Google Isn't Giving Up On Smartwatches; Two Flagship Android Wear 2.0 Watches Launching Early Next Year (theverge.com) 61
Google isn't giving up on its smartwatches. The company said today it will be launching two new flagship smartwatches in the first quarter of next year. These watches will run Android Wear 2.0 operating system and will be the first ones to launch with the new platform. From the report: Following the launch of the new devices, existing Android Wear watches will get the update to Android Wear 2.0. Not every existing Android Wear watch will be updated, but Google says most of the recent models will be. Certain features, such as Android Pay, require specific hardware, so not all models will support them. [...] Google will release the fifth and final developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 in January, and it is expected to include support for both Google Assistant and Android Pay (on supported devices) in it. It will also work with iOS devices, and Chang confirmed that while there will be differences between Wear 2.0 on Android and iOS, Android Pay will work on both platforms.
Too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too expensive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Too expensive (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
While I am in your age group, I can see the point of a "smart watch". Not that I'll ever get one, as I haven't actually worn a watch in probably 20 years or so. I haven't, mainly because I don't need a watch, since I started carrying my first PDA (Palm Pilot) and it had a built in clock. But ... I am digressing.
The point of a Smart Watch is so you don't have to pull out your phone every time it rings, vibrates, buzzes, dings or whatever. You look down, and see what it is, and then decided. The fact that it
Re: (Score:2)
The point of a Smart Watch is so you don't have to pull out your phone every time it rings, vibrates, buzzes, dings or whatever. You look down, and see what it is, and then decided. The fact that it is customizable screen is just a fashion plus. Who here hasn't purchased some vanity piece of jewelry, clothing, shoes, or sunglasses that were 20 times more expensive than functional equivalents?
Again, I get it, without needing or wanting one.
I think people get a smart watch because they believe it will make them efficient about alerts and messages, when what they really want is to turn their phone off.
Re: (Score:2)
"I think people get a smart watch because they believe it will make them efficient about alerts and messages, when what they really want is to turn their phone off."
You can think that. But I think the GP had it right. It's so I can see if a call or notification rises to the level of "pull my phone out of my pocket and deal with it right now".
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. My Pebble Time was actually quite useful, especially for driving. I could peek at the notification while stopped at a light, without having to dig the phone out. I also used it for two-factor authentication codes, being much more convenient than pulling out my phone and unlocking it.
When I returned it*, I noticed how much more inconvenient it is trying to fumble around to get my huge phone with its large case out of my pocket, especially when most notifications aren't worth it.
* I only owned it f
Most things are answer to non-problems (Score:3)
You can heat up toast in a pan, yet we have toasters.
You can make coffee with a cup and a filter and a kettle. But we have coffee makers.
You can walk or bike most places in cities, but we have cars.
Most things in life are not really answers to a problem so much as they are about making life better. The Apple Watch doesn't really solve a "problem" for me exactly, but it does make life better...
I have better tracking of workouts.
I have a better and quicker understanding of who is calling to decide if I nee
Re: (Score:2)
"I'm "old" (if you consider 57 as being old)..."
I'm a generation ahead of you, sonny. Not sure what you're going on about in that huge meandering paragraph, but you might be old enough to appreciate this story of pathos and depcronation:
Fairly often I meet a fashionable young man (rarely a woman) wearing an Apple or other fancy watch. I always make a point to compliment them and inquire about the wonders of their watch. In every case, the wearer lights up with beaming pride and eagerly tells me about some i
Re: (Score:2)
I'm 56, and I've been wearing a (Series 1) Apple Watch for a few months now. Prior to that, I'd worn a Garmin Vivosmart for 16-17 months. Prior to that, I hadn't worn anything on my wrist for as long as I'd owned a cell phone.
I'd gotten the Garmin device hoping it would help motivate me to walk more. It did that, but once that habit is in place (which takes a month or two) then the "fitness tracker" part of the equation became less important. What I discovered, though, was that - for me, anyway - it was use
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you live somewhere warm or you never go out. The battery on my watch died a few weeks back, neatly coinciding with a cold spell (I reckon the bastard did it on purpose), and until I got round to fitting a new one it was a royal pain hitching up my greatcoat and fiddling about to get my phone out of my pocket.
Re: (Score:2)
Western Washington state isn't warm; but it's also not particularly cold. We just had a cold snap where it got down to around 20F at night at my place; although usually we're above freezing (cold, rainy Decembers are typical). I didn't notice that it had any impact on my watch, but it was only that cold for a few days.
