Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Do You Want a Smart Watch?
Watches that do more than tell the time have been around for a long time. (And in fiction, James Bond, Dick Tracey, and Michael Knight all had notably high-tech watches.)
The new smart watches from Samsung and LG, without a phone connected via Bluetooth as backhaul, can still serve to show the time and to serve as alarms (and Samsung's can measure your pulse, too), but all the magic features (like searching by voice via the watch) do require a connection. They can't play MP3s or take pictures on their own, and they don't have built-in GPS. Even so, compared to the polarizing Google Glass, the new breed of smart watches are wearables that probably are an easier sell, even if this far the trend has been to replace watches with smart phones. (Android Wear has gotten a lot of attention, but Microsoft has their own upcoming, and Apple almost certainly does, too.) Are you interested in a smart watch, and if so, what uses do you want it for? If they have no appeal to you now, are there functions that would make you change your mind on that front?
No
I'd like a very *simple* smart watch...
* Simple caller-ID and memo display, programmable shortcut buttons, nothing else.
* Very long charge life comparatively (2 weeks would be okay) and/or very easy charging (put it on a charging pad).
If a smartwatch served as a secure Bitcoin wallet, I'd buy one!
I'm on my fourth watch and this one even has a date window. I cannot comprehend how a watch can get even smarter!
Full disclosure: I am the son of a jeweller / watchsmith.
Don't want it for the same reason I got rid of my cell phone. I was servicing it more than it was serving me, and it's redundant to my portable computer anyway.
NO. How many more stories are going to ask this question?
With a flexible OLED display that wraps around my entire forearm. Not sure where to put the battery, but I would not be surprised if that turns out to be a future tech.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The smart watches I've seen aren't meant to be used independently - they're used in conjunction with a smartphone. I'm not sure I want one, but I can see the appeal of - you can read a text, see who's calling, and perform simple functions without pulling out your phone.
I signed up for a Pebble on day 2 of the Kickstarted campaign. When I finally got it, I spend many hours loading watchfaces, apps and exploring all the features. Nothing really klicked for me. Kept it on my arm anyway for a week - just for show and tell - and now I'm totally hooked.
The killer app is the alerts. Not having to pull out the phone 500 times every day is what keeps this ugly thing on my wrist.
Forget all the music control, runkeeper, navigation and whatever they try. Camera - that's just stupid. That's all done better on the phone, but the *alerts* are golden! Several friends went through the same process. Initial disappointment turned to must-have. I never use the buttons - just a quick glance when the thing buzz. Android or iOS in the watch is nonsense. Pebble got the idea right, but could scale down on the features and focus on the looks.
So get me a "moderately clever" watch...
I would like a better fitness watch that tracked pulse rate without a chest band, respiration rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood o2 levels, as well a movements such as swimming and riding, not just waking and running. I would like to to use the GPS in my phone and not have one built in.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
No thanks. The watch is just another device on the long list of separate things that got consolidated into my phone (mp3 player, camera, calendar, ebook reader, flashlight, GPS, alarm clock, etc.). As with all those other things, the version on my phone is so far into the "good enough" range that having a separate device for the same functionality just doesn't offer much appeal.
Too many of the smart watches seem to try to move functionality back off the phone, which seems pretty pointless (until at such time as it could completely replace everything on my phone, which case I might be interested. You know, some sort of holographic magic screen that replaces the need for a large physical screen, or maybe interfaces with some futuristic contact lenses that project a HUD that only I can see).
Anyway, that seems to be the core problem - these watches just don't do anything worthwhile compared to what I'll already be carrying with me. I don't want a watch as a status symbol, I don't need a watch to just tell time, and I don't need/want a watch to do a bunch of stuff my phone already does.
An exception would be for highly niche purposes. I have a kid with type I diabetes. If he could have a watch that could monitor is blood sugar levels and dispense insulin, I'd buy it.
No.
1) Yet Another Device To Keep Track Of
2) Yet Another Device To Charge
3) Yet Another Device To Perform Monthly Patches On/Worry About Being Infected By Malware
4) It's simply not that hard to take my phone out of my pocket.
5) I've gotten very used to not wearing a watch, or cleaning it every month from all the skin/sweat stains they accumulate
6) The user interface is destined to be either disappointingly useless, or useful but too-big-to-be-practical.
I have exactly 0 interest in smart watches.
and hell no.
Is that clear enough?
The computer in the watch can do that, no biggie.
The key is user interface and that seems unlikely.
