For anyone considering buying the Pixel Watch 3, please keep in mind that Pixel Watch 2 has some long-standing issues where the GPS completely cuts out during runs or walks.
Some users believe it to be a hardware issue but it's still unacknowledged by Google and the forum thread where people have been discussing it has just been locked recently. Just mentioning it for awareness and visibility.
Genuinely don’t understand why Google continues to produce these products and refuse to support them. Do they just know there’s a contingency of anti-apple users who will buy their devices regardless of extreme usability issues?
Apple has its own issues. And if I'm not mistaken, you need an iPhone to use an Apple watch, but you can use a Pixel watch with either an Android phone or an iPhone. Of course, Samsung, Garmin, and others also make campatible smart watches, so if I were in the market, I would certainly be comparing alternatives.
Oh, looks like you are right... that stinks. But at any rate, a non iPhone owner such as myself can't use an Apple Watch no matter how I feel about Apple.
I guess if I need a smartwatch, I'll dust off my old Garmin. Several other recomendations in this discussion I could look into too :).
It's not just the watches. Chromecast/GoogleTV devices have been missing an audio sync adjustment for ages. That feature is being asked about/requested all over the related discussion boards. Amazon Fire has it built in. Google doesn't care across so many product lines.
Anti-Apple users have plenty of places to get their hardware and firmware updates from, few users are going to look this deep into getting a device though.
FWIW, I had a Pixel Watch 2 with this issue every now and then in the first couple of months when it was brand new. I've not had this issue in 2024 essentially (fixed as part of monthly updates).
My Pixel Watch sucks and it's not because the screen isn't big or bright enough. The implementation of notifications is awful. It's actually faster and easier in many cases to whip out my phone to see a notification than to see it on the watch.
Why? Because notifications are not shown by default. The watch vibrates but nothing is there on the screen but the watch face. To trigger a notification to actually show, you need to rotate your wrist down (if it is up) and then up again (impossible if you are carrying something). Then you have to wait for it to recognize the gesture. Then you have to wait for a fade animation to an intermediate screen that shows half of the information about the notification. Then you have to wait for a fade animation to the final screen that actually shows the notification text. And if you lower your wrist at all during or after this process, the notification disappears instantly and won't come back without the use of both hands to activate the touchscreen or crown. And in many cases the information shown is useless, like "so-and-so sent a picture." Show me the goddamn picture then!
It boggles the mind that anyone could think this is a good experience to ship at all, let alone for three generations! Especially when Pebble had it right 10 years ago. You show the notification on the screen first, then you vibrate the watch, then you leave the notification there for at least 30 seconds so it can be read. You show the whole notification at once (as much as possible on the small screen, of course), and you also show a small clock at the top so you can still see the time while the notification is shown. How hard is that?
Of course this isn't the only way the Pixel Watch software sucks. The whole UX is pretty terrible, like they had some ideas and went straight to final implementation, never bothering to iterate based on user feedback. Low information density, low customizability, feature-poor, unresponsive interactions, blocking animations. It's everything bad about modern UI in a tiny frustrating package.
I don't know what is wrong with all the tech reviewers that fail to call Google out on this stuff. Maybe it's better than Samsung or whatever but that doesn't make it good. At least the hardware is nice. Though, like all smartwatches except the Pebble Time Round, far too thick.
When I worked at Google I got re-orged into the same division as pixel / android.
My director wore an Apple Watch and had an iPhone for personal use, and I am pretty sure I saw an Apple Watch on my VP too. Nobody was expected to eat the dog food and so few did. This was crazy to me coming from Apple- I remember several internal sites would ask you to file a radar (bug report) on why you switched to chrome from safari if you opened them in chrome. So many crazy issues I saw and reported didn’t actually matter to many high ranking members of the pixel team because they didn’t use the devices after 5pm.
There is a lot of incredible talent in that team but I think Google needs a minor culture shift to compete with Apple here.
I think that for the rank and file, not needing to use the device is fine. But if you are a manager/product owner/etc (especially over teams in charge of said devices) then YOU specifically should have to use google devices like 24/7 as part of your job.
I think it's unhealthy for those in charge not to use the products they sell, especially when talking about consumer goods.
I think those directors, VPs and PMs should be mandated to use their own products. Okay to keep iPhone, but use Android as well, at least for their corp works. The product quality of Workspace and Chrome is debatable but it's not even remotely comparable to those niche market products because everyone must use it in their daily works. Why not for Android and their hardware products? Even FB did droidfooding long time ago...
I worked at FB when GearVR came out, and I was the only person on the floor who had an Android device to test it with (so I'm not sure the whole dogfooding thing worked very well there either).
the argument isn't that all googlers should have to dogfood all google products. But people in charge of a product line should have to dogfood it.
If you aren't willing to dogfood the the product line you have ownership of and prefer to use other products, you shouldn't have ownership in it as you have no vested interest in really making it better.
I think if you work on a team for some product, it would be good to be a user of that product. Especially if you are at a high level driving product decisions.
