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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.
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.
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.
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.
A decent watch will last decades and have a battery that lasts several years.
There are countless styles and options for the face and band, even in the $40 and under range.
You're a fucking liar.
You stole my response.... Smart watch???? You mean that thing that requires another device to actually DO something?
I'll keep my old analog watch because it takes no batteries, keeps reasonable time, and is going to work when all else fails...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Omega and Seiko watches (quartz not mechanical) have been running non stop (barring the change in battery every 3 or so years) constantly for the last 30 years. Is that enough for a reliability figure ? And furthermore while my Omega cost me something like 1500$ my Seiko was a 400$ purchase. Can't think of any other product that's been as reliable as these 2 are. Ok maybe HP calculators of old come close enough.
2) Battery will last 3+ years, or it will require no battery.
Buy a decent quartz watch (hint not 5$ bottom of the barrel watch).
Eco drive watches don't even have a battery, they use sunlight and that isn't going out of fashion anytime soon.
3) It doesn't have a shitty leather strap or shiny shit that will make it get stolen or some shitty material
You know watches are still made with stainless steel bracelets right ?
4) It costs less than $40.
I have never seen a DUMB watch which satisfies these, and I suspect that any smart watch would fail miserably at ALL of them. All I want is something which won't fall apart will tell me the fucking time when I'm hiking in the woods for a week and my cell phone dies. ALL watches have failed me so far.
A Casio G-Shock is nearly indestructible and goes for 50$ more or less.
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
Several hours battery life? I would want at least several weeks, so I can go on vacation without a charger.
My normal watches run for years, so a few weeks is really not too much to ask.
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.
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.
Fitness telemetry doesn't *need* a point beyond "it's fun". There's a sizable number of us stats geeks that would love to play with that dataset.
Seeing how we're effectively talking about a toy here anyway, "fun" is allowed to be the point.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!