I don't know about that. My Citizen WR-100 is a very modest watch. My wife bought it for me about 8 years ago. $250. It's my daily driver... the nightstand watch. It's very special to me for many intangible reasons, but it certainly isn't a status symbol.
I get what you're saying, but there's a middle ground somewhere, too.
Beware of the Leopard.
Some of the smart watches out there look OK; for instance the Martian Watches Passport SmartWatch looks like a reasonable timepiece, has a reported 1 week battery life, and does some simple Dick Tracy stuff while still managing to be a wristwatch.
If it had a separate power supply or some way to use the last bit of the main supply strictly as a watch with a 6 month reserve for essential functions I'd probably buy that.
But most of them are little phone gadgets for your wrist that will require charging daily, or nearly daily. Useless.
No, not really.
I'm inundated with tech. It's what I do for a living (not uncommon, on this site). If anything, I'd prefer easier ways to disconnect rather than add an additional stream of information.
Until they're ready to override my optic nerve or provide (nearly) seamless Augmented Reality, I am perfectly happy to live without. I still enjoy seeing the progression, but I just think I'm still happier not using most such things.
Changing the name from Ask Slashdot to Slashdot Asks seems a rather telling display of your character. You see yourselves as Slashdot, and the commenters as ... what, customers? the audience?
The next Beta Sucks is coming, it is only a matter of time. Until you realize that we, the commenters, are the site -- that we create the value you sell to the readers -- you will never be out from under that hanging sword.
Do me a favor; go to YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Ars, and half a dozen other sites, and read some comment streams. Do you see how vacuous they are? Do you see how much chaff you must wade through to find one or two poignant insights?
The moderation and metamoderation systems here have generated a unique community (well, not entirely unique, with SoylentNews cruising along in the wings). It is the community of commenters that you have the privilege of monetizing. But only so long as you don't piss it away with your narcissism.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I would love a smart watch but it would be more like computer on your forearm. the problem is the requirements are has, a highres display that flexes in three dimensions, sticks to your arm using the van der waals force (like gecko feet), uses heat from your body for power, weighs less than a 10 grams and is 1mm thick. It's not impossible, my idea is just an expression of several "almost there" technologies.
that is the smartphone i really want.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
My first smartwatch was a Seiko Data 2000, it was released in 1983 - and had a 4-line dot-matrix LCD display that lasted surprisingly long. It had an external keyboard with induction technology to transfer the data from the keyboard to the watch.
Since then, there has been numerous PIM watches released over the years, some with icons, some databanks etc. And 5 years ago - I bought a Chinese Watch-Phone with mp4 playback/recording, spy-camera, GSM-phone, Bluetooth (stereo) headset and a color touch screen with a mini stylus hidden in the wristband itself.
I used it the first 2 weeks to show off to my friends, I had to make numerous phone calls with it because no one at that time would believe that it actually worked as a phone, but yes - it most certainly did...and this was WAY before the well-known brands came with their limited "smart" watches, this thing could already do more than their stuff today.
I think I wrote...I used it for 2 weeks, gave it away to a watch-collector as a christmas present, because honestly...I'd never use it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Everyone I've seen use one uses it to remotely answer the phone, while they try to find where they last laid the phone. It's probably a better match for the tablet-sized phones people don't keep on them.
Learn to love Alaska
Is if it came with a red LED display and looked cheaply made. The people who wear watches anymore seem to be,"Hey look at how much money I have." so looking like you're going in the opposite direction would be art as fashion... if it didn't cost a lot of money. So maybe I'm thinking it is time to go invest in a 1$ LED watch off ebay to be a smart ass. Oh even better would be to leave it blinking 12:00 all day.
God spoke to me
No, I do not want a watch that is meant to sell my private information to third party, ass-holes like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. etc. etc.
I already have a phone to do that.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I barely need my smart phone, why the hell would I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a second, feature-pared screen that has a terrible battery life?
As with the existing technological hassles in my life, I would use a smart watch only if it did something significantly new.
In the old days (1980s), my laptop would go weeks without a battery charge. Now, my laptop barely makes it through a day, if I'm not actually using it much during that day. But my new laptop is vastly more capable, with high-DPI IPS display and 802.11ac WiFi and the ability to run a C++ compiler many times in a single hour.
In the less old days, my phone would go a bit over a week without a battery charge. Now, my phone usually makes it through a day, but not if I'm using its GPS or its processor extensively; and it's much bigger. But my new phone has a camera that doesn't entirely suck and a lot of apps, some of them useful, and visual voicemail. Still, I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have another compelling feature: Really cheap unlimited plans.