I think if you don't work on a specific product it is good to have diversity. For example GMail developers should probably use a mix of OSes and web browsers. But most Android GMail app developers should probably be using Android GMail.
But of course you don't want to be blind to other players, copying good ideas is good. So you do want to regularly interact with the other options as well. But I don't think only using the third-party option is a good idea either. If you only use an Apple Watch you don't know how the Pixel Watch works and how it has different interaction patterns (which on its own is probably a good thing). Maybe the product leads of the Pixel watch should regularly alternate between their own product and other competitors.
Dogfooding is so important, but so is competitive awareness. There has to be a good balance, where enough people are using your own product to find (and document) all of its flaws, but enough people are using competitive products to see bigger picture gaps.
I think you would have to be living under a rock to not have competitive awareness of apple while living in silicon valley or another tech hub.
You can get all the awareness you need from using the competitors product as a daily driver for a couple weeks, instead of using it 24/7 and being totally unaware of the problems using your own product that only crop up after heavy use.
You can dogfood all you want at Google and file all the bugs and feedback, if it doesn’t fit in the snide product managers narratives, nothing gets fixed.
There's something to be said for being familiar with the popular competition, but, yeah, I'd be disappointed if my teammates weren't dogfooding something like that.
If you’re into sport, I recommend Garmin. It shows notifications properly. Bonus, charge it once or twice in a week. It doesn’t try to be a smartwatch.
No sport?
I recommend a classy automatic wristwatch. Your movement winds it up. No charging. No apps. No updates. No battery. The spring is wind up by wearing, eight hours of wearing usually last for 24 hours. So sleeping without isn’t an issue and in worst case you can wind up manually. Best purchase of my life.
PS: Teached me also other things. Mine has an “old” acrylic glass which I considered first as drawback. It isn’t. It doesn’t break up easily like gorilla glass. And no notifications.
Seconding the Garmin rec - though stay away from new 265/965/Epic, which have the same OLED screen and resultant "shake it all about" and then wait a blink to see the time issue as Pixels and Apple watches, and stick to Fenix/Forerunner x55 MIPS displays for weeks-long battery life with always-on display. And no need to update every 2 years.
I'm currently using a 965 and I love it. That said, I came to it from fitbit so maybe my views are warped.
Generally, just turning over my wrist to look at it works exceptionally well at showing everything, a firm tap works when that doesn't.
The 1 to 2 weeklong battery life is also great.
It's really one of my favorite watches.
My wife has the pixel watch 2 and holy cow does the battery on that thing suck. She never uses the sleep function because the damn thing is empty at the end of every day. Like 14 hours of battery life max in normal usage.
I just recommend no watch at all. Once I got a cell phone, wrist watches lost all appeal to me other than being a fancy piece of mechanical or digital jewelry and I have never seen the appeal of smart watches, despite working with technology every day. I'm sure they are useful for a subset of people, but this idea that everyone should have a smartwatch boggles my mind.
I have a smartwatch and it really helped me break my "phone addiction". I used to get a notification and check my phone in case someone needed me urgently. Then I'd just mindlessly open reddit or HN and start browsing.
Now I just glance at my wrist and ignore it most of the time. I also leave my phone lying around all over the place. I used to religiously carry it with me which made it much easier to get distracted.
Yes, people who haven't tried smartwatches don't understand this benefit. They always say "I get too many notifications, I don't want them on my wrist". But what you do is filter them so only important apps come to the watch, then you turn off notification sounds on your phone. Then you simply glance at your wrist once in a while, ignore everything unimportant, and get your phone out much less.
Or you could just filter the ones that come to your phone in the first place. I suppose android could make some improvements on the phone side to make that easier, but it's not a problem that requires involving an additional piece of technology.
No, see, it's not just the programmatic filtering, but also the filtering you do yourself. There's no filter you could make to perfectly distinguish important and unimportant texts or calls, so the final filter is you, looking at your wrist and deciding whether it's important enough to take out your phone.
Like the other guy said, when your phone buzzes and you open it up to see what it is, now you're on your phone and you can easily get distracted and spend minutes scrolling. With a watch, half the time or more you can decide it's not important enough to even touch your phone. Much easier to let it go.
I have this use case too. I use my watch's WAN capability to go out on dates with spouse sans phone. If the world ends (server goes down...) I'll know about it and meanwhile I'm fully attentive and present.
Plus you can wear clothing that doesn't accommodate a phone without needing to put it on the table.
Seems like the smartwatch has become a tool for workout (and to an extent, sleep) tracking. It's the only reason I have an apple watch and don't generally use it otherwise. I can record a five hour bike ride with heart rate and not blast my iphone battery
I've stayed away from smart watches as I don't want to be pinged all the time. (I used to wear a smart watch during the week while at work, and a classic watch on the weekends, but if I'm at work I can get the notifications on my phone or computer just fine (watch is redundant), so now I just wear my classic watch all the time.