This time of year I'm outside mainly when I'm walking to or from the train on my way to work, and for 20-30 minutes for a lunchtime walk. Even though it's not freezing, given the rain it's not
Re: (Score:2)
I was referring to the claim that a phone serves instead of a watch. Essentially, a phone is like a pocket watch; those were replaced by wrist watches for a reason.
Re: (Score:2)
I just never could wrap my head around a [smart] watch, with a tiny screen, tiny battery life, and a VERY high price, given you can pick up a watch for almost nothing
Here they come. The slew of "But my Casio ..." posts that always pollute any thread about smart watches.
Your problem is the inability to get past the word "watch" in the name. It's the size and form factor of a watch, but it's not a watch. It's a fairly powerful general purpose computer. My "watch" runs a 4-core SD 410 @1.6GHz, 512MB RAM, Android 6.0 OS, a 320x320 display, has bluetooth, wifi, accelerometer, heart rate monitor, barometer, GPS. The analogy is between a smart phone and an old flip phone. Is t
Re: (Score:2)
> Had an LED watch at one time too, so tech isn't something I shy away from.
Ugh. My first digital watch was a Star Wars LED watch. I thought it was awesome at the time... but in my defense, I was only five years old.
I have a smartwatch - a Gear S2. I bought it after I learned how much the Vivofit devices suck... Gear S2 + S Health is excellent for tracking my workouts - and I will be upgrading to the Gear S3 Frontier soon as it will be nice to be able to leave my phone behind -- no need to worry about d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Too expensive (Score:2)
Watches are generally jewellery with some secondary use case
Apple watches sell because it allows Apple fans to show that they are part of the group, without holding their phone all the time. It's similar to people wearing t-shirts with their favourite heavy metal band on it. When they pass someone, they know they are part of the same social circle. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. People do it all the time.
But this is where smart watches have a problem. The
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto. People laugh at me (in my 40s) for still wearing an old school Casio Data Bank 150 calculator watch. I prefer that over smartphones for quickies of the times, alarms, phone numbers, calendars, etc. I care not! I wished current smartwatches were good as those! They're big, heavy, power hogs, etc. :(
Re: (Score:2)
and a VERY high price, given you can
My Pebble was about $100. You can get dumbwatches for $25 I suppose, but $100 for a watch that will tell me who's calling while I'm driving without having to risk everyone by trying to dig my phone out, and whose face look I can change on a whim to one of any thousands of options available is a pretty damn good deal.
I'll agree that thousands of $ is ridiculous, but at $100 its frankly dumb to buy anything else.
Re: (Score:1)
Google might not be giving up (Score:1)
But the public has.
Correction, they didn't care to begin with.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple couldn't make it.
Pretty sure they did make it. Not everything has to sell 100 million units to be successful. The fact that Apple built a version 2 says something. But hey they probably didn't do any research about potential and consumer demand or anything. Apple is known for just throwing garbage products over the fence.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that Apple built a version 2 says something. But hey they probably didn't do any research about potential and consumer demand or anything. Apple is known for just throwing garbage products over the fence.
Look around you. Smart watches, and especially Apple Watches, are a niche product. They weren't the Next Big Thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Look around you. Smart watches, and especially Apple Watches, are a niche product. They weren't the Next Big Thing.
How many products last year were the next big thing? The year before? I count zero. Yet somehow the economy chunked along and consumers spent billions on products. Is the fog clearing yet?
At lest no more glassholes (Score:2)
I'd get a smartwatch... (Score:2)
If it could do passwords and work with every device. Just act as a bluetooth keyboard or something, I have no real need for 2FA. Is there such an app? I haven't found one. Is it because bluetooth is too insecure?
Re: (Score:2)
If it could do passwords
I host all my 2FA codes from the Google Authenticator app on my watch. You can also sign in to anything Google using your watch,
https://support.google.com/acc... [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
MY macbook and iMac unlock using my apple watch. it detects the watch and that it is on my arm and unlocked and then logs me into the computers. works great and feels oh so space agey.
Re: (Score:2)
I used an authenticator app on my Pebble Time. Having it that convenient made me rethink how often I use 2FA.
Solution in search of a problem (Score:2)
Tech just hasn't advanced to the point that a smartwatch is, or will any time soon be, a crucial piece of technology for a large segment of the population.
Re: (Score:2)
Tech just hasn't advanced to the point that a smartwatch is, or will any time soon be, a crucial piece of technology for a large segment of the population.
