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Ask Slashdot: What Would It Take For You To Buy a Smartwatch?
An anonymous reader writes: I don't wear a watch. I never have. So, to me, the push for smart watches has always been a non-starter. But I was discussing with friends some of the features of Android Wear that Google demonstrated at the I/O conference today, and it got me wondering: what set of features would be required for a smartwatch to become viable? Obviously, this is different for everybody — millions of people wear regular watches even though they could easily pull out their phone and check the time there. Any smartwatch can also tell time, but it has advantages (apps that do other things), and disadvantages (needs charging). Clearly, there are some functions for which it's useful to have an object strapped to your wrist, even if that function could be served by the device in your pocket. Telling time is one, and lots of people use sundry fitness doo-dads to measure exercise. It makes sense to me that checking the weather forecast would fall into this category, and perhaps checking notifications. (Conversely, other functions do not translate at all, like taking photos or playing games.) Thus, two questions: if you already wear a watch, what would it take for a smartwatch to replace it? If you don't wear a watch, what features would motivate you to get one?
I suspect much like current watches, this will mostly fill a cosmetic need vice a practical one. Sure, having a wristwatch is handy in some situations, but I wear my skeleton because I’m a geek and I think seeing all those gears doing their thing is badass. Despite being made obsolete by digital technology, a well made mechanical wristwatch is still a marvel of technology.
It’s a toy and a fashion statement. Some people will have fun with it, a lot of people will think it’s stupid, a handful of people will actually find it fills a legitimate need they had but lets not try to invent reasons we need one.
This whole thing reminds me of the home automation craze (which google appears to be trying to bring back). It sounds really neat and has some serious gee-wiz appeal to it. I’ll admit back in the day I bought into it (and went with x10... a system I wouldn’t wish on an enemy) but you very quickly realize that after lights, temperature, and maybe the coffeepot, there are very few practical applications. Sure some people will go on about how their curtains automatically close when they flush the toilet, but it was mostly a toy for geeks.
Personally I won’t likely buy one, but I’m not going to berate someone who does.
Thanks for reading and have a happy Wednesday :)
I could make phone calls on it without carrying a separate phone. Beyond that and telling time, I can't think of any other use for a screen I'd want to wear on my wrist.
The Android-based things we've seen so far need to be recharged at the very least once a day. I can't even stand the thought of owning a smartphone model that requires recharging every day.
The only thing I can think of are the fitness metrics. It would be exciting if a smartwatch could measure not only heart rate, but vo2 stats as well as blood pressure.
That'd be almost exciting enough to plop down 100 bucks on it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I was a kindergarten teacher for a while.... and you are better off with checking a watch than checking a phone with some jobs.
Built-in A/C and UV light to compensate for the sweatiness and tan-marks that come from wearing a watch. This is the no. 1 reason why I would never consider wearing a watch again. Obviously I'm joking with the subject line. It ain't happenin', "smart" or otherwise. Now that time and a bunch of other things are in my pocket, they ain't goin' back on my wrist.
Oh, and bands that snag the hair on your arms. Ouch. Never again.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think it's rather novel that Google is figuring out how to *sell* tracking bracelets.
Previously the government, and of all its marketing prowess -- had to actually convict people of a crime in order to drive sales, let alone get people to wear them after the 'newness' factor wore off.
Was the key change to make them in a wristwatch format vs ankle bracelet? I suppose that's why they get the big bucks eh?
So kudos to Google, real men of genius.
I stopped wearing a watch when my last one broke over 10 years ago. I am surrounded by time - on my computer, the TV guide, cell phone, clock on microwave, clock on stove, clock on standard phone, time is everywhere. Why would I want to strap it on my wrist?
I would need it to do something useful that would either not be available on my smartphone, or completely replaces my smartphone.
I doubt that I will be able to (or WANT to) talk on the phone using a smartwatch...while Dick Tracy *looks* neat in comics, It's essentially putting everyone on speaker phone which I think is pretty retarded. With that as my initial stance, it would have to do something other than what my phone does.
I'm currently in the market for a blood pressure monitor, and I've used the gimmicky pedometers/calorie trackers before. These are things that my phone doesn't do (or doesn't do well), so I guess more or less sets the bar for me.
I don't care that they can do "neat" stuff. I need it to do *useful* stuff. Simplify my life, don't complicate it even more.
I already a sweet Casio that's wp to 100M, has an altimeter, thermometer, and various time-keeping functions/features. And it was $50 bucks.
Until, you can give me a Leila-style forearm-puter with a flexible 6-7 inch touch screen...I'm happy with my Casio.
Since this is addressed to non-watch wearers too (last sentence).... ok, I'll answer.
If you want me to wear a watch, it needs to have:
1) extreme reliability - it will last at LEAST 5 years, which I have never seen in any watch, cheap or expensive.
2) Battery will last 3+ years, or it will require no battery.
3) It doesn't have a shitty leather strap or shiny shit that will make it get stolen or some shitty material
4) It costs less than $40.
I have never seen a DUMB watch which satisfies these, and I suspect that any smart watch would fail miserably at ALL of them. All I want is something which won't fall apart will tell me the fucking time when I'm hiking in the woods for a week and my cell phone dies. ALL watches have failed me so far.
Decades ago there was some discussions amongst the techies about the "Dynabook" --- sort of the predecessor of the tablets that we have today --- and someone actually went and produce a thick and heavy "Dynabook"
It got a lot of press, but that venture ended up as a failure
Similar thing happens when Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple, and the "jobs-less" Apple came up with the "Apple Newton", again, a failure
Those two examples tell us one thing - just because you can produce some gadgets does not mean that the market would want it
Same with the so-called "smartwatch" --- this idea actually came from way back, from a comic strip "Dick Tracy", something about that fella's watch that has raised a lot of "fancy thoughts" throughout the years ( see http://techland.time.com/2013/02/11/dick-tracys-watch-the-most-indestructible-meme-in-tech-journalism/ )
No matter how strong that meme turned out to be, the society we live in today is no longer the 1930's, we have moved on
In other words, those "smartwatch" won't be big sellers
I want to be able to walk to cafe, hold my watch over sensor, and have my home, school, or work station popup. When I walk away my desktop goes away.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
If you are the kind of person who pulls their phone out just to check the time, then you aren't the type of person that would benefit from a smart-watch in the first place
I wear a basic timex digital watch, not because it's some sort of fashion statement, but because it's easier to look at my wrist (especially while driving) than it is to pull my phone out, without dropping it or getting it dirty.
wireless, several hours battery time, over 4 gig. everything else is on my smartphone, the new fogey's pocket watch.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
it is made by Patek.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Phones are barely big enough to be usable for apps as it is - while I would like to move to a smartwatch to avoid hauling a phone or tablet around, it needs a way to have a large display on demand and simple user interface that isn't audible (for privacy and security reasons). Until we get a neural or perhaps google glass style interface, I don't think it's possible to solve that problem. And all that with a 24hr battery life.
A considerable increase in a combination of the following: Price decrease, Useful features, Battery Life, Aesthetics
it would take billions more to make me wear it daily.
