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Ask Slashdot: What Smartwatch Apps Could You See Yourself Using?
An anonymous reader writes: It's official: the smartwatch wars have begun. Apple's announcement of the Apple Watch added a contender to the race already shaping up between the Pebble watch, the Moto 360, and others. Personally, my doubts about wanting one were put to rest when I learned of the health-related features. Smartwatches will be able to track your movements and pulse rate, calculate how many calories you burn, and coach you continuously to improve your fitness.
If you have one or plan on buying one, what apps or functions do you see yourself getting the most use from? If you're still skeptical, what would it take? (If an app developer sees your requirements here on Slashdot, your wish might come true.)
If you have one or plan on buying one, what apps or functions do you see yourself getting the most use from? If you're still skeptical, what would it take? (If an app developer sees your requirements here on Slashdot, your wish might come true.)
Is the submitter of the article a developer looking for ideas?
Can you really have a "war" when you no one shows up?
Don't get me wrong, some of these smart watches rate as "neat", but not for several hundred dollars. I could see dropping 100 bucks, maybe, on something that tracks health telemetry, but honestly? It'd probably have to be a gift before I got it.
This is kind of like saying 3D TV companies were in a war with each other. While that may have been true, consumers didn't notice because the tech just wasn't that interesting to them.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The things that I can currently think of that I'd use a smartwatch for - 1) GPS / pedometer for running 2) music (without the need for a phone) while working out 3) discreetly checking notifications during meetings 4) navigation when riding a bike / motorcycle. I realize not everyone would value these and will say "JUST USE YOUR PHONE!", but for a $200 - $250 smart watch, I'd definitely drop down the money for these apps.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Wake me up when a smartwatch is a standalone device that does everything my Nexus 5 does now with decent battery life and an affordable pricetag. We're making progress, sure, but nowhere near primetime.
You will be reduced to a series of numbers.
You will find these numbers matter to you.
You will want to increase, decrease or maintain these numbers.
Keep your eyes on the numbers.
These numbers matter.
Nothing else matters.
How about an alert that tells you exactly when the watch goes out of style?
You can swim (not scuba dive) with it, and the battery lasts more than 3 days. Various notification features are the most useful for me, and the ability to create my own watchface without much difficulty (I'm a programmer). I'd take Moto 360, LG G Watch R, and even Apple Watch more seriously if they could beat the battery life of Pebble, and get at least IP69 rating.
LOL, true. We were talking about this at work. I'm far from an Apple hater. I bought a first-gen iPod and loved it, along with some later generations. I've had two iPhones (though now am on my second Android). I'm on my 4th Mac. I have Kindle tablets but admit that the iPad is a very nice machine.
With that said, it is hard for me to imagine why I would want - price aside - another device on my wrist that does a subset of the thing in my pocket. If the watch were useful away from the phone, I could see some applications. But as is? The uses are contrived and niche.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Currently I see no reason to have a smartwatch, it just seems like an expensive watch that relays notifications from my phone. I have no problem reaching into my pocket to grab my phone when needed. Everything these smartwatches can do, my phone can already do and usually better. This to me just seems like having a pager and a cell phone years ago, is it really necessary? I do see the potential for these devices, I just don't think they are there yet.
or is there a hidden strategy of increasing the phone sizes of new iphones to deliberately make them unwieldy, and create a problem which can be "solved" with a smart-watch? ie, more crap to sell.
I'll be happy when I can use it to detonate those remote mines that I set.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Yeah but then your eyes couldn't follow the display fast enough.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I had a Sony Smartwatch for a while before it broke. Here are the apps I would like to see/write, besides the obvious notification apps:
Nextbus predictions
Remote control for mythtv
Monthly calender
Google maps with walking route
Weather
Display brief text, like shopping lists
Looks like a lot of these where covered in the Apple Watch presentation.
There lots of things people use their smartphones for that only require a quick glance. They are the kinds of things a smartwatch is suited for.
