 14 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in August 2019 using preproduction Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) and Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular), each paired with an iPhone; all devices tested with prerelease software. Battery life varies by use, configuration, cellular network, signal strength, and many other factors; actual results will vary.
But I just dug into the specs for my Series 3 and it's only advertised as "18+ hours" also, yet I get 23+ hours from it even after a year and a half of true "all day" use. I wear it for sleep tracking with the AutoSleep app. It's in its cradle 20 mins twice a day when I shower. So yay for conservative Apple specs?
Hopefully this means the Series 5 isn't actually a battery downgrade. If it is, then the Apple-approved sleep apps in their App Store may not get the love they have received with older Apple Watchen.
I have a Series 1. I don't sleep with it, it usually charges all night, but sometimes I wake up and find I forgot to place it on it's charger the previous night.
I can usually use it until 1 or 2 PM that day before it dies. That's a 29+ hour battery life.
I have a Series 0, and if I use it to track a bike ride, it won’t make it to bedtime. Maybe something about number of charge cycles and heaviness of use?
18 hours has been their standard "all day" battery life since Series 3 came out.
Here's the thing: My Series 3 easily lasts me 2 days without using it for things like exercise, bluetooth audio, etc. With exercise it lasts all day. I have never run out of power unless I didn't charge it the previous evening and had multiple exercise sessions on the same charge. This is way better than my Series 0 did.
So the 18 hours is really a lot more than 18 hours for most people.
My question now, is: Will my battery life really only be 18 hours with this always-on display?
I thought the same, but after I got one, I really haven't minded. To be fair, I've never been able to sleep with a watch on, so putting it on its charger has just reduced the likelihood I forget where I put it down in the morning.
Never used Apple Watch, my GF had v3 for a long time. I ordered a Withings sport a while back and when she saw that it tracks pretty much the same stuff, has notifications and doesn't need to be charged for 20+ days she got one in a week. I remember a couple of instances where she would forget to charge it and didn't have the charging cable with her - probably less of an issue with newer models and wireless charging, but anyway she said it was annoying to keep track of another battery.
People are saying "charge it during showers" - IMO that's just too much inconvenience for no benefit - I shower in the gym - do I go and charge it then ? Or when I'm tired and want to go to bed - another thing I can easily forget. I like the idea of a smartwatch - would be nice to have a better screen and more rich interface than my Withings - but sub 3-4 days battery is a no-go for me. I've seen some smartwatches that fit that criteria tho - so will need to do some shopping around and see the tradeoffs
I sleep with it on (sleep tracking app) and use it all day -- I charge it for about 15 minutes twice a day while I shower in the morning and as I get ready for bed only.
I got a Fitbit for this reason but I've been incredibly dissatisfied with the quality. I'm now on my 3rd device in ~6 months. First one stopped taking a charge, second the screen went out. Hopefully the 3rd time is the charm
My wife and I have had the same bad luck with most wearables. I went through 3 MS bands, she went through 2 fitbits and all of them physically broke.
I had a Motorola Android Wear and Polar M600, both of which degraded to less than 24 hours of battery life after less than a year of ownership of each.
I have a Garmin 645M, which I've had since launch, and it still works fine and has days of battery life, even when doing morning runs listening to spotify from the watch. I finally convinced my wife to try a Garmin 245, and she hasn't destroyed it yet.
I've had all 3 gens of FitBit and never had hardware issues. My gripes have all been on software (refusing to integrate with Apple Health, I don't like the new "sleep score", and I don't want a "premium" monthly payment). I did upgrade when the previous ones were no longer functional, but I had used them constantly for a few years each time.
However, I used to leave the charger plugged in my bathroom because I would charge it when I showered. I noticed the charging posts got crud on them and got smaller over time until my FitBit would no longer charge. Eventually, I started unplugging it except for when I was charging and that fixed my issue.
I had the same experience with multiple FitBit devices. Every single one of them had to be replaced, after only a few months, within the warranty period. The only device I ever owned that didn't need a warranty replacement was a FitBit Aria scale and that was a return/replace with the store after the first one was DOA.
Garmin or Suunto provide much better quality than Fitbit, Fitbit is a cheap quality. Garmin, Apple and Suunto aren't. Just check what the pros are using :)
I could certainly live with charging every 4 weeks. But isn't that more a "fitness tracker watch", rather than a "smartwatch"? When I think of smartwatches, I'm more thinking of ones running an Android or Apple OS, with apps available etc.
Have you tried the new Withings with ECG? I'm curious about that, this winter I'm going to switch to something new and it's basically between the Withings and the Apple Series 5
Considering how fast Apple Watch charges, a 7 day battery life isn’t that compelling considering how much you get from an Apple Watch compared to Fitbit.
If you need a watch that can make phone calls then the Fitbit is not a good watch choice. I personally don't like making any phone calls and if I have to, my phone is usually near by. But that's a very personal choice.
You pretty much throw it on the charger when you put down your wallet when getting home. I put it down when I get home, wear it to sleep, charge it again when I wake up and shower, then wear it all day. It's a few seconds added to my routine.
The problem for me is “putting it down when I get home” as I’m either still using it, or trying to do a workout. Inevitably if I’m not careful about battery life, it will die in the middle of said workouts. I’m honestly thinking I might get a second cheaper Watch just to keep motivated. I just wish there was broader support for fitness equipment compatibility, then maybe it could reduce battery life drain while tracking workouts...
Same. This is something I wouldn't have anticipated before buying the watch. Somehow, my habit formed around charging it when it needs charge rather than overnight.
My phone lasts more than a day of typical use on a charge ("Standby time: Up to 10 days"). When I'm using my laptop for anything more than an hour, it's easy (and not inconvenient) to find an outlet and plug in.
For a watch, 18 hours might not even cover a full work day.
That's my point though - I have enough devices to charge already. I'm also very used to charging my phone and laptop - I change my watch battery once every couple of years or so.
This is why I stopped wearing mine. You can have the coolest stand in the world on your nightstand that makes it super easy to plop onto every night, but having yet another device you have to mentally track the battery for just isn't worth it.
Meaning what? I can't even think of a single time where I actually had to think about what the battery level is and I only charge it while I'm in the shower in the morning.
Meaning literally ever worrying about finding yourself in a situation where your watch is dead. Or looking at the battery throughout the day and worrying about whether it'll make it through. Or worrying about bringing its charger on trips, etc.
If you enjoy your watch, that's cool and totally great. I stopped wearing mine and it was mentally freeing not having one extra device's battery to monitor throughout the day. Would definitely recommend.
It's great to hear your watch never dies on you, and you never have to worry about its battery. Surely you've worried about your phone, laptop, or headphones/earbuds batteries before -- if you want to sympathize, it's kind of like any of those. It adds to the list of devices you worry about. Subtracting from that list means less worries.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? If you never have to worry about the battery on the watch, what's the need to sympathize? You say "it adds to the list of devices [I] worry about" but I'm explicitly telling you that it doesn't add to that list because I don't have to worry about it.
Okay? I'm saying I worried about it. My watch died during the day sometimes because the battery only lasted about a day per charge. It also died whenever I forgot to charge it, and occasionally when I was out longer than expected (out late after work, etc).
I'm not claiming you worry about it or even that everyone else worries about it. I'm saying some people like myself worry about it, and not having to worry about it is nice. If you don't have to worry about it _and_ wear it, that's nice too.
I don't understand what you're trying to argue here, but I'm done with this thread.
Considering that you repeatedly used the phrase "you have to worry about it" or "list of devices that you worry about", I was arguing that your assertion isn't accurate. I don't worry about it, it doesn't add to the list of devices I have to worry about, and, based on the comments from others on these threads, it wouldn't be something you'd have to worry about either unless you intentionally didn't charge it at night. Worry implies that you're expecting it to die on you or that you have to monitor it throughout the day and we're telling you that's not the case.
I have the AW 4. I keep it on from wake, through my workout, and throughout the day until I go to bed then I just take it off and toss it on my charger.