Thus for me: Currently nothing could convince me to buy a smart watch.
I live in Thailand. In 1992 I was going to visit the USA. so I bought a watch. A month later I was in the US. A month after that I lost the watch. A watch feels too much like a handcuff. Be there then, race the clock, step in time, step in time, step in time. No thank you. My heart made the choice. I haven't owned a watch since then. If I want to know what time it is I reach in my pocket and pull out my new Sony Smartphone. It tells me the time, and connects me with other people and the world's schedules. But only when I chose. It's not a handcuff.
A screen the size of my Galaxy note 3.
There is nothing that would motivate me to get a smartwatch. Everything they can possibly do is done better by a smartphone, with the sole exception of the convenience of being able to tell the time with a glance at your wrist, and that is offset by the inconvenience of having an uncomfortable chunk of metal strapped to your wrist. One might possibly be able to make a case for Google Glass or something like it, but not a smartwatch.
called "Google Private", where they take a subscription fee from you for services and in return, they send noise data to their marketing customers about you while providing you with a list of all entities that make user-specific queries about you.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
I would buy a smartwatch and wear it--at least at certain times a day--if it provided some sort of blood sugar monitoring. The next release of the iPhone is rumored to have this. If the iPhone 8 has a consistent and/or reliable glucose monitor, I will buy one the first day and start wearing a wrist watch again. (I quit wearing a wrist watch in ~1990 because they ate my shirt cuffs. I wore expensive, for the time, dress shirts to work everyday and my dive watch chewed them up like candy.)
Firstly, like in an ordinary watch the battery life should be measured in years and it should require no other maintenance.
Second, people should be openly admiring of it - both as a technological marvel and as a timepiece.
If it could do anything else than keep good time, that would be nice but not necessary.
Personally, I consider the first of these needs to be the most achievable.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sorry, but we're not going to give you the secret keys to our wallets just yet.
One hint though, make something that's actually useful without a phone. Integrating it with a phone is fine, but it should still have helpful functionality when not currently paired...
Frankly, I stopped wearing a digital watch because I noticed when I forgot it class passed by much more quickly and enjoyably than when I was counting away the minutes until it was over. Also, it lead to the rude habbit to be checking my watch when conversing or keeping company with someone, as if I was just waiting to get away.
Having technology always at the ready is at least mildly antisocial, especially when it's visible to others. If I'm sitting down to do work then I want my full laptop. I will carry a smartphone for alarms, texting, important email, GPS, etc., but that stays in my pocket until it's needed, I don't fiddle with it and distract myself while I have any kind of company or other work to do. If there were useful features that only a smartwatch could perform, then I would carry the smartwatch in my pocket. I absolutely don't want some gaudy box on my wrist which can distract me from whatever I am presently doing. For the most part, each feature you add to it is another reason I don't want it.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I still wear an old school Casio DataBank (150 model) watch. I do not use mobile phones. I'd like a smartwatch to replace my old watch since it is difficult/hard to find another one. I do not want to buy a phone. I just want simple features like scheduler, times, address book, etc. Nothing fancy. I have disabilities so I can't hold mobile devices well. Watches are perfect. They cannot be big and heavy since I have thin arms and other issues with my old weird body. :( Anyways, it seems like the current and upcoming smartwatches won't meet my needs. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Don't know why, just bugs me to wear them, and I keep bashing them on things. Before I got a cell phone, I wore a carabiner watch on my belt and it was pretty cool...they were built with cheap springs though, had a tendency to stop staying clipped after a year or two, and after I lost one down an elevator shaft while disembarking I pretty much swore off timepieces (coincidentally that's around when I got a cell phone and stopped needing them).
I guess if I was working in a physical, mobile job...where taking a phone out was inconvenient (dirty hands, gloves, hands always full)...and being able to time things was really important...I'd wear a watch. I could control it with voice, that could be a killer app for some job I don't know what. ("Smartwatch, give me a thirty second countdown on my mark... Mark.") Yeah, the only use for a watch in my mind is checking the time without using your pockets, and always-on voice control is the only "smart" addition that makes sense. If you had the use of your hands to fumble with buttons or a touch screen, a phone would be easier to use.
Probably not good I had to think so hard to come up with just one answer.
Universal remote control
I can't find a pro that would overcome the cons. The only thing I'll use a smartphone (when I get around to one) is a better camera, it could do remote Credit Card transactions for 10 days a year(meh), and it could monitor the office security system. I can't see anything about a smartwatch to compensate for the losses.
The poor call quality and battery life have so far kept me from even getting the smartphone yet. No way is a watch going to help either of those, so really, none.
Honestly, I may occasionally joke about wanting an actual PipBoy, but the truth is, I don't want to wear anything on my arm, even a small thing. Maybe an upper arm/bicept device, but, not wrist or forearm. Possibly even a small pendant device, especially if it could be belt attached or pocketed as needed....but it would have to be a pretty clever device to overcome my suspicion that its going to end up left behind in a drawer forever in 3 weeks.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I wear a shock resistant dive watch. Quite unlike my smart phone, I don't worry about dropping it, hitting it against solid objects, or getting it wet because it shrugs these things off like it was nothing. I don't worry about losing it because it comfortably resides on my wrist regardless of what I am wearing.
I want a smart watch that is like that.
However, much of that advantage is lost if I still have to carry around a cumbersome, unattached, and fragile smart phone. It is fine to augment the smart phone when the two devices are together but if the smart watch is non-functional on it's own than I don't want one.
If the technology is not up to these challenges (And, frankly, I don't think it is) then it is not up to creating practical smart watches. Come back in 10 years and there may be a smart watch worth wearing. The battery problem may be solved by that time too.
I might wear one if it provided a responsive interface for various home automation functions (lights, security, HTPC, etc). Honestly, it might be part of Apple's plan with HomeKit and the oft-rumored iWatch.
I believe in the cake.
Seriously, why is /. letting Google do their market research here? Pathetic.
To answer the question NOTHING will get me to use Google products if it can at all be avoided. They've already broken the web.
Don't feed the Google beast!
Mandatory features of any smartwatch that costs more than $100:
* Acceptable aesthetics.I'm setting the bar pretty low here, but it has to at least look rugged & utilitarian, if not actually attractive. If it looks like a Fisher Price toy or some cheap piece of plastic junk, it's not happening.
* Ability to use normal wrist straps, absent some compelling and good reason to the contrary.
* Glass that's either independent of the screen & can be replaced when cracked by me for $10 or so worth of parts and an hour of time, or hardened enough to survive getting repeatedly scraped against rough concrete walls. I destroyed dozens of watches growing up by accidentally getting too close to a wall/concrete pillar/whatever and scraping or smashing the glass.
* MINIMUM 36-hour battery life
* At least two tactile hard buttons that can be easily pinched independently of one another and used as a modifier key with the other. I hate HATE ***HATE*** touchscreens in general, and a watch would be the worst touchscreen environment of all. The only way to make it random-touch-resistant would be to add latency and sample delays that would make it feel laggy & slow.
* Rootable & reflashable as I see fit. Android would be nice, some Linux variant would be OK, and frankly I could live with an Atmel AVR as long as I can personally reflash it.