If you're like a lot of people, you carry a backpack/computer case with you on a regular basis. Keeping your phone safely inside that bag for most circumstances would be a benefit, freeing your pockets of the burden. You could still receive/triage incoming communications while the phone was tucked away. "Nearby" for a well designed bluetooth transceiver is 30-45 feet which is enough to keep you from having to unsheathe your phone in most circumstances.
The correct solution is to put all the "phone" functionality (antenna, transmitter, etc.) in the "watch", and use the "phone" as nothing more than a remote display and computing platform. It would be tricky to create the right split (since the watch has to have some computing power), but not impossible. The second trick would be to get the battery life of the watch high enough with the added power requirements.
The current split of "watch is a peripheral" won't appeal to enough people to make true sales inroads. Sure, Apple is going to sell a lot of these just because of the Apple name, but it's still going to be just a small percentage of iPhone owners, much less smart phone owners.
Holy moley, you could get an instafication when a compatible/willing partner is nearby. That would be hilariously awesome!
The app that functions like a clock.
love the taste, hate the texture
If the watch is broken, it will automatically get directions to the nearest watch repair shop.
Then it will display a large, friendly, compass arrow to point you on your way.
If the problem is a display failure, it'll speak out loud: "Hotter" or "Colder" until you reach your destination.
If the speakers are broken, it'll just run the phone hot or cold against your arm.
If the strap is broken, you're SOL.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
This is I think the thing that so many people miss about the Apple Watch announcement. The problem with existing smart watches hasn't been that the features aren't useful, it's that the promised features simply don't work. I owned two different smart watches and had the same experience:
- Extremely limited app selection
- Very, very slow and oversimple apps that did exist
- With input that was just plain cumbersome and unreliable
- And bluetooth connectivity that had to be constantly restarted/reconnected (like, every time you tried to use it, bluetooth was down)
As I've said in previous posts, I'm one of those that does still wear a watch every single day, so I could be an obvious target for a smart watch, at least moreso than people that don't wear a watch at all and haven't done so in years, if ever.
But for a smart watch to make sense, it can't be a worse experience than pulling out the phone. Watches will always lose on the screen size front, so it's got to be compelling in other areas. The phone experience does have some problems (you have to pull it out, it's risky to pull out and manipulate in some contexts—walking in the city, for example, where a drop can kill it and jostles from pedestrians can come easily, it's bulky and conspicuous, you have to put it back, and so on), so it's not inconceivable that a smart watch could make sense.
But smart watches thus far have been lessons in user friction—you had to really, really, really want to do a given task *on your smart watch*. One that I tried for a few days (the Sony watch) only recognized about 10% of the taps that you made (Want to tap that button once? Then tap manically on the screen over the button 15 times in rapid succession and hope one of them takes.) and was so slow and oversimple (presumably due to lower processing power) that even aside from UI horribleness, it just plain didn't do anything very well in practical terms.
If the Apple Watch has:
- Processing power analagous to that of smartphones
- A high-resolution display
- Input surfaces and controls that are as reliable as those of smartphones
- Battery life long enough to get through a day with certainty
- Reasonable ruggedness
- Stable bluetooth connectivity without hassles
Then it could well be a winner, not because it claims to do anything new, but because it actually managed to do what smart watches claim to do. So far, my experience with smart watches was that they claim a lot, then do absolutely none of it in practice. It's not that the feature list sucks, it's that the features themselves haven't actually been implemented in such a way that you can use them without sitting down for ten minutes to have a "smart watch session" and eke out a tap or two.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The correct solution is to put all the "phone" functionality (antenna, transmitter, etc.) in the "watch", and use the "phone" as nothing more than a remote display and computing platform.
This is completely backwards. The cpu, antenna, and trasmitter are the bulky items as well as the power hungry items that need bulky batteries.
That's the part (along with the large display) that needs to be tucked away. The watch should basically just be a fancy remote display and remote
buttons for the phone. A small VNC type remote display protocol would probably work perfectly. The cpu hungry app can run on the phone and
export it's display to the watch (obviously taking into account the smaller screen size). The apps would still be android/iphone apps. It would
just be that now your android/iphone has a 2nd virtual screen and a few extra buttons that it can interact with.