Had a Citizen that was radio controlled, meaning that the time would update itself using a radio signal. Automatic calendar (accounts for leap years, etc.), time zones, etc. Solar powered (no battery change). Scratch-proof (no protective film needed). Had it for 10 years (unfortunately lost it) and never needed anything else.
Terrible UX. Cycling through the modes steps you through the settings mode. A destructive / disruptive function should never be part of the normal functional flow.
I've always thought you should need to press and hold Mode to set the time! And I thought I was the only one who was bugged by this. Timex watches got this right.
I recently got an A158W (the shiny version of an F91W) because I want to drop a Sensor Watch board into it. I'm going to make damn sure to modify this aspect of the firmware.
Mobile payment and car unlock (when I don’t have my fob) are what I use my Apple Watch for mostly. Mobile payment in particular is a game changer (no need to whip out your phone). Notifications are also important, I didn’t wear an old fashioned watch before I bought an Apple Watch.
I can also unlock my house via my watch, but again, it’s just more convenient than using a phone.
It is also maddening to me the degree to which sensor information is hidden, or simply not available at all. I got my Pixel 2 watch specifically for fitness and sleep tracking. A year on, and I am still completely unable to perform a spot SpO2 check. I'll get a nice, pretty and utterly unlabeled graph of my supposed saturations when I sleep, but that's it. It definitely feels like the people that make it don't actually use the thing.
Yeah Fitbit is a toy, not a tool. The graphs are vague and the data behind them is inaccessible. The sensors are unreliable. The metrics are made up. The whole thing is a waste of time.
If they ever figure out a way to measure blood sugar or blood pressure, that would actually be useful. Until then I would much prefer a thinner and more comfortable watch without the protruding sensors.
DC Rainmaker did a quick review and the updated running activities looked comparable to Garmin, but no way to export or integrate them out. Of course Garmin is mature for 100+ activities.
With the original Wear OS, you could check your notifications at any time and even scroll through them, all without touching the watch. The gestures were amazing. They eventually took them away, for reasons that I cannot comprehend.
yeah, I've been a wearOS owner from the beginning. I wish I has the early OS on the current Galaxy Watch 7 hardware... that would be nearly perfect.
Having said that, I don't think I've been happier than with the GW7 I have atm. It does what i want, I can wear it all day and all night and charge it back to 100% in the time it takes me to have a shower get a cuppa and be ready to walk out the door.
Its giving me interesting data on sleep and heart rate etc etc (though if I'm honest I'm not sure I'm really using that data for anything)
Android Wear is pretty much abandoned, which is ridiculous considering they're still putting out new Pixel Watches. It's insane that this OS has been around for a decade and pretty much not improved at all. The software still feels the same as it did in 2014 - slow, laggy, and badly designed.
Don't get me started on the insanity of making round smartwatches. You wouldn't make a round phone.
There is no reason for a smartwatch to be round, ever. It badly hurts functionality. Why would I care more about holding on to a hundreds of years old skeuomorphism than your device actually functioning well?
I don't hate my Pixel Watch (yet?) but dear God, getting a text message notification that doesn't actually show you the message is a baffling step backwards coming from a Fitbit.
I'm still wearing mine. But I only really get value from two features.
One is literally just the vibration motor on my wrist, so I can turn off all sound and vibration on my phone without missing calls and texts.
The other is "Extend Unlock" (formerly "Smart Lock") which makes the bad fingerprint reader on my Pixel 7 a non-issue, and is just generally convenient.
Funnily enough they're trying to replace "Extend Unlock" with a new feature called "Watch Unlock" and (quite predictably) they screwed up the implementation so bad it's not worth using at all. It's slower than entering my unlock code and annoying because it vibrates the watch every time my phone unlocks, with a random delay. Luckily they didn't actually remove the old "Extend Unlock" feature, they just hid it. I suppose someday they will remove it and I'll have one less reason to wear a smartwatch.
I have always-on display turned on. So the screen is always showing something, just not anything important, like the notification I just got, or the next turn on my navigation route, or whatever.
If you ever used a watch that did show notifications automatically with an always-on screen and then went back to one that doesn't, you would probably notice that it's way slower, and also there are many times where you can see the watch screen but it's not convenient to do a gesture.
I had a Fitbit Sense for a couple years, before it finally died in the shower. It was just out of warranty. I bought a Fitbit Sense 2 which I thought would be an upgrade but it was amazingly a much worse device.
A huge part of it was a similar notifications issue to what you describe - get a notification, raise wrist, and have to wait for a stupid animation to play before displaying the notification.
There were a bunch of other problems, including some unbearably stupid ones like it would only work with Alexa and not assistant (wtf who owns fitbit?). I took it back and managed to buy another original Sense. (I posted about them on the Fitbit forum: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Sense-2/Is-Sense-2-a-downgra... which seemed to get a bit of agreement from others).
My conclusion was that literally nobody working on this watch or responsible for its success actually used one.