* Real, honest-to-god e-ink (not LCD-based "e-paper") display that takes a cue from the DSTN LCD displays of yore & has two or more independent controllers that can update different parts in parallel (doubling or quadrupling the time to redraw the display). Enough framebuffer ram to do full-blown double/triple-buffering with *really fast* DMA (to let you compose changes, then propagate them to the actual display in an instant instead of 200-400ms) would be even better. There's no technical reason why an e-ink display HAS to be glacially slow... they've just been slow up to now because they were designed to minimize component cost and conserve battery life. But since they'd only consume power while being actively updated, the power budget difference between e-ink with parallel controllers and e-ink with one slow controller would be fairly small (think: race to sleep instead of always running slowly).
* If it DOES have a touchscreen (in addition to the aforementioned pair of diagonally-opposed hardkeys from a few points back), that touchscreen needs to be capable of AT LEAST 120 samples/second (if not with stock firmware, at least the hardware itself when reflashed to a custom ROM). A tiny screen NEEDS a high sample rate to get any kind of acceptable resolution from a capacitive sensor.
If the watch could:
-directly enhance my physical health - not just a health monitor
or
-fully replace my phone+wallet+keys - tethering to another device is not acceptable
*And:
should be capable of recharging in a matter of seconds, not minutes/hours
should be durable so the device does not fail after a bump into a table corner
As it stands today, *smart* watches are only a gimmick that will struggle to gain any traction. Smart watches will most likely never be able to compete vs smart phones. The physical dimensions required for the watch vs the phone will work to the phone's advantage every time.
A Phaser.
A Tricorder.
A real time universal translator that operates transparently while conversing with people of other languages.
The ability to respond to voice commands no matter how obscure.
also it would need to keep time
Ok i could do without the phaser and as long as it could always get time from gps or network connections i dont mind if it doesnt have an internal clock
It needs to be a complete phone with all the bells and whistles, just with a small screen.
Extra credit, it should plug into a bigger display for things like maps, chat, pictures, and email.
as soon as it generates its own power from my movements, like my 30 year old mechanical one does.
I already have a smartwatch, but if I didn't these would be the reasons today I would get one:
(These are all real, existing apps.)
App that ..sends slow-scan video to watch from phone or takes and displays pictures ..sends nav screen to watch ..can display forecast, barometric pressure, wind direction and velocity ..gets full weather report ..lets you activate watch features based on a value on the internet e.g. **buy alert** goog is at $450 ..lets you know your phone needs charging ..keeps you on-time with buzzing alarms ..(maybe not yet) tells you if your flight is on time ..displays your track as you wander around hoping to wander back
or "new post on your blog", etc.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
The only advantage of a smartwatch over a smartphone is that it can't be that easily stolen/lost/broken. I would therefore like it to take over more critical functions that, however, require a minimum of interaction with the smartwatch. Have it automatically unlock/lock my house/car using proximity sensors, for example. Of course it should provide all sorts of time-telling functions, like time-zone conversion and it should have calendar reminders. It should be 100% waterproof so I can wash my hands without having to take it off. Did I mention that the battery should last for at least a year? Don't bother with anything inferior than that.
The key features to make a 'smartwach' worth my money, in my mind, starting from the hardware side:
1. E-ink display. Easy to read in daylight, can be illuminated from the side for low light use, extremely low power use.
2. Inductive charging. I need to be able to take my watch off and set it down on a stand, and pick it up in the morning knowing its charged, no fiddling with little connectors that get corroded by my personal humidity.
3. Decent water resistance. This is an extension of number 2, but vital. I need to be able to sweat, wash my hands, slosh a drink, and not be worried about ruining a multi hundred dollar piece of hardware strapped to my hand.
as for software features, I desire:
1. Show me the time without having to screw with it. - I don't want to be pressing buttons on my watch just to see the time during the day. At night, yes, a button for a light, but I need it to be a 'at a glance' function.
2. caller ID function, and ignore call function. This thing is linked to my phone, so most of its point is to be able, at a glance, to see who is calling me, and ignore the call if desired. Single dedicated button for this function would be best.
3. Volume control for headphones attached to phone. - say, I have my phone in a pocket/arm case, using headphones to listen to music or make calls. digging the phone out to change volume, or fiddling with tiny buttons on the side of my head at my headset sucks, It would be nice to be able to use a volume control on my wrist to adjust the volume of whatever i'm using. Remember, this 'watch' is supposed to be an extension of my phone. basic pause/play/skip function would be nice also.
Honestly, thats about it. The main thing that makes me dislike the current smart watch offerings is bulk, charging, and over-feature. There are very few things I will want to do on a screen small enough to fit on my wrist comfortably, and as such, I see the smart watch as more of a peripheral device, not a primary interaction vector for my devices.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
The new pebble steel is probably the best looking of the smart watches, but thats not saying a lot. It almost looks like a normal watch, instead of a half an iPhone on a wrist band.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Probably some sort of brain seizure of something that suspends my belief that technology is support to serve a purpose, and is definitely not a method to sell trinkets.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
While I can use my Note2 for all things digital, I still wear a watch quite often, a Casio G-Shock. The main feature that it has that keeps it on my wrist is the compass, although I use the alarm and timers more often.
I would like to see what the email/text/whatever is that I just got so I can decide if I need to read it now or later. I would like to have biometrics like pedometer, pulse, etc. Customizable watch faces are a must. Working with the phone GPS to display waypoint direction would be great.
Has to have GREAT battery life, it would be awesome to have solar like my current watch. I would turn off some of the features to get better battery life.
MUST be water/shock resistant.
My last smartwatch, a Timex Datalink, had some neat features, like being able to upload a days worth of MSExchange appointments. This endeared it to the astronaut crowd. It had some neat apps available too, but it wasn't rugged enough, and mine didn't alarm so I stopped wearing it.
If Casio or Suunto come out with a smartwatch version of their "adventure" watches they would probably qualify, but I wouldn't want to spend more than $200, so I'm figuring it will be 2-3 years at least for this feature/market intersection.
Watches are still way too thick. You still can't find a digital watch (except for some ridiculous e-ink devices) less than 5mm thick.
While they're at it, why do dial watches still have crowns? You should be able to hold them up to a computer screen to set the time and date like those old databank watches. All they need is a sensor or solar cell and a tiny bit of logic.
I mostly stopped wearing a watch because my phone does that now. I only need a watch in secure areas where phones (and smart watches) aren't allowed.
Pocket watches went out of style when miniaturized and rugged wristwatches became cost effective. Now pocket watches are "back" in the form of a small computer in a pouch - aka a smart phone. A wristwatch can't have enough of a display area to be useful as "the" mobile computer a person carries around. And there's no real reason someone would want to carry two. So except perhaps as a style thing, the wristwatch isn't coming back.
You'd have better luck with a fallout-style pip boy -- a band covering the forearm with a screen a good 8 inches long.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
GPS and stats for while I'm biking.
If it was shaped like a candy bar and fit in my pocket so I didn't have to wear it on my wrist.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
xx
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
...and that car must be K.I.T.T., the Knight Rider Two Thousand.