I use it to roughly track calorie burn and movement throughout the day so I like to keep it on as much as possible. I don't track my sleep metrics except for time.
It goes on the charger when I go to bed at the same time, and right beside my phone. It works. The most tedious thing I do is change the band from my leather one to silicon that I wear during my time at the gym.
Depending on what you want the watch to be able to do, there are much better options.
The Garmin Fenix can last up to two weeks on a charge - I usually charge mine once a week, and with 5 workouts where I have chest band in use it's usually down to about 47% when I connect the charger. I mainly use it for the fitness tracking, but I have notifications enabled for text messages and other chat apps and the calendar.
Like these sibling comments, after owning one, I really don't mind. I waited until the 4th generation Fossil Explorist started to go on sale and got it for well under $200. I plug it in when I plug my phone in. About the only issue is that I ended up buying a $4 surge protector because I'm low on outlets near my bed.
Not all splitters are surge protectors, but most surge protectors are splitters (though single outlet surge protectors do exist). It is likely that when OP said "surge protector", they meant something like this: https://imgur.com/qHR9UFu
Yes. We often say "power strip" to better indicate that you plug in one end to get a strip of outlets to use. Ideally it's also a surge protector, so if something goes badly wrong, the things plugged in are protected.
I keep a charger on my desk at work and if I remember I top it up sometime in the afternoon, if not I charge it in the evening.
I do miss the week long battery from my Pebble Time, but having to charge it daily hasn't been a real problem. The main nuisance is needing to bring the proprietary charger when I travel for a couple days.
It’s an inductive puck thing that the watch aligns itself to with magnets, honestly a lot nicer than needing to plug and unplug a cable. Feels like it will last longer, and it’s much more reliable than Pebble’s spring loaded charging pins were.
Would be even better if it could charge on standard Qi pads, but no such luck. Maybe there’s something about the size of the coils, who knows?
Ah, OK, that does make a difference. I have a Plantronics headset that has a similar charging point, and it is great to be able to almost throw it onto the charger and just have it work.
But - the heatset also has a micro USB port built in, so if I don't have the charging point (or the charging case, which it also came with), I can just use a USB cable. This seems the best approach, IMO.
"Wake to Sleep" seems to be the generally accepted definition, i.e. you won't have to charge it during the day during normal usage. How long you're awake for can vary though, I've seen anything from 8 hours to 20 hours of battery life be referred to as "all day".
I hate it when marketers get to make up their own meaning of commonly used words, usually making them mean less than they ordinarily do. With "all-day" meaning anything between 6.5 (see parallel comment) and 20 hours, it's becoming a worthless and purposefully confusing term.
(Note if that a physical store advertises it's open "all day", you expect it to be open from 00:00 to 23:59.)
Well in this case you don't have to wonder what it means because they say exactly how long—18-hours.
Also, nobody says "open all day" in retail because retailers would be more explicit about the fact that they are open at night, thus you have 24 hour convenience stores, not "all day".
It’s no better or worse than the old “lifetime” warranty which varies from guarantor to guarantor. Oh, it means “service life,” oh it means “while original owner uses it”, etc. They are all bad. They should say what they mean and not hide behind their own definitions (which can change over time).
Clearly this means they don't intend Apple Watch to pick up sleep tracking though. My Fitbit needs to last a few days because there's only a couple chances I really take it off to charge.
I think it didn’t make the cut at the last minute. The code has been in the betas for a while and there have been a bunch of “rumor” articles about it. Usually when there are that many rumors they’ve been seeded by Apple PR.
Nope. I will keep using my Pebble. Whilst it still works.
I just can't get past the 18ish hours battery.
I know when I possible eventually actually own and use an Apple Watch, I am sure some of the features trigger the "once you go x you can't go back" type thing, but until then, nope.
Though my Pebble is, unfortunately, starting to creak a little, some notifications are not always shown etc, so a Fitbit may be more likely upgrade. They at least have 5 days battery.
I don't know what I'll do after my Pebble Time Steel dies (hopefully a few years from now). It's so un-intrusive and I want E-ink (reflective LCD) screens on everything.
I even wrote a little JS app for it to pull down transit in real time - I know Apple Watches have Citymapper etc but there's something about being able to hack it on the fly.
I'm honestly not even sure where they're getting 18-ish hours for the battery life. My Series 3 watch still gets me 30+ hours on a single charge and I only charge it when I'm in the shower/putting my clothes on.
Though I have to admit my helicopter-parent side is considering an Xplora for my kids. If it gets better battery life (2-5 days currently). An Apple Watch is out of the question.
FWIW, my Series 2 still gets me 2-3 days based on my usage. The main feature I use is the heart/sleep monitor at night, and then sporadically throughout the day (weather and time, usually). I disable all notifications besides navigation.
Yeah same thing for me. The battery time is the deal breaker.
I use my Xiaomi Mi Band with about 10 days battery time even when using sleep tracker and heart rate tracker every minute 24/7. It costs less then 10% of the Apple Watch as well.
Same with me. Even though I'm iOS dev and own apple watch I use it only for development. My Mi Band 3 last round 20 days on single charge which is great. I just wish app had better UNICODE character support
I'm wearing a Fitbit Versa (whose lineage is from Pebble) and as bad as I want to go back to WearOS or jump ship from phone platforms and get an Apple Watch, you can't beat 5 days of battery life.
For what its worth, my Apple Watch S3 has "up to 18 hours of battery life" and I wear it all day and all night, usually only taking it off to charge while i get ready in the morning. (30 minutes to an hour?)
Some days I do briefly end up charging it again in the evening for a while. Some days I don't let it charge enough in the morning (sleeping in, or leaving early) and then end up with not enough battery to make it through the night.
I'm curious if you can disable the always on screen for longer battery on the new watch, or how much of a difference that would even make. I don't mind the screen turning off when im not using it.
Honestly, all I want is something that I can put on charge once during the day, for 30 minutes while showering, and have it last until the following nights shower. I want it to track sleep, and monitor health. That's it at least. My Fitbit Versa works perfectly for this, and hey, it has a bonus that if I forget to charge it one night or over a weekend, it still lasts! No interrupted heartrate monitoring or sleep tracking.
I was really hoping Apple would step up their Apple Watch game this year, with a longer battery and native sleep tracking -- that's all I want. Personally, I don't really care about being able to answer calls from a watch when I have my phone on me 24/7. Time to wait another year I guess and keep using my Versa :-)
I do this with my Apple Watch S3 and it works just fine. Maybe a bit more than 30 minutes in the morning? I don’t keep track. I leave it off for shower and breakfast.
Granted, there’s no native sleep tracking (yet?) but there are some 3rd party apps.
That's what I used to do with my Pebbles. I recently tried an Android Wear watch (TicWatch C2) for a few months, and it failed to live up to my expectations for battery life. I'm now using a Fitbit Ionic, and it fits the bill quite nicely.
I know this is a completely different class of device, but even though my FitBit can last a few days without recharge, the more important thing is that it can get a full day's charge while I'm in the shower.
A 24 or 36 hr battery that recharges during a 15m shower I imagine would work for most people.
There are a lot of people who sleep with Apple watches already, since there are a handful of 3rd party sleep tracking apps. Plus, the silent alarm that taps on your wrist is really nice. You don't need to charge it for that long, 15-20 minutes before bed and in the morning is plenty.
You need a 3rd party app. I use SleepWatch, Sleep++ and AutoSleep. Since they all use the HealthKit you can use multiple apps for different visualizations.
I retired my previous fitness watch (Polar M600) when its battery life got to be this bad.
I moved on to a Garmin 645M with almost a week of battery life. It is nice to be able to travel for a week on business and not worry about carrying a charger. The display is clear and always on.. It plays Spotify so I can run without my phone.
I recently got a Garmin Forerunner, 5 day battery life.
Hasn't died on me yet, only charge it 2-3 times a week while in the shower and get dressed, 20 mins top.
Only gives me call and messaging notifications which I prefer, previously had a motorola smart watch, more apps is not the way forward.