After my third one broke I had some time where I tried a Galaxy Watch, played with an Apple watch, and finally settled on nothing until there was something that lasted longer than a day. Fitbit Versa being the spiritual successor I moved to, but its frustrating that Google picked them up after i bought it and slowly the software is becoming less reliable.
My wife's will keep unpairing from her Pixel, mine is insistent on moving the account from Fitbit to Google but the "account migration" fails so once a month it just logs out.
I had one a while ago and notifications, specifically google calendar notications were terrible. While they would appear on the watch they were completely absent from my phone.
So if I didn't specifically look at and flip through the watch, and instead looked at my phone there would be zero indication I had a appointment coming up.
I'm happy with my Withings Scan watch now. I'm largely passed active-smart watch territory and only passively check the stats on it.
It really sucks to hear this. I was going to once again try swapping back to Android with these new Pixel devices but it sounds like it's going to be a downgrade from the Apple ecosystem. I'm not happy with the things that Apple does with their strong market position created by having such locked down systems, but I'm not going to downgrade my experience solely on principle (also it's not like Google is saintly).
Yeah this is very annoying about notifications on my Samsung watch too, probably an android watch issue in general. For me, watch notifications have become just a way to know about particularly important things like email or certain chats. Often my watch will vibrate and I'll just switch to the tab with my mail in it without bothering to wait for the watch.
It's crazy how they can't manage to make these work faster. There's more than enough processing power in there, but the software is just so bloated.
Huh, just yesterday I started setting up and getting used to my new (to me) Apple Watch Series 6, after having used a Pixel Watch 2 for several months.
I'm surprised to find myself somewhat disappointed, and preferring my Pixel Watch, though I'm still giving myself some time in case it's just familiarity. But a few things:
* The available watch faces are pretty underwhelming, particularly digital ones. There's only a single one that actually includes the seconds, as far as I can tell. And the only one with lots of complications is Modular, which sticks the time in the corner, and has a big unwieldy complication in the center. My kingdom for Pixel Watch's Utility.
* No watch face store!?
* I can't seem to set up a minimal all-red face for night time, like I had on the Pixel Watch.
* The heart rate complication is just a picture of a heart that I click and it takes me to a widget that measures my heart rate. I had a real time glance on Pixel Watch, right in the complication, always up to date.
* The sleep tracking is weird and confusing. I need to set up schedules and such? On the Pixel Watch, it just tracks my sleep automatically.
* Subjective, but I still like the size and shape (round) of the Pixel Watch more than this Apple Watch, for now.
> * I can't seem to set up a minimal all-red face for night time, like I had on the Pixel Watch.
> * The sleep tracking is weird and confusing. I need to set up schedules and such? On the Pixel Watch, it just tracks my sleep automatically.
If you switch to Sleep focus (side button, moon, Sleep) it'll switch to a more minimalistic face and turn off the Always On Display. A quick tap on the screen would still show the time.
I bought AutoSleep [1] back when in the day when watchOS still didn't have sleep tracking, and still use it daily. It's fabulous for automatically tracking naps.
I know you won't like this answer, but you probably want the Ultra. The Modular Ultra watch face does the things you want. Heart rate on the screen, lots of complications (six small ones, one big one in the middle), seconds displayed in several possible ways. Screen turns red automatically in the dark.
Sleep tracking should be pretty much automatic. I don't have any fancy schedules configured, although maybe at one point the phone did ask me what my usual sleep times are. It just automatically collects sleep stats and puts them in the Health app.
The round watch face preference is definitely a subjective thing. I can't imagine how it works as a practical matter since so much of what makes a smartwatch useful benefits from the rectangle form factor and space.
Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.
I have failed to comprehend the allure for precisely this reason. I've looked at adopting the Apple Watch a few times now, but as a person who struggles with insomnia and finds sleep tracking valuable, I'd have to buy a separate device to use with the watch because of the battery life. Or, I could just keep my current Fitbit which consistently lasts a week and gives me good enough information.
People make it out to be some big deal, but I don't really understand. I have an Ultra 2, and it goes an easy 2 days on a single charge. I wear it all day and all night (for sleep tracking), and put it on the charger when I get in the shower. When I'm getting dressed, I put it back on and it's good to go.
Same here. It's been great, and I'm on the Ultra 1 still.
I will say it wasn't great when I had the non-Ultra. It was fine at first, the watch would last a full day, but like 2 or 3 years later it would struggle if I did a lot of exercise in a day to make it to the time I go to bed.
I also recently went on a 5-day backpacking trip and it was a struggle to keep my phone and watch charged with an external battery. If the ultra lasted even 3 days instead of just 2ish on a charge this would have made it way easier. By the end of the trip to save charge I just gave up charging the watch.
I just charge my watch once I get home from work. Only takes 30-40 minutes. Its not gonna miss many bio-metrics while I watch an episode of a favorite show.
FWIW the Android and Apple smartwatches will all charge nearly completely during a 15 minute shower. It's very possible to wear them for sleep tracking and only charge a bit a day.