Any one or more of:
Time Travel.
Teleportation.
Anti-gravity.
A pricetag of $0.
I haven't worn a watch in 15-20 years. So nothing could get em to start wearing one again. And a Google watch? Bwahaha!! I'd rather have root canal work done by a twitching drunk sadist dentist then touch anything Google ever makes. P.S. My WiFi blocked Nest thermometer is for sale, cheap, ever since Google bought them ... make me an offer.
DaveyJJ
If it were cheap, non-plasticky, water and shockproof, medium size and with several years of battery life I'd probably get one... but only if my Timex Expedition gives up first.
My dumbwatch's battery lasts about 2 years, and when that battery dies, I can go to a store and buy another one for a few bucks. When the watch itself eventually dies, I can go to a store and buy a whole new watch for about 25-30.
I would buy a smartwatch when those things are true of smartwatches. Until then, I'll stick with the watch I have, thanks. I don't really *need* a watch to do anything other than tell me what time it is and have an alarm on it, after all - in fact, doing other things would probably just make it less useful for those primary tasks, a la Stroustrup's great quote about phones: "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."
Sexy enough so a hot 20 year old would hop into bed with my fat 56 y/o self when she sees me wearing it.
// human female
/// I have no explanation as to why she would wander into mom's basement to see me wearing it tho.
/ make that a hot 20 y/o female
I probably wouldn't get a fully featured smartwatch, but the Nabu Smartband from Razer is about as close as I'd personally get. Mostly for the annoyance factor my phone tends to garner when it's constantly going off with Hangouts, GroupMe, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, and many other applications that cause my phone to make noise. With the smartband, the annoyance is isolated to just myself and the vibrating band on my wrist, allowing me to permanently turn down the notification volume.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
$100 / day, paid in full by google, direct deposit, and I'll wear a stupid fucking smart watch.
I don't have to use it, do I?
PS: I already wear a watch.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
my last watch went 14 years on one battery, my current watch is about 3 years old.
lose != loose
holographic display; instead of a watch so bulky it looks like the people selling them aren't comfortable wearing one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Already posted, but got a better idea. Combine it with that Myo thing that measures your tendons or whatever so it can tell what hand or finger motions you're making. The hell with touch control or voice control: Make it something you can operate by only moving the hand it's strapped to, without touching anything. Use with Bluetooth earbuds, put your thumb against your third and fourth fingers, 'swipe' up to start/stop your music, or down to skip track...maybe something to answer or hang up a phone call. This is given the assumption that the required hand signals are simple and do not have false positives. Hell, maybe you can write by signing letters in ASL under the table so you can text in a boring meeting, better than subvocal. *IF* the input was extremely usable and reliable, that just might be novel enough for me.
Of course, it occurs that I could just wear a Myo by itself and pair it to the phone in my pocket.
We already grant that the person wearing the watch has a phone, so why not just keep the watch simple (and thus power-stingy) and slave it to the phone?
That way, if there's a feature you want on the watch, get the phone app to do it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
this is a solution searching for a problem that doesn't exist. I still wear a nice watch, mainly as a backup for when my phone has a flat battery or is in an awkward to reach place. my current watch does everything I need it to do, it tells the time, is water proof so I never need to be concerned where I am with it and doesn't need recharging more than once a year, maybe one day a smart watch will also be able to do all those things, but what's the point!
I have an android smartphone. Why would I need a smartwatch ?
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
n/a
Have gnu, will travel.
Smart watch designers have to let go of their idea that it has to look like a watch. It's like the early years of automobiles, where cars were designed to look like carriages without the horse, or vegetarian food in the 1950's and 1960's which had to look like meat.
I want something long and more or less rectangular that wraps partly around my arm, starting from the wrist and going maybe halfway up the forearm up to the elbow. This would allow me to read text messages or notifications without having to squint at something tiny. It would open things up to a huge market for apps that just don't work on something about 1" across. It would allow me - eventually, once they were touchscreens - to press buttons or even type with one hand. And it would open up a huge market for digital tattoo "screensavers".
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
a smart watch that used a regular dial and had a siri-like but massively expanded voice prompt system, and it needs to use a kinetic charger or an induction charger so I never have to plug it in to anything for any reason.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Feel free to wear a smart watch. It's not like your cell phone isn't already telling people where you are even when you think it isn't. Also go ahead and pay for it too, saves me some tax dollars when people pay for their own "spywear" as well as any fees for connectivity.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I was thinking same thing. I've never considered one but hey, maybe just like in the comic series (and complete with taglines "2-way wrist TV").
mfwright@batnet.com
Until it can sit on my wrist for a year or so without needing my attention, it's not a watch, it's an annoyance. I'm so unwilling to fuss with stuff like that, I bought a deep water capable tritium watch that is illuminated (glows) all the time, numbers, hands and outer ring.
I think this is how smartwatches will go over with just about everyone else. Less function than the phone, which we already have, twice the annoyance (have to take it off to charge it.) Not likely to fly. Google glass (which I *despise* but anticipate the success of) is a much more functional wearable (and you could easily shoehorn med sensors in there, too... just a little more integration, etc.)
As for the medical/sports aspect, it's a pretty lame "sport" (croquet?) that would let a watch get by unscathed, and medical sensor suites are already available, and with considerably longer time-between-charges, too.
Just gonna go ahead and call this the Segway of wrist thingees. :) Sounds good, looks good, isn't good.
Semi related, when is someone going to market a solar-cell surfaced skullcap? I mean, heck, if you're going to wear a computer on your face, you might as well wear a power supply assist on your head. Maybe a little propeller for when the wearable's batts and the skullcaps reserves are fully charged. ;)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I want a Dick Tracy 2 way wrist TV that operates by audio commands. I mean audio commands that actually work in some reasonable fashion. Not:
"Call Chuck at home."
"You said have sex with woodland animals behind your house?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Here's my priorities for a smart-watch, in decreasing order of importance. Satisfy all of these and I'll consider wearing one:
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
My're car (well, truck) has a monitor, which I often watch. So I don't accidentally clock somebody. It's a timely solution.
You should see what I did to solve my blind driveway problem. That one involves a radio transmitter, a frame combiner, two cameras, and a remote receiver in the truck. I watch that too, similarly concerned about clocking issues. Solves a number of problems hands down.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Calendar reminders. That's it. I don't always keep my phone in my pocket and sometimes I have the thing on silent. It's worked out well for me. I tried the email and facebook notifications, but I really don't care about missing those things. For me the whole point of email over phone calls is that you don't have to drop what you're doing because somebody has something to tell you.
Now I've always worn watches; I like them. I like being able to glance to see the time. I also like the quick, crude analog timing function of a rotating bezel, although I can live with a digital stopwatch. And I like a good looking watch; for me this means simple, functional elegance. I think the best looking watch ever made was the Rolex Submariner, although I'd never spend that kind of money. Generally cheap watches are too cluttered for my taste, but you can find a reasonable Submariner knock-off around $80 (e.g., an Invicta 8926OB).
It's not a matter of impressing people with how much I spend. One of my favorite watches costs only $35 (Timex Expedition T45181). I like it because it is simple, functional, and aesthetically pleasing in a subdued way.