A lot like a product you might have heard of called the iPad. Certainly not crucial, but incredibly successful.
And they shouldn't! (Score:2)
Smartwatches have a huge potential but there are significant issues that need to be addressed first.
The first problem is the screen: it takes too much power, it's far too small, doesn't harvest energy from ambient light and can only flex two dimensions at once.
The second problem is the CPU: it takes about 1000x more power than it should and isn't even stateful. QCA based CPUs would solve these issues.
The third is the wristband: it doesn't keep the watch perfectly in place and it's quite the bother. Have t
Those mostly are not issues (Score:3)
The first problem is the screen: it takes too much power, it's far too small, doesn't harvest energy from ambient light and can only flex two dimensions at once.
The screen may currently use too much energy, but I strongly disagree about it being too small. I bought the smaller Apple Watch because are screens on a wrist look absurd and take up too much space on your arm. A small screen can convey plenty of information.
As for flexing "in two dimension at once" WTF? I don't need or want the screen to flex, at
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. I currently have the Apple watch with the milan loop band and it stays in place perfectly all day. plus it's comfortable as hell in 100 degree heat as air travels through the mesh band.
But my Pebble time steel before it also stayed exactly where I put it. I am guessing the author is one of these notjobs that puts it on loose and then blames what gravity does on the device.
Re: (Score:2)
What I want is an arm mounted computer that is thin and flexible like a cloth yet stays in the perfect adhered to your arm and never runs out of power. What you want is a toy.
Re: (Score:2)
What I want is an arm mounted computer that is thin and flexible like a cloth yet stays in the perfect adhered to your arm
Try wrapping a bandage on your arm for an entire day and then come back to tell me that is what you really want...
What you want is a toy.
What I *HAVE* is far more useful than a toy would be.
Maybe someday we'll have what you want. But then I can use that too. Until then I can use the App Watch to do quite a lot of useful things.
Hoping for less suck. (Score:4, Interesting)
The OS is not the problem. It's the hardware makers. I will accept a big chunky diving watch if the damn thing was waterproof and shockproof with a decent scratchproof crystal.
Also for god's sake give us some real battery life! 2 days at a minimum please.
Re: (Score:2)
Your mom said you need to empty your bucket again it's stinking up the basement.
Re: (Score:2)
My Pebble can go about a week, and charges to full when I put it on the charger while I shower.
Buy one now, while the box stores still have some in stock.
Oh please (Score:2)
You'd have thought that by now the various manufacturers would have gotten the message that the vast majority of people simply do not want a smart watch.
They just aren't that useful to most people and they also aren't that practical...otherwise everyone would be wearing and using them.
Re: (Score:2)
They just aren't that useful to most people and they also aren't that practical...otherwise everyone would be wearing and using them.
In the backwards, irrelevant landscape of silicon valley, many folks sport Apple Watches, and maybe 1/10 of that number use Android Wear. I wouldn't look to the technology capital of the world to get a feel for what's going to be successful in technology though.
Re: (Score:1)
Ah look, another dork who thinks every product must be bought by the vast majority of people. The reality is that the vast majority of people don't want the vast majority of products that humans manufacture, otherwise the vast majority of people would each need blocks of warehouses to store all their possessions, and the vast majority of the surface of the planet would be warehouses. How many distinct possessions do you own? 100? 200? Do you know how many products there are in the world? It's in the million
Yeah, they NEED to kill some things and FOCUS. (Score:1)
What's the point of Android Wear? (Score:3)
Smartwatches are good as notifications device, it can act like the top bar of your Android phone.
I have a Mi Band (like a Chinese FitBit), it is great because it has a very noticeable vibrator, much better than what you have on your phone because it is always in contact with your skin. Good enough to act as a silent alarm clock. It has sensors too and the new model has a tiny display giving you things like the time and unread message count.
Do you really need more? For any interaction, the smartphone you already have with you is much better.
Android Wear does too much, as a result, it need a really powerful CPU and a large and power hungry screen. First, it is expensive (>$100), but it also results in a ridiculously short battery life, usually around a day which mean you need to recharge it every day like a smartphone, typically overnight. Not only it is annoying but because you aren't wearing your watch at night, you don't get the silent wake-up alarms, which is a feature only wearables can provide. Same for sleep tracking if it has any value to you.
To put it into perspective the Mi Band is around $15 and has a real month of battery life. Version 2 is around $30 and has a tiny screen which shows time and notifications and the battery life is just slightly lower.