But I agree there is a huge difference between once-daily charging and once-weekly charging.
not trying to sway you but just thought it’s useful to know, the apple watch ultra 2 easily lasts me 2.5 - 3 days without a charge with normal usage. That includes sleeping with it and some cellular-only usage as well.
Personally I find notifications on a watch to be exceptionally annoying so I almost always have my watch set to sleep mode. The only thing I use the watch for is to tell the time, track my sleep, heart rate, and steps. I'm not sure if sleep mode affects the accuracy of the tracking but it does make my battery life last for a good 2-3 days.
They are also a huge battery drain. I wish Garmin put the effort into their iOS app that they did with their Android so as to be able to filter notifications by app. Eg, I want iMessage notifications on my wrist, but I could care less about IG notifications, and I actively turn off bluetooth to save my battery life when my wife is forwarding me reel after reel...
My Fitbit devices (first Ionic, and now on my second Sense) have spoiled me, I can't imagine having to think about charging on a daily basis. I get 3-5 days depending on what I'm doing.
I'm sure you get used to it and it becomes part of a routine but it's nice not having to deal with it daily.
my garmin is currently low and i have 4 days of battery life or 2-3 long runs with gps and bluetooth enable left. with physical shortcuts to payment and timers, i haven't worn my apple watch in weeks
Especially if you do a bit of serious (long-distance) running, you can't get past garmin. My partner has recently reached the semi-professional level and nobody there actually uses anything else. A few apple enthusiasts often refuse at first, but they all switch at some point.
I'm not that deep into the fitness scene, but I'm convinced by the 14-day battery life. But I also understand if you find the look a bit unfashionable.
As a distance runner myself, this is accurate. I've known a few people who are hesitant to switch from Apple (or really any "smart watch"), but when they do, it's the same comment "Oh wow I didn't know these were so good!"
A common complaint I hear is "yeah but there's no apps! how do I add extra functionality to my watch?" .. they just don't believe you when you say "it's already there"
Smart watches are general purpose devices, more sandboxes than anything else.. where as Fitness/Sports Watches (Garmin/Coros/Suunto/etc) already have everything you need for Fitness/Sports, and things you didn't know existed. What's happened is that it's trivially easy for Fitness watches to add some smart offerings (Calls/Texts/Notifications) and also some apps...then it is for Apple/Google/Samsung to add fitness things.
Sure Apple and also Google did add in some training load/status/etc stuff.. which is great cool... but it's also still a device that I have to charge daily, instead of monthly. And then, when theres a fitness metric or long term stat I want to see, i have to give some third party developer my health data to do it.
An example of that last thing. I have a friend who's a triathlete, I'm going to travel to run a Half Marathon with him, he uses an Apple Watch SE, I'm on a Garmin Fenix 7x.
He's jealous of all the long term stats I have, like all the training load over time, adaptive workouts, etc etc. He's on that cusp of ditching a smart watch and getting a dedicated fitness watch. When I see him, and he sees what I can do on my watch.. he's gonna love it.
I see it pretty much the same way; there are no apps and the appstore is very underwhelming. There is no quality control and one is not even able to purchase anything without credit card.
I think people who want apps on a fitness watch, ultimately want different things. Personally, apps on a tiny screen is not a good experience to me. So I never use them.
All the smart features i want on a watch is, Notifications, to know when someone is calling me, payments, and to find my phone.
>Plus, a new better Battery Saver Mode extends battery life to up to 36 hours across both sizes, without compromising any of your health and fitness tracking or safety features.
I don't know if 48 hr battery is that much better. Charging it everyday is easier than remembering every other day. You basically have to jump from 24hr to a week battery for people to truly care.
That's what I've gotten used to from my Garmin. It has a claimed 2 weeks of life, and I charge it once a week.
I pointed out the 48hr life because I loved the MS Band, and I can't think of anything it didn't do that any modern smart watch does for me that I actually care about. And it got the same or better battery life as is typical in the market today. And on much worse hardware.
Is that a MIP Garmin or an OLED Garmin? I've heard that their OLED battery life is getting better with newer models but usually you have to make a choice between battery life and sunlight readability (better on MIP) or brightness and vibrancy (better on OLED) with them.
It also heavily depends on the amount of notifications and the brightness of the display. As well as a few - to me not easily identifiable - other factors. In the last few weeks I had battery life between 30hours and nearly 6 days.
I went even further and got a Garmin Instinct 2X Solar with a battery life of a month.
I didn't understand how annoying it was to always charge the watch/Oura ring/Whoop band/phone until I got rid of them (except for the phone, that's still annoying).
100%! I switched from an Apple Watch to a WiThings ScanWatch for the battery life. Sleep tracking and vibrating alarms are kinda useless if you are expected to charge the watch every night.
Why charge it all night? Just throw it on the charger when you get in the shower. Even if it doesn't hit 100% in the space of one quick shower, it'll easily add enough charge to go at least one more full day.