But with the Pebble any question of aesthetic elegance goes right out the window. It's an ugly hunk of plastic. It will not impress anyone. But then, missing an appointment because your phone is in your coat pocket on silent isn't going to impress anyone either. The Pebble does one critical thing (other than tell time) and does it really well. Most of the time that makes it my go-to watch. On weekends I go for my Submariner knock-off, or if I'm doing something that will beat up the watch I'll go for the Timex.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I keep my phone in my pocket and usually on complete mute. So when there's a phone call or meeting reminder I don't get it until it's too late. Broke down and bought a Pebble a few months ago and a slight buzz at my wrist tells me there's something I need to pay attention to, and in a meeting or with friends it's a lot easier to just glance at my wrist to read a text than pull my phone out, turn on the screen, enter my unlock code, get into the app, and read the message.
If reports of Apple's upcoming smartwatch are true: a device crammed with non invasive health related sensors, (with more sensors being added to later models), then I could see it succeeding at creating a new market. If it is not clunky. I can see this approach as a gamechanger. I also wouldn't be surprised if it could be used to control home automation via their homekit api. While you are sitting in the sofa, a quick swipe to adjust the light. Finally i can see it exchanging maps information with an iphone which is in your pocket. A quick glance for directions as tou walk. Curious what the real featureset will be. We live in interesting times.
Why do we have wristwatches? Because they are more convenient than having a timepiece in one's pocket to take out to check the time.
Therefore a wrist-phone must be more convenient than both a wristwatch and a "pocket" phone. It can't just tell time. A wristwatch does that. It can't just tell you that you have a call, your phone does that. It also can't do something that requires user interaction . . . Why? Because you need two hands to interact with a smartwatch. The hand with the watch strapped to its wrist, and the hand manipulating it.
So when will a smartwatch be useful and desirable? When you find an interface method that doesn't require two hands.
And no. I don't know what that method is. And if I did, I wouldn't tell you.
I am not a crackpot.
I'd get one if it could do all of these things:
1) Tell time in at least three time zones at one glance (local, UTC, home)
2) Must be solar powered (those kinetic watches are crazy pricey) -- My last trip to a jeweler for a battery change was wasted with a 45 minute sales pitch for Melaleuca. No thank you!
3) Must NOT be crazy pricey (I'd rather spend $100 for a GOOD watch)
4) Must, absolutely must be light and comfortable (ideally of a size that would be considered large for a ladies' watch, yet smallish for a mens' watch)
I'd be flexible on these:
1) Be able to tell the time of sunset, sunrise, civil twilight, and anything else interesting as far as sunset/sunrise is concerned, but must be able to give LOCAL times without me resetting the location manually each time.
2) Exercise tracking ability (obviously GPS/calculator/etc/)
3) USB/Bluetooth/IR connectivity
Things I really DO NOT need:
1) An E-6B built-in to the face.
2) Fancy/flashy face and/or band
I wear a mechanical self-winding wristwatch. I would never wear a smart watch.
You pay me $50/month, with the proviso I can leave it turned off 24/7.
And by 'off', I mean in a metal box so it can never phone home accidentally.
Since it's a watch, it has to run at least a year, and preferably longer without my thinking about charging it. Whether that's solar, or something else, I don't care. It has to look decent, and not be too big, and do something useful that my simple mechanical watch doesn't already do.
I hate the feeling of a watch on my wrist. I'm not sure why, but I never liked it. When I was a kid before cell phones became common I discovered that, and quickly became the only kid in high school with a pocket watch. And a pocket smart watch is just a cell phone. Possibly with a lanyard, though my current phone (SGS4) sadly lacks a way to attach one.
Not a sentence!
Other people have mentioned price as a factor. For me, that's the ONLY factor. It needs to be cheap enough that if it turns out to be useless, it didn't inconvenience me.
I wouldn't mind a smart watch just for mucking around with and seeing what hacks I could do with it. But I can't justify the expense of buying one on a whim.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
My watch has the time and date, a chronometer, an alarm, a light, and even a countdown timer. It's smartest features are its ability to hold a charge for over a year, plus being fairly rugged and cheap. Plus, it's got built-in 100% foolproof hardware protection against any tracking malware. Can't get much smarter than that.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Can it print money (has to be usable denominations)?
Can it get me in bed with women who're completely and utterly out of my league?
Can I press a button and have the head of every Mac-tard within a square mile explode?
Come talk to me when you get it working the way I want...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Because watches are man-jewelery.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/...
Honestly, something with a landscape screen, but less bulky than a pipboy, and more like a wrist watch.
I have a Garmin GPS Watch. It's great to track your runs and has a website where you upload your run information and biometrics so that you can replay your run or analyze your performance. It works as a regular watch as well. It can also give you a picture of your run or walk so that you can determine where you are relative to where you started in case you get lost. So it's good for running and they have models for triathletes that are waterproof to 10 meters or something like that. Mine handles the rain just fine. It will interface with fitness club equipment and digital scales and it comes with a chest strap that you can use to measure your heartrate while you workout. You can also set alarms for minimum and maximum limits. The updated model also has motion sensors in the chest strap so it can do things like analyze other stuff about how you run and make recommendations. Of course there are limitations. It's big and thick. It has a touch screen but it's imprecise and there's not a lot that you can do on a touchscreen that small. It will run for 8 hours on a charge. You need a special charger. I'm a runner and most people think that runners are nuts and they're probably right but a runner and geek will put up with the limitations to get the functionality present. I really doubt that Apple, Samsung, Google, etc. are going to produce something that caters to this market. I don't think that their products will have the durability of a special-purpose device and I don't think that their biometrics sensors will be anywhere as useful as the Garmin's chest strap. So I will be happy to see what they come up with but I have a lot of doubts as to how useful the devices will be. BTW, one thing that I would like is an iPod Nano with BlueTooth for my runs. I have older generation Nanos with wired headsets but I'd much rather go wireless. An iPod Nano watch would work but I'd have to wear my Garmin on one wrist and the Nano on the other.
It needs to be so rugged that it won't matter if it gets soaked in mud, chemicals on it, slammed against a concrete wall, in direct sunlight for hours, etc.
It needs to have it's own powering that will last for a week. Solar electric cell should be built into the face and band to constantly boost the energy levels. Kinetic powering caused by the swing of my arm to further boost the battery life.
If it had that and was essentially a smaller version of my iPodTouch/iPhone/iPad then it would be of interest.
And it has to be inexpensive. Oops.
The ability to receive email.
10 years ago, I wore a watch that could receive email. This watch was discounted and I have not been able to find another one.
A new watch just needs to do what my existing one does, only better, and for a similar price. Any new features are a bonus. This is how smart phones evolved. Every new phone I gained added new features to the basic phone functionality. In this area still we are still generating phones with additional features. We have not yet decidedly reached the era of computers that just happen to have a phone feature.
I won't buy the first, second, or probably third generation of the current 'smartwatch'. Fool me once, shame on me.