My Apple Watch ( Series 1 ) is still alive and working quite well. It lasts for 8-9 hours if I don't use the heart rate monitor, while doing sports. I think at this point I could say that my Apple Watch is not "all-day" battery life.
I use an Apple Watch series 3 near the coast in Ecuador (30 degrees celsius year round).
Battery has been fine for me. I wear it at night for sleep tracking, and charge it when I shower. Even on days when I shower once, I usually manage to get through the day without issue.
My series 0 worked great until the glue came off of the screen last week. Screen flapped open, caught on my backpack, and ripped the connector cables clean in half. No indication of problems until catastrophic failure, and I took great care of the thing. Bummed.
This happened to my Series 0 last summer. Obviously, it was out of warranty by over 2 years.
I took it to the Apple Store. They gave me a brand-new stainless steel Series 0. Apparently the battery swells sometimes, in the older watches, after a lot of use, and pops off the screen.
That's what I call customer service. That's the experience I get over, and over, and over again, from Apple. That's why I keep coming back.
Yeah mine's been off the charger for about eight hours today and I'm only down to 70%. You'd think a launch-day Series 0 would be suffering more battery degradation by now.
Every sane person would assume that but because they were unable to meet the "all-day" target, they kept it as a marketing phrase and added the actual life time.
I don't think there's a standard per se. But I'd like to mention that Apple use to undersell battery life (for once!) and the Apple Watch is known to quite easily last more than 24 hours.
You forgot to mention that in 2019 you are wearing on your wrist what in 1980 would be considered a super computer and occupying several shelves worth of space.
Edit: Some info that I found online. According to this article from 2015 [1 ]the apple watch is equivalent to two iPhone4s (Not sure I believe that but if true incredible).
Also this quote:
"Meanwhile, the Cray-2 supercomputer from 1985, which is the fastest machine in the world for its time, is now only equal to an iPhone 4."
Another quote :
"The Apple Watch performs about 7 billion FLOPS"
According to wikipedia [2]:
"The Cray-2 released in 1985 was a 4 processor liquid cooled computer totally immersed in a tank of Fluorinert, which bubbled as it operated.[8] It could perform to 1.9 gigaflops and was the world's second fastest supercomputer after M-13"
So assuming that all of the information is correct then it is indeed true that the Apple watch from today is many times more powerful than a super computer from the 1980s.
Also decodes and plays audio, takes ECGs, monitors movement and sleeping patterns in real-time, communicates with people on the other side of the planet using a high-bandwidth global communications network, and receives and decodes positioning signals sent from space.
I don't really care if it costs $1, it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
> it's still ridiculous that people today strap two supercomputers to their wrist so their wife on a business trip in Beijing can tell them over live high-def video to feed the cat.
Or so a person in Hong Kong can say I love you to their grandmother about to pass away in a hospital.
They've also had these weird devices called 'telephones' for a while now, seems you can accomplish a similar feat. (Also, do people really need to say goodbye to their loved ones randomly in the middle of the day on their watch?)
Not necessairly. My point was that he/she was using an example that painted the Watch/Modern Phones in a bad light, while you can find examples that paint them in a good light as well.
Also, Telephones do not have nearly the same connection that video calls create. I call my younger sister, who is around 9ish, in a different country twice a day, and she regularly asks me to video her because she wants to give me kisses and wants to see me. That is possible in a normal voice call as well but its not nearly as connecting and personable as video calls are.
Unlike the Samsung Watch which will do several days with always on display, GPS enabled. But congratulations to Apple for finally making their watches usable as, well, a watch.
Coming from a number of Pebbles, when the last one died it was a requirement for me by then that a smart watch should be able to always display the time.
Call me old fashioned if you must. I disabled gesture based display on (with night mode turning it off when asleep) as the first thing when I got the S3 Frontier, then sold it / upgraded to Watch later for improved battery life. It does at least 50% better and is faster as well.
Garmin watches also do well for displaying time, even better in fact, but they are a fair bit more expensive.
Only reason I don’t have an Apple Watch is because you can’t stream Spotify over cellular, you need to have your phone with you. What’s the point? I want to go for a run and stream music with just the watch to my Bluetooth headphones. I don’t need the watch if I have to bring my phone with me.
To be fair, though, that's 100% Spotify's fault. I remember when there was a watch app for Spotify and Spotify bought out the company and removed the app from the App Store. Now, they refuse to release a new app because of their little dispute with Apple regarding purchases. Makes me hate Spotify because it only adds to the list of really silly things they've done that spites customers but might make them a few dollars in the long run.
There are no 3rd party apps that can stream over the cell connection or Wifi on the Apple Watch. Pandora, Tunein etc. Some can do offline. Pretty sure Apple only allows their apps to use the cell connection for streaming because thats an Apple thing to do.
That's not true. Spotify purchased an app that did just this by buffering into playlists that updated while they downloaded and then they promptly killed the app. WatchOS 6 also includes the ability for third parties to stream directly and Spotify has publicly said that they refuse to use this until Apple changes their App Store policies.
It's completely do-able and Spotify has the capability to do it, now and in the recent past.
I can stream Spotify offline on my Garmin watch. It’s a game-changer going back to the days of bringing nothing but my watch (and Bluetooth headphones) with me to runs and the gym. Battery life is also several times longer than any Apple Watch generation and the sensors much more accurate and versatile. They claim 2 weeks in smartwatch mode for the Forerunner 945.
But a lot of times the decision to buy a watch is fashion-driven rather than utility-driven, and depending on what city you live in, either high-tech fitness watches are everywhere, or anything other than an Apple Watch gets you a dirty look.
I borrowed a friends Garmin Forerunner for a 2 week MTB trip to NZ, it was certainly capable, but horrific all uncomfortable and I had a small scar for a while where it had dug into the back of my hand.
Have you tried recent devices? Garmin used to have a bump on some forerunners, my wife had it, it was very uncomfortable. I personally have the Vivoactive 3, which is flat, I've been wearing it 24/7 except for charging (during the day, so i've slept with it), and it's very comfortable.
It isn't perfect, but the Mighty (bemighty.com) is basically an iPod Shuffle that you can download Spotify offline playlists to. It filled that niche for me.
You can stream Apple Music over WiFi/cellular without the phone. Not sure if that will include Spotify at some point but I do know the new watchOS has opened up a lot of those APIs.
Apple Music is a disaster when it comes to music discovery, and frankly their app is very much behind compared to Spotify. Even on iOS it feels like a web app, something I didn’t think I’d ever say about Apple’s own, built-in app.
I feel strongly opposite - Spotify UI is a reason why I cancelled subscription. Queue management is just awful, other elements are much less intuitive than in Apple Music.
Even just navigating to an album or browsing songs saved on your device are awful. Everything I want to do in their app requires far too many clicks or endless scrolling through a list that's only sorted alphabetically, and the pages are stuffed with features that push their algorithmic promotions. You're not gonna have a good time unless you're the most mindless, passive consumer and you don't want to bother with managing your library or making any choices of your own.
Saving songs is spotty too, some of the "saved" songs on my phone don't actually have the data and won't play when I'm offline. I can't figure out how to force them to redownload short of maybe uninstalling the app, so sucks to be me I guess.
Spotify's mobile app is so bad that I'm constantly reconsidering my subscription. I'd go so far as to say that being able to explore new artists and save their discography for later when I'm commuting is a meaningful improvement to my quality of life, but Spotify has managed to make the experience so shitty that I usually just turn on the radio instead.
Seems like you two use the apps in different ways. Spotify is acceptable for picking a couple songs and discovering similar music, but sucks at just queuing up the music you already know about. I prefer Pandora for discovery, but it sucks at connecting to external devices. Since device integration is my most important feature, I settle for Spotify's discovery.
It's the opposite for me.
Spotify kept repeating a small collection of recommended songs to me, until I react to the song by stating whether I like or dislike the song. It takes active effort from me which is bothering.
Apple Music's recommendations on the other hand updates every week. And the recommendations have been quite good.
Yes, Apple Music is just Spotify by Apple -- but, if you're outside of the USA, you might find less obscure music available. Regional restrictions here in NZ are frustrating.