I don't think I'd want the extra battery life unless it was much longer. Like a month or more. Remembering to charge a device just once a week is harder to make a habit out of than just putting the device on the inductive charger every time I take a shower.
I think this approach works for the newer and more expensive models but not for the SE (which is what I had). The SE's battery is only rated to last 18 hours and does not offer fast charging, so taking it off and sticking it on the charger when you go to bed made sense; otherwise, you need to charge it at alternating times of day or leave it off for 6 hours in the middle of the day.
I tried many Fitbits and Samsung watches before discovering the ScanWatch. I briefly get excited when a new Pixel or Samsung watch is announced, and then I remember I have no interest in charging it every night, or every week.
I made the switch a few years ago, but I recall the Apple watch taking much longer than 30 mins to charge. The current iteration of the Apple Watch SE (which is what I had) claims that the battery lasts 18 hours and can charge from 0-80% in 90 minutes: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-se/specs/
I'm much happier with a watch that does fewer things but does them well. Only having to charge it for ~30 minutes once every few weeks means that I can just leave it on all the time like the non-smart watches I used to wear.
I charge every night so all day is all I really need, but unless they're advertising at least 2 day battery life it's probably not going to consistently last all day (especially after a couple years of charge/discharge cycles) so that's a bit of a nonstarter for me.
Weird take. Do you think your Garmin and your 10 year old watch can do the same things as an Apple Watch? No.
Apple Watches are more like mini-iPhones. For example, I can take calls from my watch without a phone nearby, which is more appealing to me than multi-day battery life.
Your take is much weirder for me. I barely even make calls on my phone nowadays but I use my Garmin watch many times a day. I also use them to track my sleep which would be very inconvenient if I had to charge them daily.
How is it a weird take? These devices serve different purposes, and their designs optimize for different things.
I like that my watch serves as a mini-iPhone, and I don’t mind charging it while I sleep. I like that I can install some of the same apps on my phone and watch.
You wrote above that preferring a week-long battery life for a watch over an ability to make calls and install apps is a "weird take". For me it's exactly the opposite, I take the week-long battery any time. So if anything at all is weird here I'd vote for your viewpoint.
Congrats you completely misunderstood. Preferring a week long battery life isn’t weird.
What is weird is saying an Apple Watch is inferior to a 10 year old watch because of the battery life, when these are different devices with different purposes.
Think about this for a second, would Apple purposefully gimp their watch’s battery life or maybe, just maybe, there’s more going on.
> Preferring a week long battery life isn’t weird. What is weird is saying an Apple Watch is inferior to a 10 year old watch because of the battery life, when these are different devices with different purposes.
It's the same thing. I'm not going to wear two watches, a choice has to be made. Based on criteria important to me (and to the original commenter you jumped on) Apple Watch is clearly inferior.
> Think about this for a second, would Apple purposefully gimp their watch’s battery life
Yes?
Design a device with just enough to get through the day, forces getting replaced in a few years when battery degrades. Apple is a hardware company with the capability to optimize battery life but they don't since 80% health on a batt that lasts a week won't force a replacement for most customers.
Yet apple device batteries last longer than any other brand. My Apple Watch is 5 years old and lasts at least a day and a half. It feels as fast as the day I bought it and still gets major upgrades.
My other apple devices are the same way. I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
> Yet apple device batteries last longer than any other brand
Citation? In my experience this isn't the case. 2-3 years heavy use and the batt needs replacement (less than 80% design capacity). Can sometimes get as high as 5 years on a lightly used device. It may work longer but its not going to hold anywhere near design capacity. The dual-cell low voltage charging standards other manufacturers use seem to hold up longer since the heat is reduced.
> I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
Cool, stuff like my original SE's hold up fine (and got a security update like a week ago). I've just replaced the batteries 2 or 3 times because they age and performance declines. This is expected but I'm not going to cope on a battery with 60% of its design capacity and act like its just as good as new.
> Your statement is ignorant.
I forgot how hard some people will try to rationalize their behavior. I still think the statement holds true knowing how many people I've met clinging to devices with dying batteries and saying 'well I have an upgrade coming soon' rather than just replacing the fucking battery.
I replaced my first Garmin (640M) at roughly 5 years old due to physical damage (it got mangled badly enough that the part of the case that holds the band on broke off), and it was still getting roughly the same battery life as it did when it was new.
Keep in mind you're doing far less charge cycles than a device with shorter battery life, it's going to last longer than a device that gets a full cycle per day. Not unreasonable for it to have under 500 cycles in a 5 year period (where this would be unheard of in a primary cellphone).
Do you actually use the mic and speaker on your watch like Maxwell Smart, or do you need to also carry a bluetooth headset or pair of AirPods to take calls from your watch?
I do use the mic and speaker for short and simple conversations. Overall I like that I can go on a run and leave my phone at home while also being able to take a call if I need to.
Look, I’m not claiming it’s life changing. The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up.