1) Monitor and keep and continuous chart of blood glucose, sleep cycles, blood pressure and pulse rate, blood oxygenation. Don't even know if the tech is viable for these, but they'd interest me.
2) Be part of a payments system that actually gets traction out there. Let me import all of my cards of various kinds and then provide them wirelessly to others without having to pull out a card (and/or a phone with a specialized app).
3) Same thing, but hold all of my tickets for entry into events.
4) Connect to a voice-to-text service to enable personal logging/journal-keeping just by talking at it.
5) Find a way to operate clearly and reliably using gestures and voice recognition rather than touch input when desired.
6) Have built-in GPS and voice navigation.
7) Have a built-in high-resolution camera to enable convenient visual capture of information.
8) Do all of this in a cloud-based manner so that everything that the watch did/tracked was available from all of my other tech devices.
9) Have a between-recharges time measured in weeks.
I don't know, it would have to be pretty freaking fabulous. But there are some basic things that I *don't* care if a smartwatch does, and those are probably more telling. I absolutely do not care about doing these things on a smartwatch:
1) Calls
2) Web
3) Email
4) Facebook
5) SMS
6) Linking it to my phone via bluetooth
7) Telling time
Number 6 in particular is a non-starter for me. Battery life on phones is already too short. And phones are the devices that I use for web, email, and other informational tasks on the go because they (not a smartwatch) have the screens suitable for reading/editing. I need them to last as long as possible, and I have no interest in duplicating their functions on a smartwatch. So I refuse to enable bluetooth on my phone all the time just to get some additional "watch" features.
It needs to be a "standalone" device in the sense of no other devices needed for it to operate normally, but a completely cloud-integrated device in the sense of "but I can access everything it does and it can access everything I do on my other devices over the network."
Number 7 is also pointedly interesting. I don't care if something on my wrist can tell time. Social "time" as a concept is more ambient than ever. Everything has a clock on it. Your computer. Your phone. Your thermostat. Your radio. Your car dash. Every ticket machine of every kind, from movies to transit to events. Public spaces and the sides of buildings and billboards and retail shop signs. I don't look at my wrist or my phone to know what time it is. I do a quick visual 360 and in general, I find what I'm looking for, wherever I happen to be. A "time-telling device" is frankly a bit 19th/early-20th century a this point.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Well first of all the usual stuff. It needs to be completely open source and have an open bootloader so there is a chance of security. It also needs to have rather simple code so it can be checked, as well as decent battery life.
Then there is the whole issue of user interfaces which isn't even solved for mobile phones these days. What you need is a powerful interface that works on small devices. So far the best contestant in that area seems to be the HP-01 calculator watch.
http://www.led-forever.com/htm...
It allows you to start a stop watch, and then use the result in real time to do calculations on it.
Unfortunately it seems like "smartwatch" manufacturers will go the other route, making them rather useless. Just like they already did with the idea of a "smartphone" when they turned it from something like the Nokia Communicator to something like the iPhone.
The only way I would ever consider wearing something on my wrist:
1. Long battery life (Charging it once a month would be a reasonable compromise, but ideally once every 6 months or 12 months).
2. It tracked my health in a meaningful way, and produced helpful insights that actually help me keep healthy.
3. NO PHONE FEATURES and NO GPS! I prefer to leave that for my phone.
Things I want me watch to tell me:
- You are lacking fluids, drink water
- You are too stressed, relax
- You are hunched, stand straight
- You have been sitting for too long, get up and walk for 5 minutes
- Blood Oxygen levels too low, do some exercise
- You are not sleeping well, consider changing your sleeping environment (or a number of recommendations about sleep)
Those are just a few, I'm sure I can think of a few more if I really put my mind to it.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
I have a stainless steel self-winding Rolex Explorer that I bought for $157 in Gibraltar in November of 1969. I've had it serviced once. It still keeps very good time. It tells time in the 12 hour system. No day, no date, black face, high contrast very visible hands. It's a basic watch and it's exactly what I want in a watch. I don't think I need a "smart watch" to augment my smart phone. I will admit that I sometimes use a Plantronics Bluetooth headset with the smartphone, in part, to comply with our new laws regarding phone use while driving. That, so far, is the extent of my wearable technology.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
- broadcast my location to anyone
- store any personal information (or at least allow me to have total control over what is stored)
- be hackable
- require me to charge it like a cellphone, fuck that, I want it to last for a year+ like a regular watch
- require the presence of my phone for its functionality
- act like a Dick Tracy gadget, there's enough asshats talking out loud via Blueooth et. al.
Honestly I'm not interested in a 'smart' watch, to me I see it being mainly just another piece of tech that people will be f*cking with when they should be watching the road, or making eye contact while talking to the person in front of them.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
If it can do CGM or even interface with a CGM sensor then it will be totally worthwhile. Currently the best CGM solution cost around 3k and requires another mobile phone sized bluetooth device which is NOT my phone.
I have the same opinion on features as you and I think the Pebble is close enough so that is why I'm wearing one rigth now and it's a long time since I wore a watch but I got really tired of pulling up my smartphone from my pocket all the time. Very happy with it so far. With a 3rd party app I can also get just the right amount of notifications.
The #1 priority, it has to be at least as good as my $30 Timex at what that $30 Timex actually does.
I could live with the battery needing charging every week, but not more often, half the point of my watch is being able to tell at a quick glance how much longer I have to sleep. (Without putting my glasses on, thanks, a clock on the night stand really doesn't help here.)
Better programmable alarms, alarm noises, and vibration alerts than I can get with a simple watch would be good.
Beyond that, give me a good heart rate monitor, and other basic sensors, and a good API to play with it all.
A watch is easier to look at when you're driving than a smartphone. Work out something that's useful to have when you only have a split second to look at it, and you have a market. Otherwise you're just talking about a fashion accessory which happens to tell the time.
I didn't wear anything on my wrists in the last 25 years and I can't think about any feature that would me want to do it again. One of the good features of a phone is that you put it into a pocket and take it out only when you need it. Your hands and wrists are free. When I go cycling I've already got my bike computer, on the bike. About monitoring all those quantified self things, they don't matter to me.
when it can detect spider-man guesture and throw spider webs on your enemy
- most important: a sync feature (for example with a basestation at your home) that does NOT give up your personal health data to the manufacturers server, which in term will sell your data to health insurance companies and what not. - standalone operation, not a dumb device that needs a bluetooth tethered smartphone near it all the time - buttload of sensors, like pulse, oxygen level, blood pressure, odometer, body/outside temperature - battery run time in the region of weeks or months - physical buttons on the front, not side. if it has an laughable stamp-sized touchscreen i am not going to buy it - waterproof, not water resistant
I want a PipBoy damn it!
I don't think the technology exists.
The bracelet on my Tag chronograph recently broke/wore out and I bought a Seiko analog chronograph to wear while I get the Tag bracelet replaced. The Seiko is a solar quartz and charges via any kind of light and supposedly has nearly 30 days of reserve power when fully charged but otherwise never needs battery changes (from what I read in reviews it will stay charged from ambient light merely sitting on a dresser). I can't tell where the "solar panels" are on this watch face, either.