That's 2 devices that I have to plug in every day to keep using. A smart watch would be a third. So far, I haven't heard of any compelling features. The current crop has what? The ability to show notifications. Which my phone already does when I leave it on the table next to my mouse, and which I'm already consciously choosing to ignore when I want to maintain focus. And Samsung's watch has its trademark heart rate sensor, which works only if you're not exercising.
I can imagine some uses for a smart watch, in concept, if it could do stuff independently of the phone. A camera that you don't even have to dig out of your pocket (or purse, if you have a Samsung). A communications device that you can carry without pockets. A security/control device (if it doesn't come from Google, Apple, or Microsoft, and runs free software). The concept is interesting. It just needs good execution.
Have a nice time.
Check out Pebble. I got it to last 2 weeks without bluetooth. If you turn bluetooth on, it's gonna last a solid week. And it's waterproof (I used it in a pool and daily in my shower).
Unless its something like they had on ARK-II back in the 70's, ( and that would not be too practical ) a smart watch will always be a gimmick, unless there is some sort of way to make the screen appear bigger than it is.
Not being a Luddite, or not 'thinking outside the box', its far to small to be really useful other than for telling time. Just from the proliferation of larger screen phones you can tell that going smaller is not the direction people want to go for usability or functionality.
Sure, you can have alarms, and scrolling banners.. but your phone can do that, and so much more, without the 'squint' limitation...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I want to be able to call my self-aware trans-am to save me from gunfire
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
No FM Radio. Less storage than a Nomad. Lame.
http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod
This actually makes me nervous. Given the unbroken track record of Slashdot mistaking the market share for every major advance in technology since the iPod, I'm forced to believe that smart watches are going to be a hit.
And I'm not sure I want to live in that world.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You don't need a watch, you need a life!
You've obviously made the trade off to give up your freedom to be connected 24x7, I am not judging you, its just not a choice that I would make for me.
500 alerts a day? That's over 30 alerts an hour assuming a 16 hour day. An alert every 2 minutes? Wow... Just wow.
How do you have time to have a life? I am serious about this. Are these alerts coming from work? From social media? Text Messages from friends?
So during a 2 hour dinner or a movie or anything else you might do, you don't mind being interrupted 60 times?
What do you do with these alerts? Ignore them? Respond to them? Does that mean you pull out the phone and respond?
My personal time is too precious to give it over to a little black box on my wrist. I'd want to control what notifications I get, how often and from whom.
I don't want a little black box to control my life.
Absolutely, I get that people in a support position might need to get alerts while on the job, but 500 a day that need your immediate attention can't be healthy,
for the organization or any person. I certainly hope they pay you really really well!!!
I want one. The specific thing I want my watch to do, besides be attractive manly jewelry and tell me the time faster than pulling the pod (cell phone) out of my pocket, is to vibrate or give alarms when certain things happen or to allow easier interaction with other of my nearby technology.
Oh, I forgot my pod in my car when I went into the shopping mall? I'll know because my watch will vibrate when I'm 50 feet away from the car instead of waiting an hour and wondering why my wife hasn't called me with the dinner plans like she promised.
Oh, I'm at a playground trying to manage multiple children safely? I'll know if one of my children starts to wander away, and the watch will point me in the direction they are wandering.
Oh, I'm listening to a podcast in earphones with my pod in my tight jeans pocket, and someone calls me? I can answer the call in one second by touching my watch, instead of trying to fish the pod out of my pocket and missing the call. I can also use the mic on my watch for better audio quality.
Oh, I want to take a 'selfie' from farther away than my arms reach? I can put the camera on a flat surface, go pose, look at my watch to see what the camera sees, get it framed up right, then touch my watch to start a three-second timer on the camera.
All you people saying NO have no imagination. You are the same people who would say "Why would I need my cell phone to have a big screen on it? All it has to do is show phone numbers and my flip phone already can do that." Have you guys paused to consider that there might be applications beyond your current imagination?
I have a Pebble -- until recently, a Kickstarter-edition one, though it malfunctioned and the company quite helpfully replaced it.