It’s silly that I’m getting downvoted because it’s true. The Apple Watch and some android watches are more powerful devices more akin to a mini-phone. And because they’re more powerful they use more power. Do people really think Apple is purposefully gimping their own device or maybe there’s more too it than “these are all smart watches”.
I’m totally ok with charging my watch every night and the extra little conveniences I get from a more powerful device are worth it to me.
I throw my watch on the charger when I go to sleep, so I don’t really seen the benefit. I’d rather have a more powerful device as a tradeoff.
If that matters to you then great but I take issue with putting all of these watches in the same bucket and pretending that they’re all the same except for battery life. It’s just not true.
Your pattern would not work for me, and a few other the other commenters on this thread, because we value sleep tracking.
I had an Android Wear watch years ago (2016?) that started with 36hr battery life and did great sleep tracking and fitness tracking. Between updates and battery degradation, after a year or so, it would barely make it 18 hours. Then I had to start charging overnight so it would be charged enough for my 5am runs, and so I lost the sleep tracking feature.
FWIW, I never ran out of battery with my Apple Watch. Charging it was part of my routine.
I changed to a Garmin this year (started to do ultra marathons) and I've run out a couple of times because I just don't remember to charge. Especially when using GPS and bluetooth audio with it massively bumps up power consumption (which felt less like the case on the Apple Watch)
Still prefer the Garmin, but just saying that I don't think battery life is the huge feature that people think it is.
I'm too locked in to the Apple ecosystem to switch, but I really wish they made a round watch. This one looks so good compared to whatever Apple puts out every year. A round watch face just makes so much aesthetic sense.
Have you considered a Garmin watch? It works well enough (for me anyway) for showing and dismissing notifications from my iPhone. The battery lasts well over a week, and the biometrics and fitness/training stuff is way ahead of anything Apple has to offer. And most of the Garmin watches are indeed round.
I could never give up those corner complications. Round looks better if you're only interested in the clock aspect, but for text display, a rectangle is incredibly more functional and with rounded rect shape, it's good enough for me.
You would need to refactor the entire UI interaction model to properly take advantage of a circular face.
Round smartwatches make no sense and I don't know why anybody is making them. Scrolling content needs a constant-width display. If there was a square android watch I would get it.
Clock face, compass, activity tracking, heartrate measurements. For most of those, square vs. round is largely irrelevant from a functional perspective, but round feels more aesthetically pleasing (to me).
square vs. round is largely irrelevant from a functional perspective
You can fit less information on it, even with the same number of pixels. There is nothing you can do on a round LCD that you can't do on a square. If you find it aesthetically pleasing, great. I like round as well. But for people who like round, and use round to display a clock face, try a mechanical watch. They are awesome. ]
"fine-tuned for fitness" the product presentation page scrupulously avoids talking about sport and systematically uses "fitness" instead.
Anyone who has ever tried to use Fibit + Google Health for their training knows that it's going to be a disaster.
This product seems destined for those who like something big and bright on their wrist.
In principle, this watch has no built-in GPS. One day's autonomy is therefore well below that any entry-level sport watches released in the last 5 years could offer.
No reference is ever made to a positioning system, whether GPS, Galileo, GNSS or Glosnav.
DC Rainmaker confirms in its test that this watch is not equipped with a GPS chip. "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. "
> "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS."
That doesn't mean "no GPS"
Weird cherry pick from a larger quote that clearly implies it has GPS:
> Again, this is an area I’ll dive into during my in-depth review down the road, looking at both the heart rate accuracy in running, as well as various changes they’ve made around GPS/GNSS accuracy. Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. However, as I’ve constantly said: I don’t care how a company arrives hardware-wise at an accurate GPS track, as long as they do so. We’ve seen companies with multiband implementations do worse than other companies without multiband. So as long as Google can deliver accurate GPS tracks, I’m happy.
You may wish to work on your reading comprehension. "Does not have multiband GNSS" is not the same as "no GPS", and the watch specifications clearly state is supports the GPS, Galileo, and Glonass satellites.
I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time. My Galaxy S23 Ultra weighs almost 300g with the case.
I recently got wrist pain and some radiating pain in my pinky and ring finger. First I thought I'm getting carpal tunnel but that is quite literally the other tunnel in the wrist.
Took me a while to figure this out, but turns out holding a heavy phone in one hand, propping it up with your pinkie finger (bending the finger sideways) is not a natural way for the pinkie finger to function.
Stopped holding it like that and it seems to be getting better. Got a magsafe handle for the back of the phone which should arrive soon ... Hopefully it gives me more grip.
Wow! I had the exact same experience as you --- also precipitated by the same "use pinkie sideways to support the bottom of the phone" usage.
I stopped holding the phone that way, and it went away.
The phone being big and heavy is quite insidious. Turns out that "you're holding it wrong" can really be a problem... not for the antenna/reception, but for our own hands.
> I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time.
The standard Pixel a line is relatively small, ~6", but perhaps you're talking about going back to the under-6" range.