The only reason I don't have an apple watch is because of the square tablet shape that screams "APPLE ON MY WRIST". They need to release something more low key if it's going to be visible on my body all the time.
There was a third party app called Apollo for the Apple Watch. It used the cellular or Wifi connection of the watch to stream directly from the Spotify API.
Spotify issued a cease and desist within days. I still have it installed on my phone and watch - it's a long way short of perfect (when it loses its connection it hangs and there's no easy way to reset it) - but it does work.
So it's not Apple stopping the release of this functionality.
No idea, the developer said he was told they were violating the terms of the Spotify API agreement by using non-standard hardware. The only thing I can think of is Spotify had/has one of their own lined up and haven't released it.
I assume this is all tied up with their campaign about unfair treatment on the App Store, but it still makes little sense to me. Apollo was written by a single developer in their spare time, it works (although not perfectly - still good given it's a 1.0 and they were working alone with no support) and has been released for almost a year.
I handle this with an elastic phone waist band (google flip belt for an example). I don't think about the phone at all and do everything from the watch
I really don’t want streaming on the watch to be seen as an acceptable solution by consumers.
If I can’t actually cache my raw media files onto the watch directly and play using any watch-only player app I want, then it’s unusable. Any solution that requires streaming or tethering is a total non-solution.
The general concept is, either it lasts for weeks or it lasts for one day, if it lasts for 3 days you'll forget to charge it, if it lasts for weeks it's okay if you forget, a small reminder can tell you to charge it enough for a day in a few minutes.
The trade off is insane in comparison, the Apple Watch is capable of a ton of things you just can't do in a longer battery-life product, things like phone calls, cellular connection, sharp graphics and quality voice replies. Meanwhile the garmin products have fantastic readability outdoors on their low res, low power transflective LCDs.
They simply are on a different roadmap and each roadmap has its own constraints.
I would almost prefer the daily charge over even weekly charging. My Kindle lasts for what seems like multiple weeks, and I have it run out of battery pretty much every cycle. Yet I almost never get anywhere near low battery on my smartphone.
My pebble watch gives me warnings when it has less than a days worth of charge. The only issue is I usually get the warnings when I am not at a charger. An improvement would be to only give the warnings when I am at home.
If it lasts for 3 days, that means I can hammer it with full brightness and cellular, and not have to worry about it not lasting a full day because the marketing speak doesn’t live up to my usage limits.
5th generation of the Apple Watch and it still doesn't come close to replacing my Pebble, unfortunately. At least it's closer to an actual watch now, with an always-on screen, but it still can't last 24 hours on a charge.
Does Pebble have a sim? The biggest benefit of apple watch for me is that I can take it anywhere without my phone, play sports, shopping, running, the sim card in the phone is the best thing that keeps me away from staring at my phone screen while I am going out.
It doesn't have a sim. The Pebble's purpose-in-life was to be a good watch first. It complements your phone with smart features like notifications, automatically setting the time on your watch based on your phone, and syncing your calendar to Pebble's timeline. It's not a phone replacement like you're looking for, so Apple Watch is a good fit for you.
Still, I found my Pebble greatly reduced the time I spent looking at my phone because I didn't need to take my phone out of my pocket upon receiving a notification or to check the next item on my calendar.
I don't have insider knowledge of their financials, but my impression is if they stayed lean and focused on their core product they'd have been a sustainable small company. Instead, they grew too big in typical VC-backed fashion and it wasn't sustainable.
They spent a lot on R&D and bet the company on kickstarters. Their direction also constrained them to Garmin-like products rather than heading off Android Wear or Apple watch (even fitbit can't compete after buying their guts)
I mentioned this in another comment, but I see battery life as solved for most people. I wear my watch all day and all night with a third party sleep tracking app. I then charge it in the morning while I shower and get dressed. That is always sufficient to keep my battery charged for 23.5/7 usage.
I had two Pebbles and the first thing that went wrong with them was the battery. If I didn't charge it every night it would die in the middle of the day.
I'm curious, does anyone with more knowledge know how Garmin are able to get so much more battery life out of their watches? Their official spec definitely lists "2 weeks" in "Smartwatch Mode" (which seems to be GPS disabled, but still heart rate tracking and similar).
It is impressive and I'm curious why Apple cannot compete.
> I'm curious, does anyone with more knowledge know how Garmin are able to get so much more battery life out of their watches?
Yes, I can.
I have a Garmin 5 Plus and the reason it can get such great battery life is it's ####ing massive, with most of the volume devoted to battery. It also doesn't do a bunch of the stuff that the Apple Watch does, with all wireless connectivity requiring Bluetooth sync to your phone.
It's fairly rugged and a decent enough watch but, unless you're outdoors all the time, I wouldn't recommend it: it's bulky and somewhat ugly. I've stopped wearing it because I didn't find it that motivating in terms of keeping fit: ironically I did better before I got it, and am doing better again now I've stopped wearing it.
Also, that battery life tanks the moment you switch on GPS: then you'll be down to about 24 hours.
Overall I'd describe Garmin smartwatches as highly overrated.
I could also never get my Fenix 5 to give me acceptably accurate distances on twisty mountain trails. And, as you say, even as a big guy it’s just too bulky a watch to wear day to day. Maybe I’ll get another someday but my tracking needs are mostly just hiking distances and the Apple Watch eorks for that plus being nice as a day to day watch.
I have a Garmin FR645 "smart" watch. It lasts two weeks between charges if I don't use GPS a lot; if I run 5 times in the week (w/ GPS on) it'll go most of a week between charges.
But, it doesn't have much of an app ecosystem. Just a few widget-type things. Notifications are basic, and mostly unidirectional. The screen is nowhere near as nice as an Apple Watch. And no cellular.
But, for basic smart things - GPS, simple notifications, and telling time - it's excellent. And costs less than the Apple.
Until Apple can make their watch last most of a week, I'll stick with slightly dumber smart watches that I don't have to think about too much.
Another difference is the CPU, which is really bad on 645 (and all the others). If you play music from it it dries up the battery pretty fast. It goes nowhere near 2 weeks, as you say, for me at least. I’m keeping all the features active, though (bluetooth, gps, glonass, garmin pod, heart rate monitor).
Feature wise I honestly think that Garmin makes better sport watches, while Apple does better smart watches.
Probably at least part of it is that, at least the Garmin Fenix watches are pretty big. The newly-announced Fenix 6 apparently slims down a bit but they're still basically big hunks on your wrist. Personally I don't really mind but big difference from an Apple Watch.
Also, I haven't looked recently because I ultimately found my Fenix 5 wholly unsatisfactory for hiking distance tracking with GPS but the watch with GPS only lasted for about a day. (Which is what I basically care about for a smart watch.)
My Garmin Forerunner is about the size of the larger Apple Watch. While it only lasts 3-6 hours with GPS/HRM/Bluetooth on, it goes for at least 3 weeks on standby, which is what I want from my watch.
I have the Fenix 5x Plus. I effin love this watch. 100m water proof. Weeks without charging. Easy to read, always on display. Sapphire screen. Tons of fitness metrics (even more on the 6). And as far as size. I love the look. I bought a watch. Not a mini phone that is missing functionality. Garmin Pay. Wireless music. Takes calls. Up to 72 hours of GPS. 72 f-cking hours of gps. Not 18 hours of normal use. That is GPS.
I worked on a smart watch team. Turns out writing a simple while loop and a simple task model, cooperative scheduling, let us sleep our processor more often. It was also very light weight in terms of memory. Basically not having the burden of traditional heavy weight OSes really helped get good battery life.
It is the screen, and the discipline. I read a review that said they don't allow 3rd party watch faces that update every second, for example.
Garmin just introduced a watch with an AMOLED touchscreen, the Venu. According to the reviews I've read, it is basically the same watch as the Vivoctive 4. The Venu gets 2 days of battery life, the Vivoactive 4 gets 7.
I think it’s more that Apple prefers a powerful OS on a slim devices over long battery life.