I originally got it as a geek toy, a whim, but it turned out to be hugely useful for me, given my constraints and work circumstances. Largely, this came down to three factors:
I manage people, and at least at my current company that means that the vast majority of my time is spent in meetings. Having a Pebble on which to see what messages I'm receiving (just for text messages, not FB or email) means I can know when someone's texted me (a rare, but potentially important, occasion) and be able to see what I got without having to reach for my phone in my pocket; it also means that because being able to see the message doesn't necessitate using the tool with which I respond, that I'm less likely to respond immediately, which makes the process less disruptive to the people I'm in meetings with;
I used to miss meetings often because I'd get in the middle of something (or another meeting) and forget to check where I next need to go. My phone quickly vibrating in my pocket was easy to miss. But my watch vibrating? For me, it's unmissable, and it makes me much more aware of where I need to go next.
The other factor that's made a huge difference is not work-related. Being able to control music on my phone via my watch is a trivial improvement when I work out, but it's made another issue basically go away: The "What the hell did I do with my phone?" problem. If I can't find my phone these days, calling it doesn't necessarily work -- it's typically in quiet mode -- but using my Pebble to get some music playing on it, and increasing the volume, is usually immediately helpful in figuring out where the phone is.
You could, of course, argue that these three factors are not, or should not, be relevant to the average geek -- maybe you don't have as many meetings, or are more disciplined about checking your calendar. And God knows we all found our phones before we could remotely start them playing music. But it's been very helpful to me.
What do you mean a specific phone or vendor? The Pebble has been around for a long time and has no such allegiances.
And ugly? Have you seen the Steel? It's more handsome than the majority of watches I've owned.
Calendar alerts, live weather, caller ID, and text messages all have made me a fan of my Pebble. Try one for a couple of weeks - I'm pretty sure you'll become a convert. I'm sure it varies based on style, but I've discovered that I probably only respond to about 30-40% of text messages (some are ignored, others are received ends of conversations). The rest can be viewed on my watch without having to ever mess with the phone.
With a watch and a blue tooth head set soon enough the question will not longer be who needs a smartwatch, it will be who needs a smartphone - I think the mini-tablet will ultimately reign supreme and act as a hub for tiny peripherals. That's what I'm hoping for at least.
ôó
Almost, I want a smart phone sitting in my top pocket that will tell me the time and date when I ask it, even when it is pin locked. So some more shirt pocket voice commands when screen is locked, handy when driving.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It seems to me that current wearable products are a case of technology looking for a problem to solve. There's nothing they do that matters to me that my iPhone can't do better, and the idea that it's a burden to pull my watch out of my pocket seems laughable to me. The Android Wear products are vaguely interesting as technology demonstrations, but I see nothing that they DO that I need done —and I don't want to wear a device on my arm and charge yet another device, too. It's theoretically possible that someone will release a new product that does something that I'm not even conceiving on, in which case I'll re-evaluate my opinion. But right now I can't see anything interesting about them. If Apple releases anything even vaguely similar (in function or anything else) to what the Android companies have been releasing, I'll have zero interest in it. I need products that solve real problems that I have. Nothing about what I see so far even attempts to address anything that I consider a problem to be solved.
Then all I'll need is a smart car.
"Have you paused to consider that there might be other lifestyles than your own?"
Sure. I know there are ascetics. Then there are the other vast majority of us. You know, people without your magical 100% perfect memory, people who listen to music [or podcasts], people with children, people who take pictures, and most important people who have myriad other problems not discussed here because their needs are outside my imagination, and yours.
"Why would [using a mic on my watch] be better than the [mic on my] phone?"
Because the phone is in my pocket, as stated in the hypothetical. Before you ask your next question, here's the answer: for the same reason it's more convenient to have a phone in my pocket rather than tethered to my kitchen.
A smart watch could:
* Displace smart phones/dedicated GPSes used for turn-by-turn directions (visual and audio) while driving. It's going to be great for motorcycle users. I'm not sure yet whether it will be legal for this use.
* It will make the policeman's job more difficult by allowing drivers to check their emails/texts while driving without it being obvious to an observer.
* Provide quick updates to stock/commodity traders who are on the go or not near a desktop/laptop.
* Allow joggers to skip songs without carrying their smartphones in their hands.
I bet there are many other uses, but only gadget lovers and those who find its services very useful are likely to buy it -- the general smart phone user is more likely to skip the watch.
So could smartphones, at no additional difficulty. In fact they'll do so better if you have a bluetooth earpiece, as the audio will be routed right to your ear. There's nothing here a watch will do better than a phone. (There's also good reasons for continuing to use the dedicated GPS, as they tend to lose signal less, have maps predownloaded in case you go to an area with spotty internet, and have better databases of nearby locations. But I can understand wanteing to ditch it).