I definitely find the move to larger phones somewhat perplexing because even as a 6'4" guy it's pretty difficult to navigate that much screen space with one hand.
I have a Garmin Forerunner which satisfies these requirements. It's basically the size of a normal watch, notifications work very well, and it has a GPS for tracking runs if you want that. I've had it for years and charge it at most once a day for ~15 minutes when I'm in the shower and it has literally never run out of battery. You can take it on a weeklong camping trip and probably be fine as long as you don't use the GPS.
I have a Withings ScanWatch. Was pretty much what I wanted in a smart watch: looks like an analog watch but has discreet notifications plus the fitness features. I got it because I wanted to track EKG, which it is very good at (I was able to provide the readings to my cardiologist who accepted them). However, the HR monitor (using PPG) is now malfunctioning and it's out of warranty and there's no repair options, so it's just sitting on my desk and I'm back to my "classic" watch.
Also, it wasn't fully waterproof (5 ATM is not enough) and I didn't like having to take it off to go swimming etc. My classic watch is 20 ATM.
Same for me, in the end I got the pixel 2 because its one of the few (if not the most recently) small android wear watches. I'm sad people complained a lot about the size and this new version is bigger. The software is so-so, but I love the design and feel.
I've had a Withings HR watch for 8 years, it's so old it's got the old Nokia branding but the battery still lasts for a month, handles android notifications and basic fitness stuff and looks decent. I'd buy another one instantly if this one was to give out.
I've got a Pixel Watch 2, and it's okay, but the fitness features are all unusable to me; I use a Fitbit Inspire for sleep tracking and wake alarms while my Pixel Watch is on its charger overnight, and Google only lets me turn on fitness tracking on the Pixel Watch if I migrate my fitness tracking from the Fitbit.
I could realistically see myself replacing my phone with a 5g smartwatch. The hardware seems good enough, but tere's a few use cases that make me hesitant. If the ecosystem and support continues to improve I'll probably do that in a couple years.
Besides what you listed: maps, payments, door locks, and music. I'm mainly concerned about losing the web browser that lets me do everything from my phone, but stuff like gpto could replace a lot of stuff, and if there are more actually usable apps(with potential ai integration for ux), that might be enough for me to ditch my phone.
> dont really need a screen, its cubersome when you are outside for long periods of time and battery life on Apple phones isn't very good
> Need something, I don't care if its big, that will last for at least a week, can do 3g/4g (5g is too much) SMS globally and calling internationally
That depends on if you feel that you need to keep everything that needs network running in the background all the time. I keep some things running in the background, but not everything. My aging iPhone 8 lasts me a week between charges, and it's got 4 years on its back and still using the original battery, now down to just under 80% maximum capacity. Really, the iPhones' battery life is fine.
My experience is the exact opposite, having to "scrounge" to even get close to a week with Android under similar usage. I have less control with Android over what gets to run in the background and how network access is permitted, and most importantly no control at all over any of the invasive behavior of Android itself where it uninhibitedly abuses cellular/WiFi access to shovel data to Google the entire time the phone has network access. It's a world of difference compared to how very rarely iOS "phones home". Regardless, I get a week of regular use out of this anno 2018 iPhone model. If I keep it going as just a phone and enable low-power mode, I get a few days more.
Looks like one thing Google cannot get right for the third generation in a row is that the smartwatch is the _watch_. Something you wear all day, something looking good, something matching a wide range of looks.
Apple Watch managed to push instantly recognizable rectangular style. Galaxy Watch tries to pass as a regular watch, more or less successfully. And Pixel Watch? It looks either as a children's toy or as a cheap fitness band. It might be smart, might have the best software and hardware, but it just isn't something I'd like to wear, except maybe for a training session.
Looking forward to The Quantified Scientist's [1] review of it. I don't care about any of the mainstream tech reviewers who read the spec sheet. I care about the accuracy of the advertised health features.
Pixel Watch 2 was significantly better than Pixel Watch 1 but still behind an Apple Watch SE2 which is $100 cheaper.
I like saying "hey google play drum and bass" into my wrist as I ride my bike. I also run the Dexcom continguous blood sugar monitor graph as my always-on watchface. I also have Home Assistant assigned to a button, so whatever I speak gets emailed to me as text, or if it starts with "question" it uses groq llama3 to reply a short answer on the screen. It doesn't often die before bed time. I set it on it's wireless charging dock. I don't like wearing a watch (or anything) when I sleep. Perhaps if I had a free Garmin I would give it a whirl, but I know very little about it's capabilities. So that's why I have a Samsung Watch4 currently. Also the 40mm version is really small which I like. I can't stand medium/large watches.
Some users believe it to be a hardware issue but it's still unacknowledged by Google and the forum thread where people have been discussing it has just been locked recently. Just mentioning it for awareness and visibility.
- https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Android-App/Google-Pixel-Wat...
- https://support.google.com/googlepixelwatch/thread/242833127...