Even if they don’t already have a lot of excellent embedded hardware folks, which I doubt, I don’t think they would have trouble hiring them, if they wanted to.
I charge my Apple Watch 4+lte every 2 days. I use them on bicycle (workout app + music over bluetooth, around 2-3 hours) and take them off before I go into the bed. 35% charge is enough for one day.
While I am looking to upgrade to the Series 5 from a Series 1, I'm disappointed in the lack of native sleep tracking functionality... it's a glaring hole in the concept of overall health tracking.
Similarly, I'd hoped they would announce some standardization to weightlifting in HealthKit. The watch and iphone health options are very cardio-centric, and every weightlifting app has implemented their own internal 1RM tracking which should be at an OS-level instead.
I used Autosleep for a bit. I reached out to their support on some things I considered bugs / wanting to have a hybrid mode where I can sleep without it on, but also work without it on (I work in an area I can't wear my watch - and you already input a time window when you sleep). Autosleep assumes I'm sleeping during work. This broke AutoSleep's usage for me unless I wore my watch while sleeping. While that's fine, I'm sure it's a pretty unique problem I have, their support was condescending and rude. It was the standard first you don't know what you're talking about, here's how to run our app to the "why would you want to do that?" mentality. I won't use their products again, not that they care.
You turn off the wireless and screen activation at night, it hardly uses any power. It takes about 20 minutes (aka your get dressed & shower time) to recover all that power and more.
I think most probably do, but in my opinion the optimal way to use this watch is to wear all day and night and charge in the morning while you get ready. I've been doing that for 2 years with my Series 3 and I have never run out of battery.
I have a friend that does this. I think that this may conflict with Apple's goals around wearables, though. I suspect the company aims to determine life schedules and provide useful prompts through key portions of the day. Morning prep being one of them.
The watch needs to charge without taking it off the wrist--for example from using an Apple laptop or keyboard.
You can charge the watch fairly quickly; less than 1-2hrs. If you sleep with your watch overnight, I've seen it drain anywhere from 4% to 10%. I think it depends on the notifications, etc. I usually turn my device on theater mode and DND when I sleep.
According to another comment watchos 6 actually will have sleep tracking.
I tried different 3rd party sleep tracking apps, but it was so inaccurate that it was basically useless. I assumed that this is reason that they didn't have it.
They don't seem to be designed to wear while sleeping. It's really too big for that purpose. Also, battery life is just not enough for 24hr wearing. This is precisely why I got FitBit.
Perhaps it's naive of me to think that Apple will ever detach the Watch from the Phone and allow set up and full use cases for users who don't have an iPhone. I'd definitely buy a cellular enabled Apple Watch and ditch my phone if possible.
This is exactly why I purchased the Apple Watch. I leave my phone at home more often than not. The Watch does just basic comms and I've removed notifications of everything else. It's the essential communication/navigation device that I need and all I really want. For anything else I'd much rather open my laptop. Hoping one day it can be a standalone device.
With all the watchOS 6 stuff that makes it more independent (App Store on watch, iPhone-less apps, etc), I was thinking this might be the year. Oh well, bet it happens next year.
One could argue that the iPad is intended to do the same thing to the MacBook line. Obviously the iPhone is a bigger driver of Apple's business, which changes the circumstances somewhat.
I think this depends on whether other manufacturers go that route. Apple would rather have their own Watch cannibalize iPhone sales than some Android Wear gadget.
It looks like their long term strategy, i.e. put smartphone functionality into a watch, put tablet functionality into a phone, put laptop functionality into a tablet.
You can specifically only order an Uber X, so, it wasn't worth it for me. I tried building my own app to do it, bit at the end of the day the cellular reception just wasn't good enough for daily use.
I'm currently using a palm companion, and seeing if I can use it for most of my daily tasks.
I'd like it to be a primary device where you can also use it with an iPod Touch optionally for just rare moments when you want to either take a decent photo or interact with a screen.
For this to work well for me personally, though, I think Siri needs to be better.
My only Apple device is an iPad. If I could use the Apple Watch with the iPad I might do that! My health insurance company (Aetna) will pay for $150 of it.
Apple has tremendous incentive to make the watch fully independent: once that happens, it's not hard to imagine fully independent glasses are far behind.
I think the watch + AR glasses/contacts will be what they move to. The same way the watch is now tied to a phone, the AR glasses will be tied to a watch.
I wonder how compact AR glasses can get, near term. My wife and I just gave our Oculus Go to our grandson and bought an Oculus Quest which is portable, has a sort-of AR ability because of external lowers video cameras, and is comfortable. But, the Quest is a long ways away from glasses.
A little off topic, but I worked in VR in the mid 1990s for SAIC, and Angel Studios/Disney. I am so very happy to see inexpensive consumer VR rigs like the Quest. Some of the media produced for the Quest is very good, Vader Immortal being my favorite entertainment ever.
This is probably off topic for the S5 release, but I keep sort of hoping for a smartwatch I don't have to wear as a watch.
Because I wear a nice watch already. It only tells the time, but it's also jewelry. A lot of us still want a mechanical watch on our wrists.
So where does that leave us if we also want what the Apple Watch offers, but aren't willing to displace our nice analog timepieces?
Sure, I could make an Apple PocketWatch (and it's tempting, since iPhone is now available only in "big" or "huge") but one of the most interesting things is the sensors on your skin and vibration as notification.
Maybe you could wear it on your ankle like a convict under house arrest?
That's what I was thinking of for a PocketWatch more or less. Take off the straps, somehow attach a chain to the spring bars or whatever the Apple Watch uses.
Probably needs more fashion-hacking than that, but as the phone is more stand-alone capable... one day I'm sure it'll have some ride-share apps built in, and at that point it'd be enough for a night on the town, right?
I can't remember the name but when I was a kid, there was a children's book with a gorilla that sold stolen watches, always had a bunch of them on his arm. That look might work, and then I could have a Garmin too in case the battery dies on my Apple.
I do this; I also wear the Apple Watch on the inside of my right wrist instead of the outside, since that makes it FAR more usable for train fare gates and Apple Pay in general.
Whenever people ask about the two watches (and it has been EXTREMELY rare), I just point out how convenient it is.
Assuming you're being serious, this would look absolutely goofy as all hell (do you want to look like a goddamn kleptomaniac gorilla?), which is a dealbreaker for someone who wears watches as jewelry, i.e., someone who cares about watch aesthetics.
Completely with you. I used to wear a vivosmart® HR+ [1] next to my mechanical. With the vivosmart rotatet 180° to wear on the inside of the arm, it was an acceptable look. But I was not happy with garmins privacy policy, so I stopped wearing it.
Still looking for a replacement, ideally no display (even longer battery life, smaller), heart rate monitor, motion tracker and everything just pushed into iOS health app or a cloud-less app.
In the meantime I will give the Apple Watch a chance.
Sort of misses one of the biggest points of the Apple watch, it’s health features oriented around heart rate monitoring. I actually had no interest in this bauble until I realized it could seriously help me with my workouts.
In the somewhat-related space of fitness trackers, there are alternatives to watches: keyfobs, ankle bracelets, rings. You get heart rate, sleep tracking, alarm clocks; I don't know if any do notification buzzes as well.
I think companies will continue to explore this space because there's potential to find a big winner. But they're contending with the difficulty of miniaturisation on top of the challenge of usability.
p.s. an idea that just crossed my mind was a smartwatch in a pen. Sure, pens are too easy to lose, but it could do some interesting things with input.
I really wish Apple would make a standalone fitness tracker. (They'd rather upsell me a Watch, but, still...)
Just give me all of the Health-related aspects of the watch without anything else. It doesn't even have to have a display — I can view Health data on my phone. I LOVE my Watch but there are circumstances where a mechanical watch is the way to go.
Scrolling down there's the Nike and Hermes editions. Maybe this is a cultural difference between here (Frankfurt) and elsewhere - I fail to understand how one would willingly pay extra to advertise a brand. The way I see it is that Nike for example should pay ME to wear their branding.
And even then I wouldn't. I'm not a walking billboard.