Here's an idea- on the extremely rare occasion you actually have to deal with the police, wait 10 fucking minutes to look at your texts. Also, if you need to deal with the police more than once every 5 or 6 years, take a good hard look at what you're doing wrong with your life.
So does a smartphone, with a better UI, and more screen space for easy access to information
Or they could use voice control. But I doubt holding it in their hands or fishing it out of ones pocket is really all that much worse than trying to fuck around with your watch while jogging. In fact I would bet either of those are easier.
Yeah, still no valid use cases for a smartwatch.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There's a few other things in the hardware that would bring up issues:
*Battery- smaller form factor, smaller battery, less life. People complain about that already
*camera- is there any place to put a camera on there that isn't going to be blocked by write hair or inconvenient to take a picture with? Can you see the screen to see the image? is it easy to hold your arm steady enough?
*Text input- voice recognition isn't there yet, and even when it is you don't always want to be public with your messages. How do you type on one quickly?
*Is there enough physical room for everything?
*Heat- if we do all that in a watch, how hot will it get? Will it become a safety hazard or uncomfortable to wear?
*Power- even if everything works, a phone can have the same stuff and more, due to form factor. So why would you limit yourself to the watch?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
FWIW, much of what you want has been available for years. Ex: http://www.aliexpress.com/item...
There's a slew of versions of bluetooth wristbands. They all seem to include:
* alert when they go out of range of your phone (ie. you leave phone in car or it gets stolen, and it vibrates when you're 5m away)
* time/date on display (for any of those with a display... some don't have a display)
* caller id displayed (for those with a display)
* vibrate on incoming calls
* (optionally) vibrate on incoming sms/txt/notifications
* basic call handling (answer/hang up)
Personally, I'd feel better about the current "smart watches" if they could stand on their own better. They're a whole lot bulkier than things like the aforementioned bluetooth bracelet, but they don't really bring that many additional features to the table.
My gut tells me that many of the limitations are directly due to the carriers. Ex. watch has apps that proxy to stuff on the phone and vice versa, rather than just going directly to the internet. If they just used the phone for net access (for example), they'd be more useful, but carriers would want to charge for that type of net use (like using a phone's internet access via a laptop... most carriers force you to buy a special plan and pay more for that feature).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unless you like carrying a smartphone in your hands all the time in crowded places, or like leaving your smartphone on the table where it can get lost or stolen, the smart watch is better. Nothing beats a watch for quickly checking something. Constantly fishing a phone out of your pocket, unlocking it, checking stuff and putting the phone back in your pocket can become extremely tedious quickly.
Constantly having to take it out to skip songs gets tiring and many people don't like voice control.
Sorry, your alternatives aren't that much better either. According to you, the wristwatch should've never been invented. People should just be satisfied with fishing out gold/silver/steel watches from their breast pockets to check the time.
I haven't owned any of the current generation of cellphone-accessory smartwatches. The ones I have owned:
-- Casio GPS watch - It was a gift from my wife, back before GPSs had taken over the world. It was big and clunky, got me all kinds of geek cred at work, didn't work very well as a GPS but the fact that it worked at all was amazing. -- TI EZ430-Chronos watch - programmable, using their MSP430 microprocessor set, had a reasonably flexible display. It didn't have a lot of sensors, and I didn't end up hacking it very much, but it was a lot of fun. It had a low-power radio link that let it connect to a heartbeat monitor band, so you could use it for things like watching your heart rate while jogging. -- Watches with various other functions built in, like moon phase, tides tables for surfing, that kind of thing. One of them had a screen saver for entirely no good reason, just because it could.In practice, I find that almost all of the time I'm either in front of a computer screen with a clock display in the corner, or in an environment with clocks around, or carrying a cellphone with a clock display on the main screen, or in an environment that's not very friendly to watches, or in a social environment where I don't really care what time the clock says it is, so I've stopped wearing watches most of the time.
When smart-watches get smart enough to be the phone instead of being a peripheral display for the phone, maybe. But is a smart-watch phone that needs a Bluetooth headset and needs reading glasses to use more convenient than a cellphone with big text that can use a wired headset? For me, it's really not.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No it's not. A smart phone is more conveniently carried than a laptop. A smart watch is not more convenient than a smart phone. There are also functions that a smart phone can perform that a laptop can't. Please rein in your assholishness until you learn how analogies work.
I agree with your comment. I remember when I posted right here on slashdot in 2005 that phone displays were too small and that we needed touchscreen and voice UIs .. of course I got response that phones didn't need to have a big screen because people have TVs --seriously?
Proof: http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...