For me to wear it, it would have to look like a quality analog watch on the outside. The face should continuously display a high res view of an analog watch, adjusting the display image/brightness to ambient light (so in low light it would resemble an analog watch in low light, with just the luminescent glow of the hands and numbers/markers).
The battery should last at least a month without taking it off (which is where the technology doesn't exist part comes in).
Trouble is, I can't see what "smart" features I would care about. All I can think of is that it would be cool to load new watch faces (ie, with exposed 'mechanisms', chronographs, moon phases, etc).
"I am surrounded by time - on my computer, the TV guide, cell phone, clock on microwave, clock on stove, clock on standard phone"
Once you get out of parents basement, time is not everywhere ;-)
It's true though that there will be people who find utility in wearing watches, and those who don't. Enforcing one solution for all will not make people happy - if you don't want a watch on your wrist, why wear it?
Interesting to see whether smartwaches would need to be turned off at an airplane... they use radio for some of functionality.
A few things come to mind.
1. A sleep tracker and a smart vibrating alarm, so I could get the most from my sleep hours and not wake up my wife and baby. Something similar exists and does not require an OS like Android, but would be a nice feature for a device like this.
2. Solve the city navigation. To the level of "now which exit should I take from this subway station?" and "now where is this bus stop I'm supposed to take next?"
3. Electronic wallet, if they can make it universally acceptable.
4. It would be nice if it could replace the phone for calls and maybe music, even if phone calls are not as convenient and are only meant to be a backup option. It has to work as a standalone device without also carrying a phone in your pocket, anyway. Optional software integration is welcome.
5. It must work at least a week without recharging, and maybe have an optional wireless charger you could use at your work desk without taking it off. Battery life is more important here than the display colors or the ability to play video.
6. There can be different screen sizes (jewelry to PipBoy 2000) and different price points. It's going to be hard to balance the screen, batteries, looks and price. If you want it to be popular, there has to be a $100 version with limited functionality, a $300 version that replaces all the main smartphone functions (maybe use a flexible/curved 4" screen), and multiple $1000+ fashion makes.
All these features don't have to be present in every device. For example, I would not use a 4" device for a wearable smart alarm.
First up; I have type three Ehlers-Danlos, which means that my joints randomly dislocate, and I take huge amounts of analgesia. Sometimes I have to deliberately take a larger dose than I am supposed to to get home if I don't have my wheelchair with me. This leads to episodes of confusion. So a nice big simple In Case Of Emergency button would be exceptionally helpful if I fall over or get too out of it. Additionally, the ability to have it remind me to take medication would be helpful. The ability to pull up Maps and navigate without having to pull out a device; it is not easy to defend myself. Finally, robust remote media controls for the paired phone or tablet. When I pass through crowded stations, particularly Westminster or London Liverpool Street, in my wheelchair, I occasionally get absolute fucking morons walking into me, despite flashing lights on my wheels and on the crutches on the back of the chair at about head height. To deal with this, I keep a set of quite loud Bluetooth speakers mounted to me chair, and blast metal as I travel. This also motivates my pushing. The ability to easily control this from my wrist, without having to dig into my pouch, would be very helpful. Oh, and telling the time would be a nice bonus, too.
I'm actually making my own. I don't see why I should spend ~$200 to just get a microcontroller with some circuitry on my wrist, not to mention it's really fun to design and build. My goal is to release my design as an open source alternative when it's done including both the hardware and software.
Phone Gauntlet. Shiny black plastic outside, soft thin grip enhanced material on the palm side. Actual phone electronics and screen are placed on the forearm. Maybe a little fold out keyboard there. Heres the hook: to make or answer phone calls you place your hand up against your head just as you would if you were making the hand signal for talking on the phone. The speakers situated on the thumb and the microphone on the pinky finger.
The first is if it becomes a TRUE replacement for the things that I put into my pockets... ALL of them: loyalty cards, credit cards, keys, etc.
The second is if it replaces about, oh, 80% of what I use my cellphone for: scanning the titles of emails (and quick deletes thereof), texts, GPS/locationing, and, oh, telling the time. =)
Give me those two things with a decent interface, and I'm in.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
If the device had a long battery life, and I could get an unlimited data plan, I'd use it.
It is about early to ask about smart watches. How about first asking what it would take people to buy a smart phone, or a smart television? Personally, perhaps threats of cruel death, on all three accounts.
Why do all of my things need to do all of the things?
I still wear a watch because it's generally quicker and more convenient to glance at my wrist than to dig my phone out of my pocket. In addition, I'm not required to turn my watch off when I get on a plane (though that's less of a reason now), the battery lasts on the order of years, not days (or hours), and I don't always have my phone on my person.
It's easier to glance at my wrist for the time, rather than digging my phone out of my pocket. It also has a stopwatch & timer, though the phone's is so much better that I rarely use the watch for that anymore.
For anything else, I can't think of anything that I can't just as easily do with my phone.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Like modern tablets started at $500, with decent ones around $200 now. There will be a shake-out in smartwatch feature sets and manufacturing economies of scale. You probably dont need a camera on a watch as some have tried.
First off it needs to be waterproof. And sufficiently waterproof to swim with. I have a Garmin GPS watch which is great (except it isn't waterproof enough to swim with). The battery life sucks, but it is still great for running and cycling and has a heart rate monitor. I have an iPhone and there are better apps for that, but it really isn't up to the environment. Would be nice to get the better phone apps on a Garmin type watch with better durability and battery life. For any athletic activity these are great for collecting and sharing useful metrics.
I wouldn't replace it with a smartwatch. I wouldn't even replace it with a quartz watch. I wear 3 silver Navajo bracelets on my opposite wrist so there's no place left for a smart wristwatch.
I've already got a Pebble. There are many things I like about it but things I would love to see:
* Inductive charging /w a decent charging base
* Ability to "answer" a call (rather than only suppress ring). This is doable with Pebble but for some reason requires a ton of extra software on the phone
* BT Microphone on the watch (this will likely kill batteries unless new battery tech comes out)
* Better battery life (I get about a week).
* Works with multiple languages (Pebble only seems to support English)
I bought a new Hamilton Railway Special conductor's pocket watch with the first paycheck I earned as a computer programmer in 1962. Since then, I have never worn a wrist watch and do not plan to wear one.
I retired the Hamilton when I got a pocket Casio with a calculator, alarm, and count-down timer. I now have an electronic pocket watch with a round dial and hour, minute, and second hands; it also shows the date (but not the month or year). I have to reset the date when a 30-day month ends. When that happens, I recheck the time against a global array of atomic clocks that are tied to the Internet; I find it keeps excellent time.
Yes, I was a computer geek in the early days of geekdom and remained so until I retired. I do not own a smart phone or even a dumb cell phone. When I leave the house, I prefer to leave it entirely -- phones, computers, etc. But I do carry a watch in my pocket on the end of a chain attached to my belt.
By the way, during much of my career, I was the go-to person for issues relating to time-keeping and the rotation of the earth on which time-keeping is based. This was for various projects involving earth-orbiting, military space satellites.