Maybe this is a cultural difference between here (Frankfurt)
Considering all of the luxury retailers I've seen in Frankfurt, and all of the branded soccer jerseys I've seen so many people wearing in Frankfurt, and all of the non-generic everything I've seen in Frankfurt, I think it's disingenuous to frame this as a geographic issue.
Perhaps if you define your geography as whatever seat you currently occupy, your argument holds. But Frankfurt is hardly immune from the concept of conspicuous consumption.
The Nike band is nice because it is perforated, which is great for venting sweat during a workout. Otherwise, I haven't really noticed any "nike" branding on my Nike edition Apple watch. I'm not sure anyone would even know it by looking at me, there is no nike logo anywhere (wait, no that isn't true, there is a small logo....on the inside of the band where absolutely no one can see it).
I think there is a cultural split here in the US. I personally hate branding and logos but you also have a large group of people that go out of their way to buy things with huge logos. To each their own.
I can't speak for Germany, but in much of Eastern Europe the Adidas logo and 'three stripes' are almost a type of uniform that people are very keen to be seen in. To me, it seems wearing brands conspicuously is a reasonably global trait in many demographics (or in certain product categories.. who debadges their car?)
There's a large cultural difference here, and from my experience, Germany is the exact antithesis of American brand culture.
In America, among many groups of people, brands are social signaling on how important/wealthy you are. It only tapers off a bit at higher incomes (>1M+). Below that, it's rampant.
I don' t think that's the right income cutoff at all. In my experience the brand signaling occurs in the poor-lower-middle class regions, then stops from there all the way up to the new money but no taste crowd. Rap stars, etc. I don't know anyone in the HN/SoftwareDev income range who loves to show off brands, with occasionally some cars as maybe the exception.
Though I will say Nike shoes tend to be an exception across the board. Seems like everyone has a pair of those.
I don't think there's a demographic that doesn't brand signal aside from nomadic herders. Some demographics are into the whole subtlety thing, but definitely still signal. Brands signal wealth, but also taste, intelligence, class, and tribe.
For HN: Cars, Electronics, Universities, FAANG on your resume, consumer products that signal your care for the environment or concern for your health/fitness.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly. It's only certain groups (largely separated by income), but unless they're a celebrity, it seems to largely taper off at extreme levels of wealth, where brands become 'subtle' again.
These comments are kind of hilarious when the average software engineer’s wardrobe consists almost entirely of tech company t-shirts/hoodies with giant logos on them :D
The bands are sporty and differently designed. Apparently they match some of the most popular sportswear aesthetics Nike has.
But if you still want to frame it as "paying for advertising a brand" you could look into the ways that people use brands to say something about themselves. I recommend reading about the success of Starbucks, Ferrari, and Apple, especially the first 5 or so years of the iPod.
This happens in Frankfurt too. Adidas, Puma, and many more clothing companies in Germany are not cheap and display their brands prominently
The Nike version doesn't cost any extra - in fact it gives you extra watch faces and different band options (that are not visibly branded). Most years the Nike bands have been better than the reguar ones, and the Nike faces are nice if you like that sort of thing.
A perception of status. Someone I know was debating about buying an Hermes belt that had the H logo as the buckle. Looks incrediby tacky, but it sends a signal to others who are familiar with the brand.
Consider that wearing an Apple watch makes you a billboard for Apple. The Apple Watch and the distinct white ear pods are about as well-lit of an advertisement you can get!
Is what it is, but people treat the Apple logo and product as far more of an important status symbol than Nike.
I would go so far as to suggest that the Nike logo cheapens the "person billboard" that Apple turns customers into
It doesn't have enough battery life to last through the night if you've worn it all day. They probably intentionally don't have sleep tracking to avoid emphasizing that.
It probably does have enough battery life if my watch is any indicator. And if it doesn't a small change to your daily routine, such as charging your watch both at night while you prepare for bed as well as in the morning while you get ready for the day, will make getting through the day + night no problem. You get most of a charge in something like 30 minutes.
I don't understand why so many are saying that sleep tracking is a problem? My series 4 taking up 10-20% over night. Then I charge it for a bit in the morning before going to work.
Have people worked out how much various tasks and usage patterns affect battery life?
With a Series 4, I can get through the night. I suspect that a large part of that is that I keep "Wake Screen on Wrist Raise" off most of the time. Generally I only enable it when doing a workout (~30 minutes a day) and sometimes in the kitchen when using timers. Another factor is probably that I don't use it for much more than telling time, checking my activity level, checking weather, and reading the occasional text message.
If I charge to 99% or 100% during breakfast, I'm almost always above 60% at bedtime, and overnight with the Sleep++ app tracking uses under 20%.
SpO2 is probably what it would take to get me to replace my current Series 4. Everything shown today (what little there was) was a "nice to have", making it a "if you skipped an upgrade cycle or two" device to me. (For contrast, Series 3->Series 4 was a big enough jump to buy a new watch a year later.)
What do people do with data from their sleep trackers? I tracked my sleep for years with a Fitbit and now I track it with an Oura ring. I look at the results occasionally, but it has never provided any useful information.
If it tells you that you've been waking up a lot or that your oxygen level drops precipitously every minute or so, you go see a doctor.
There are people trying to "optimize" their sleep, of course, but the real benefit is getting a large chunk of the population to notice something is wrong.
The same with the ECG. A one lead ECG isn't much, but it means a lot when you give it without any hassle or additional cost to millions of people.
I use AutoSleep on Apple Watch 4. It is good at poking me after a few days of not sleeping enough with a message like: "You slept for 5:38 last night, and have a sleep debt of 12%". That's enough of a poke to get my sleep back on track.
I've also used it to experiment a bit with how drinking at night affects my sleep. (noticeably!). I could do that with just how I feel, but the hard data is easier to correlate later.
The Pillow [0] app does a great job of automatic sleep tracking using Apple Watch sensor data.
Edit: with my Series 4, I wear my watch all day, and charge it when I’m showering/getting ready in the morning and when I eat dinner/relax
in the evening—times when I don’t care to be hyper-connected to notifications, etc. anyway.
This allows me to wear the watch, essentially, 24 hours a day.
I would assume sleep tracking would never be a feature. You need to charge your Apple Watch every night, so that's off the limit. I use Fitbit Flex 2 to track my sleep and I wear them both during the day, however during the night only Flex 2 stays on one of my wrists.
Unfortunately Fitbit decided to discontinue the display-less flex 2 and now I'm a bit confused on what to do next.
Apple is rumoured to be working on sleep tracking. Of course it already exists by third parties: I use SleepWatch.
I thought the charging thing would be deadly for my use of it, but it is so much less of a thing than I imagined it would be. Firstly, sleep tracking uses surprisingly little battery. Often I'll see less than an 8% drop over night. Additionally I just drop it on the charger in the morning while doing my morning routines and that gets it quickly to 100%. Very occasionally I do a short burst in the evening.
I never thought it would be worth that sort of hassle, but it is a thousand fold. I send and receive messages from the watch. Answer calls. Look up things. Use the activity track. Use it to control media. It is my alarm clock. With the recent betas of 6.0 the usability has improved dramatically -- before all sorts of operations would yield "I can't do that" sorts of responses, whereas now I'm getting just brilliant results.
I was a naysayer of the thing (I strongly felt that if you couldn't go days without recharging it was a dud). The health features got me to give a shot, and I am a very strong believer now. It is an absolutely wonderful device.
Is it just me, or has the surge in popularity of smart watches also caused a surge in the popularity of regular watches too?
Speaking of myself, I bought a Pebble watch back in 2013 or so. I quickly realized I liked wearing a watch. Then I also realized I really only needed the time function. I then went from the Pebble to a Seiko mechanical. Now I have no smart watches and about ten different mechanical and quartz watches.
The main reasons I prefer conventional watches:
1) They come in a much wider array of styles
2) They don't run out of power on long flights and leave you without your time reference right when you need it the most
3) They are generally cheaper
4) Some of them, like my Casios, have great features that work offline, like a digital compass, thermometer, altimeter ... all powered by solar!
5) To me (and this is a matter of personal preference) they look better
6) There are a lot of closet wristwatch nerds lurking in tech companies. Once you start wearing a Seiko mechanical, for example, you will soon get comments from other undercover watch nerds. I actually enjoy this random camaraderie.
I like Withings watches, they last 30 days and have tracking I like (HR & Sleeping) but no fancy display or anything like that. Design is also much nicer than any other smart watches I've seen.
Could you share your experience with Withings ? I love their looks but I have wondered about the accuracy . I use my Fitbit Ionic mostly for tracking my daily calories burned. I was looking at Withings but I saws on message boards that it seemed to have having difficulty calculating calories. Is this still true?
As a frequent traveler the emergency calling feature in so many countries without needing to sign up for another service is pretty dang cool. I was in an apartment in Eastern Europe sleeping when the kitchen caught on fire, luckily I woke up from the crackling of the walls/roof and no alarms went off. Luckily I had memorized the local emergency number and had a local sim (I don't always if I'm not in a place long enough) and was able to call the emergency services but it could have easily gone the wrong way. Sometimes seconds count and you don't want to be googling a local emergency number
Or make them independent of the phone. It looks like iOS 13 takes some steps towards that independence. I’d honestly like to have a watch instead of my phone.
Exactly. We want the watch instead of the phone, not in addition to. And I’d like them both to use the same account and number. Why don’t these companies get it? They’ll probably shut down the divisions and say “nobody wanted wearables” despite never having unchained them as consumers desire.
I bet there are quite a few of us watching each of these announcements waiting for exactly that to happen, ready to click that buy button.
The only thing I'd miss dropping to a watch + decent point-n-shoot instead of an iPhone is live photos, which are maybe the most important feature to me from the iOS ecosystem released in the last, oh, decade. Only reason I'd even hesitate to go watch-only.
Not sure that would ever happen - the watch is often just a thin client for the iPhone so they’d have to port the majority of iOS to Android if they wanted to do that.
I don't know if that's a good idea for them financially.
Right now the Apple Watch is the only thing keeping me from switching away from the iPhone.
If I could pair an Apple Watch with the Razer Phone 2, I would be so happy and never look back. And the problem will only get worse the next 5 years as folding screens come out for the very high end market.
Form some use cases WearOS is pretty nice. For example, they have all supported always-on displays for years now with "all day battery life"...
I switched from an Apple watch to various non-Apple smartwatches when I switched to an Android phone. I used a Ticwatch E (for over a year), the new Samsung Galaxy watch (for a week), and the very new Fossil Gen 5 watch for the last month.
The Ticwatch E uses Wear OS, but is relatively slow and has battery life issues if you are not careful; however, it is very light (40 grams with band!).
I tried very hard to like the bigger Samsung Galaxy watch, but for me it was far too heavy (63 grams + band), which drove me nuts, and the app ecosystem was painful to me. In fairness, the battery life was really amazing though.
I currently wear a Gen 5 Fossil, which weighs 45 grams + band, and is fast enough, with a lot more RAM/storage than the ticwatch and newer generation processor. I'm happy with it. (For comparison, the Apple Watch case is 50 grams.)
Overall, I like Wear OS significantly more than the Samsung watch operating system (which I really didn't like, due to the apps being so expensive and limited). Wear OS is also nice because there are tens of thousands of watch faces to choose from, and some of the faces (that cost $1) are also very highly customizable.
The Apple Watch Series 5 is an absolutely incredible piece of technology, and I wish I at least had the option to choose it, but I guess I don't since I'm not using an iPhone...
Samsung's offer based on Tizen seems to be significantly better. Especially their Samsung Health based ecosystem is way better with watches that actually have working sleep tracking, activity detection, are swim proof and have enough battery life to last through it all.
Does anyone suspect it doesn't contribute meaningful to their advertising business? Anyone using one probably already uses an Android phone (with a Google account, etc.) and maybe the additional marginal information about a person that would improve how they use that information to sell advertising isn't worth their investment in the platform.
Titanium as an option is worth calling out as well. The navigation stuff seems like it could be more fully-featured in the future (would be cool to get Google maps-esque nav directions on my watch instead of keeping my phone in my hand, for example).
But can I look at my Watch, see the map and an indicator of the direction I'm currently facing? I assumed the directional indicator required an internal compass, but maybe I'm wrong.
I actually hope Apple had a “Watch Lite” version. Because I don’t need all the features Watch provides, I just want a smart watch that track my sports activities and health, I DON’T NEED the retina display, multimedia apps or ability to take phone calls, let my phone do those things and just keep the watch minimal and only act as a brilliant health monitor on my wrist
This is a big let down for me. I love endurance sports and currently use a S3+LTE with bluetooth headphones and it's the perfect running companion. I don't have to carry anything to track to run and listen to my music, podcasts, or audiobooks.
But I was really expecting more innovation from the "by innovation only" event. Garmin's flagship watch has a feature that extends the battery life by embedded TWO SOLAR PANELS into the display. That is innovation.
”Garmin's flagship watch has a feature that extends the battery life”
By about 15%, according to that page. Anybody know how realistic Garmin’s battery estimates normally are or have a pointer to a real world test? I find it hard to believe that a watch’s face would be facing the sun a lot, even when not wearing a coat or long-sleeved shirt.
I have a Garmin FR 945, keep most sensors on all the time. I used it on a 2-day, 25 mile hike while recording everything and using its navigation and maps to figure out where I was on the trail for a good chunk of it, about 11-12 hours of recording, and it still didnt hit low battery by the end of the next day.
Generally I charge it every night or every other night so I don't know how long it stacks up against its estimates, but with some activities sprinkled in I think it's fair to say that a "1 week" estimate is closer to "4-5 days" if you’re active, depending on how long you're actively recording activities for during that time. As a plain smart-watch without tracking an activity or listening to music, it's down about 10% at the end of the day on those sedentary days, so I think that’s pretty in line with its numbers
My previous watch that I used prior to buying the Apple Watch was a Garmin Vivoactive, which I used for marathons and 2 50K trail runs. It never came close to killing the battery on any individual run that's about ~6 hours of continuous GPS usage.
On top of that during a normal week of milage (~50miles) I would only take it off to charge once after my Saturday long run.
Regardless my point was more that I consider that solar technology to be much more deserving of the title of "innovative" regardless of it's performance (things get better over iteration) than an "always on display" something that all of my Garmin watches I've owned over the last decade have done.
You don't have to carry anything to listen to music, podcasts, or audio books with the wifi-only Apple Watch (beyond the bluetooth earphones, presumably), and it tracks your run too. The thing has 16GB of storage and a full ability to exist by itself. I've never used the S3, or the Garmin, so I have no idea how great they are, but I just had to comment on the Apple Watch thing.
There are some things that the Apple Watch seemed designed to be tethered to an iPhone, almost like they were (bizarrely) afraid that it would make people not want to upgrade their phone. They've taken a really rapid approach away from that, though, and the watch is becoming dramatically more powerful by itself, even though it could already do all of the basic things.
Yep. I go running routinely with just my Apple Watch and no phone. It's feels much better to not be clutching the phone in one hand. I listen to Podcasts and/or Music and when I get home I even use HomeKit to open my garage door to let me in the house. (That last one works presumably because I pop on the house wifi when I get near)
This is true, the only reason I noted the LTE was because this gives me access to my entire Apple Music library on the go. Perfect for the indecisive listener like me! :)
At this point it seems pretty clear that if you are serious about endurance sport, you should get a sport watch, not a smart watch. The sport watches can even play music over bluetooth these days.
"International emergency calling also works with fall detection, if enabled, to automatically place an emergency call if Apple Watch senses the user has taken a hard fall and remains motionless for about a minute."
I like how they have thought, don't need a sim to make an emergency call, let alone credit, why not add the ability to call emergency services and use the GPS to pick the right local number.
Equally the safety feature for older people is great initiative, though I do feel for younger users, this may cause some false positives and produce an unhappy ending when suddenly your watch has called the emergency services because you had a rest after some form of exercise.