I'm considering replacing my iPhone 4 with something bigger, as my eyes are getting worse. If I get a larger phone, I'm not going to want to take it with me as much when I'm running or skiing. Give me something that can still track my workouts without my phone being present, and isn't stupid large and I might consider it. It also needs to be reasonably inexpensive, durable, waterproof, and have battery life long enough that it won't always be out of batteries when I go to wear it.
www.clarke.ca
...zap any NSA agent, or people of similar ilk, by mere voice command.
Unfortunately, given the amount of morons who want to know all about you, I might get vocal problems quite quickly...
I'll buy one the day after The Leafs win the Cup.
This is not an entertainment device so an E-Ink display would be great. Can they be made touchscreen?
Another reason for the E-Ink display would be great battery life.
I want one of the models to be fairly large; almost like strapping a Nexus 5 to my wrist.
It must be thin. The batteries can be in the wrist strap (which should allow for very long batter life (24 hours minimum)).
The wrist strap must not absorb anything, must not be coated with hard metal, and must let my skin breathe.
Applications that I would use/need:
GPS/Maps (navigation is not needed! I am perfectly capable of finding my own way, just show me where I am.)
Time (of course)
Text messaging (possibly with a removable handheld keyboard type thing for when having long conversations via Hangouts or whatever).
Phone capabilities with a hardwired earpiece that can be pulled from the device and automatically retracted. Speakerphone optional.
Built in microphone and camera with LEDs hardwired (can not be surreptitiously turned on in software!) to show if they are active. May as well have an LED to show if the earpiece is active as well.
If other neat things like body and air sensors can be implemented, then great. Air pressure, blood pressure, blood oxygenation levels, sugar levels, body temp, air temp, etc etc. Magnetic compass. You get the idea about sensors. Ability to turn them individually and as a group.
A hardware switch that turns off all data collection and transmission (making it essentially a digital watch for the duration) that can not be bypassed by software.
I would pay large sums of money for such a device. I would be afraid to have such a device without the hardware switches described.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
In order:
- minimum a full week battery life. Even that is really too often for a watch-like device, but as long as available technology is what it is, say a week.
- did I mention battery life yet?
- I'LL RECHARGE SUNDAY NIGHTS ONLY, OK?
- wireless charging or a dock, I don't care. No fiddly connectors, or port covers.
- IP68
- always on display, readable in sunlight
- guaranteed periodic software updates for a minimum of 5 years from launch. Make sure the device has enough RAM onboard.
- functions:
- open API for third party apps
- timekeeping.
- periodic sync of paired smartphone calendar to local calendar, so one can get events and browse the calendar without the phone around
- periodic sync of paired smartphone contact list, so one can use the smartphone as a dialer. Also remote keypad.
- ability to display alerts and messages from a paired smartphone.
- heart rate monitor. Togglable. (Is that a word?). Also readable from smartphone via BLE. Will eat battery, ok. Accurate. Works when exercising. Talk to MIO.
- NFC, so the smartwatch can be used as a key.
- compass. (GPS is useful with a map, a smartwatch does not have enough screen realestate for a map. And it eats battery.)
- multimedia controls for a connected smartphone
- virtual leash, so either the phone or the watch notifies you if the other part appears out of range
- ability for smartphone apps to use smartwatch as a remote display of sorts. Will eat battery, ok.
- design. Think Macbook Air. For the wrist. Soft shapes, solid appearance. Or something. I am not a designer. A shiny, overheated lego brick doesn't cut it, ok?
I do not see a smartwatch as a (primary) input device. Think remote display and sensors.
Dag B
Also... I'd consider buying a Smart Watch with any of these capabilities...
* Time travel, +/- 5000 years, with return feature
* Teleportation, up to 50km distance
* Time dilation ("bullet time"), minimum 60 seconds subjective to 1 second external observer.
* 3D copier (3D scanner + 3D printer; synthesize feedstock from atmospheric carbon)
* Flight (up to 30 minutes, max load 200kg, max speed 50km/hr)
* Force shield (deflect rain + bullets), 60 minute runtime
* Transforms into giant Battle Robot
* Underwater breathing support + waterproof (rated to 300 m)
* 2d projector (4m diagonal w/1200 lumens @ 20m)
* Holographic projector that plays "Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi..."; monochrome image ok
* Sleep gas feature
* Dog-walking feature
When my cell phone comes in a pocket watch form factor is when I'll buy a smart watch. Screw wearing it on my wrist.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Frankly, I'd like it to be more like the crop of data acquiring bands that we see right now with a small time display, and that's it. I'd like it to capture a lot of health data (HR, distance travelled, etc.) and it should sync with my ANT+ bike equipment (cadence monitor, speed, power, everything) and act as a proxy to my phone and feed my phone data.
Look, the phone is the thing with the screen that you actually want to look at. A watch face is too small for anything except small bites of information except the time and the date. The new Withings Activite watch actually looks pretty good; no digital display at all. The battery lasts a year. It tells you if you're meeting your daily goals and basically nothing else. But it captures data. THAT'S useful.
I'm never going to read email on my watch that's coming from my phone; how could that possibly make any sense? MAYBE I wouldn't mind a sort of morse code vibration to it that tells me if I got a notification by text, mail or other.
Part of the problem with the current crop of smart watches is they haven't thought about what kind of information is appropriate to display on a screen that small. A watch is meant to be GLANCED at, not stared at. Information has to come in digestible, atomic chunks. We can process the relative position of two arms on the face very quickly, but an email or text requires a few seconds of reading, particularly if the font is small or the words have been forced to be wrapped.
We need to rethink data display before we can make use of these devices. Right now, it's the wrong data for the form factor.
All I need a watch to do is to tell me what time it is, and my $30 Timex does that job just fine!
"A Bird In The Hand Will Poop On Your Wrist"-Benny Hill,1982
I liked the idea of that kickstarter waterproof thingy. Would be nice to have a phone on my arm while surfing... Only the boss can then bug me and its not really very waterproof.
I view it as a phone that you strap to your wrist. I only wear watches for travel. A phone that you strap to your wrist is just a little bit more convenient. You have vibrate better. Its also away from centre of the body so its a little away from your chakra line if you go in for that kind of thing.
A blog I run for the wealth
Why don't people like to swap batteries or devices designed to charge that way any more? Be it smartphones, electric cars or.in this case watches.
A blog I run for the wealth
doing just a few things well might be enough:
-good timepiece. Obvious clock, but also timer.
-good flashlight.
-dead simple integration with select phone apps. Less is more as long as quality is high.
-be rugged, I don't want to have to baby a thing I wear all the time.
-look attractive, I'd say mimic non-smart watch look as much as possible.
-not require me to do a lot to charge the thing or haul around another charger. I would love to see something like kinetic charging.
-do something novel. Synth display with ambient sound in a club? NFC ring? Just a few ideas done right might put it over the top.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
I'd say 6 months is the minimum battery time for a device to be called a watch and not a wristband-PC.
My desirable functions:
1. Blood pressure
2. Cholesterol
3. Blood Sugar
4. Blood Oxygen %
5. Air quality
6. Altitude
7. Velocity
8. Lux
9. Wifi
10. Solar re-charging
So far everything misses the mark.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!