With that in mind, I'd imagine that during that minute a countdown upon the display starts and audible alert of about to call the emergency services - just to limit false positives taking up emergency services time. Also for legit cases, would offer reassurance to somebody who may be incapacitated but able to hear. Maybe they do have that, not sure, and will find out come an in depth review.
This feature has caused a lot of false positive emergency calls for people skiing/snowboarding, where a fall is often harmless but triggers this countdown due to the speeds involved. [1]
Folks stash their devices away under warm clothing and end up not noticing the countdown or reaching their device in time. Be careful with it if you are involved in high velocity sports.
Thank you and reassuring. That feature alone will sell this by itself for the older generation. Even those who do not travel will appreciate it for that, people like that reassurance that such an option is open to them, even if they don't utilize it. More so the older you get, least what I have noticed.
I'm pretty sure that fall detection only activates when it senses rapid acceleration. Just because you stop moving doesn't mean you'll trigger fall detection.
Everyone knows what you mean, but the technically accurate account is that during normal use or while sitting still on a desk, the device's accelerometer registers an acceleration of approximately 1 g directed towards the center of the earth, and when the phone starts falling, the acceleration drops to approximately 0.
(Then the acceleration will asymptotically approach 1 g again as the device's velocity approaches terminal velocity, but well before then the software will have determined that the device is in free fall.)
It triggered for me after breaking really hard on my bike (not a fall). My hand must have experienced quite the rapid deceleration.
That said, I don’t think it’s a problem in most situations but during winter I might not have reached my watch under several layers of clothing in time to cancel the countdown.
I now usually leave my iPhone at home. I am trying to follow a digital minimalism program, following slow media ideas, and using digital devices for highly productive activities, not to waste time.
I find AirPods work really well with my Apple Watch, no iPhone lifestyle.
That probably means that the screen is clear enough to read in most ambient light (since they're talking about an always-on display), but won't keep you awake or distract people in a movie theatre.
Hard to beat the watches Garmin is making. 18 hour battery life isn't great compared to the fenix series with a week of battery life. And the features don't even come close.
Human perceived brightness is something like a logarithmic function of the power used to make the light. When you see most of the watch face go almost dark and the important bits being "half brightness", that could be operating at <5% of the normal power. The new fancy display only needs to be refreshed once per second which lets all the switching electronics go to sleep. What that all adds up to is the always on time taking very little power and turning it off will not gain you much run time.
Nope they're just taking advantage of the OLED screen which only turns on the pixels it needs to, I doubt you could double the battery life by turning off always on... you might get 2-3 more hours out of it.
I don't think you can just add the hours like that. It's in a low power mode but the screen's still on. Probably uses very minimal battery to have the always-on display.
This is one of the places where Apple could test new Battery Tech.
People seems to value things very differently, so for iPhone, they valued it as a Phone, when it is more like a Pocket Computer with very decent Camera. But they still see it as a Phone, so $1099 is expensive.
When it comes to Watches, we are used to seeing Super expensive watches, I don't ever see people ( General Public, not tech nerds ) comparing Apple Watch with what ever Digital Watches, like Gear Watch. And for this reason Apple Watch is affordable to many.
And I see it is very much possible for Apple to bump the price and include Solid Battery or some other form of Breakthrough Battery technology along with Super fast Charging.
I wouldn't mind spending $1099 if it had 3x Battery Capacity and Super Fast Charging.
They mentioned that the Series 3 will start at $199. What about the Series 4? I hope they don't discontinue it, since this is the model I would plan to get. Bigger screen, but not the top-tier pricing of the Series 5.
I have wondered if they use the refurb store to clear out new inventory at a discount, but retaining more revenue than if they sold to a retailer. By officially discontinuing a product, they can force (most) people into buying one of the new models.
Protip: the extended warranty that comes with buying something with a credit card DOES NOT APPLY to refurb purchases. That means if you buy a refurb, or even if Apple swaps your device for a refurb when you take it in for service, you can't utilize the extended warranty.
Yeah, I was looking forward to pickup up last year's tech at a discount. Pretty lousy of them to force people to decide between super high price and 2-year-old tech (esp with the screen diff).
Am I correct that if a Watch user goes far away from his/her phone, receives a SMS during that period of time, and then comes back, the notification is never shown on the Watch?
If so, how come this is not a #1 issue Apple needs to address? The Watch is then unreliable for notifications and doesn’t eliminate the need to check the phone from time to time. I’m amazed this is not talked about.
All messages including iMessages or just green SMS texts? In general if you're not on a cellular model then it's supposed to show you notifications once you reenter the range of your paired iPhone. The only Messages bugs I've seen on developer betas are related to how read receipts are shown in Activity workout replies.
The Watch does too much. I love the Fitbit Versa because it helps me get off my phone. Just important notifications and reading texts and that's it. I can't really "do" much on it except glance at notifications and that's exactly what I want. Helped me keep my phone in another room in the house or in my bag at work and not look at it at all.
Most of the Apple Watch complexity is only disclosed if you go out of your way to find it by pressing the crown and going to the home screen. I do think it's a bit much though that Breathe notifications are "important" in that they're on by default.
They haven't dropped it, it's available in black, gold finish, and black pvd finish... they've added titanium and brought back ceramic but otherwise the finishes are unchanged.
some complications "hide" when the watch is locked now (Fantastical's "next calendar event" being one of them). I'm guessing it'll support something similar.
The battery issue with smartwatches drives me nuts. My Citizen uses a solar panel, and it's been ticking for years. It should last about 20 without needing a change of battery/capacitor.
"...so it’s easy to see the time and other important information, without raising or tapping the display." Did the whole watch industry for at least 150 + years...truly innovative
So, the LTPO display is not new. It was introduced in the Series 4. What is not clear to me is whether in the low-refresh low-intensity mode it is still subject to burn-in.
I still have 2 Pebbles working perfectly and I will continue to stick with those. I haven't seen much yet that makes me want to replace them. Perhaps I have simple needs but Always On Screen, Notifications (SMS, Email, Calender), Voice Messaging and the Ability to dial calls is all I need a smart watch to do. My Pebbles still do it with 5+ days of battery life. Outside of the bio features some people use I really feel a lot of smart watch features are looking for a problem to solve.
I wish someday Apple Watch can charge itself by harnessing the power of arm swing. I know some mechanical watches do that. Not sure though if it can gather enough power to sustain indefinitely.
>Apple Watch Series 5 and Apple Watch Series 3 have a water resistance rating of 50 meters under ISO standard 22810:2010. This means that they may be used for shallow-water activities like swimming in a pool or ocean. However, they should not be used for scuba diving, waterskiing, or other activities involving high-velocity water or submersion below shallow depth.
I have a Xiaomi Amazfit. Cost me 55€, and the battery lasts 15 days with an always on display. It has included GPS, compass, pressure meter, heart rate monitor and sleep monitoring.
Sincerely, other than looks (and I woild still not bring an Apple phone to more formal occasions just like I don't bring my Amazfit) I can't understand why anyone would pay 10x more for an iWatch not can I stand that I would have to charge it everyday.
Exactly. Actually, the Amazefit Bip can go even much longer (six weeks) if you don't use GPS daily and as a benefit, fully FLOSS (unofficial) companion app Gadgetbridge ( http://gadgetbridge.org/ )
I find the current generation of smartwatches a complete waste of money. Other than the signaling factor of the iwatch, i found it annoying and utterly useless. Between the wrist-shock vibration (hey my phone is already vibrating in my pocket) to the annoying "breathe" app, this is by far the worst apple product i ve used. But it's not their fault, it's a problem with the genre. Between the daily-recharge hassle, the inability to have an always-on screen, the lack of a killer app and its relative fragility , watches like these are doomed. I much prefer the $30 xiaomi mi band as a sort-of tracker.
Is there a standard for what "all-day" means? I think most would initially assume 24 hours, but thinking about it more, it seems reasonable to consider "can work from wake up to sleep" or "can work from sunup to sundown"/