Still rocking my Sony Smartwatch. It may not be the most practical thing in the world, but it makes me smile
Right, two things here 1. Amazon have just dropped the price of a load of LG G Watch R Smartwatches on their 'Warehouse Deals' from £170+ to £152+. 2. I've bought one as I had £40 of vouchers. Impressions on the way this weekend.
That watch looks awesome. Is the display always-on and readable in sunlight? I'm tempted by Pebble Time Steel, but can't see myself gaining much from my current Pebble Steel. The colour display is nice, but it's not something I feel is needed. If only it had a round display.......
It’s an OLED – much better than the LCD found in the Moto 360. The advantage OLED has is that you can light only the pixels that are required for the display (ie: just the ones showing the time: 16:20) rather than the whole watch face. The G watch R has a bigger 420mah battery vs Moto 360 too, and a more efficient processor (Snapdragon 400 vs Ti OMAP). The specs are also pretty much identical to the new Urbane which hopefully indicates decent confidence in the chip going forward, whereas Motorola had to do a lot of work on the software side to bring the 360 up to standard. I use a lot of Google services now (Gmail, Play Music) etc, so I’m hoping integration is good, and Google Wear continues to improve.
So farm, nothing has brouhgt all the features together to make the perfect smartwatch: - OLED display - Wireless charging - A SoC that doesn't suck The G watch Urbane and Huawei Watch both have good screens and good innards, and both are reasonably attractive, but you need to futz around with a physically attaching pogo-pin-cradle-thing at least twice a day if not more. The Moto G has an OK screen and an ancient power-hungy SoC, but looks pretty good and Qi charging.
Parge, are you telling me you aren't getting a gold Apple Watch Edition for £12,800? I am disappointed my son. I have a Pebble (Kickstarter Edition, woo!). It's pretty good, but a bit first generation. I can see where Apple are trying to go with their Watch, but I don't think they're there yet either. I still think a truly good smartwatch is years off.
I've got a Pebble, which I had for a bit over a year now, and I'm happy with the £150ish I paid for it. I generally get between six and eight days on a charge, so usually I only have to charge it on Sunday nights, but if it runs low on Sat then 20 mins on charge will see it good for another day. The screen is actually some sort of low power LCD, rather than eInk as everyone assumes, but it works well, and is easily visible outside (better than some normal watches I've had). The backlight comes on if you shake your wrist, which is useful, but that means it'll come on when you're dancing or waving your hands around (can be disabled). Receiving texts etc on your wrist is pretty handy I find. Best way I can think to describe it is: If you've played GTAV, you'll be used to snippets of texts and emails popping up on the side of the screen, and you can go to your phone to read in full, and/or reply. Well, replace 'side of the screen' with 'your wrist' and that's what it's like. You get the gist of a message, which is usually enough to know if you need to deal with it now, or at your leisure. Any other questions, feel free to ask.
I am, but its not out til the 24th April, so I'm just using this as a disposable smartwatch for a month. 100% agree that a truly good Smartwatch is years off. They need about 5 days more battery, to be about half the size, and Android Wear needs a good few years of development too. The Innards of the Urbane is identical to the G Watch R. It is pretty well established that it lasts at least two days too, and certainly doesn't need charging twice a day. The Moto G definitely has the best charger though.
Most reports have had the battery life,, depending on use, as between one-and-a-half and just-about-two days. Which in practical terms still means charging every night if you want to avoid the watch dying sometime near the end of Day 2 and not having the proprietary magnetic-pin-dock-thing handy. At least I already have Qi chargers everywhere for phones and tablets, so I can stand a watch only lasting a day without charging (the Moto 360 doesn't quite handle that under heavy use, hence waiting for its assumed-to-be-in-the-works successor).
I was quite surprised not to see them announce a new one at MWC actually. Especially since there are some very clear and easy ways to improve upon the design with currently available tech (OLED display, Battery, Chip etc)
I bought my Dad (from these forums) a sony SW2. Originally he couldnt use it with his atom based phone as the apps didnt have a x86 version. Since then I upgraded him to a note 3, but he hasnt used the watch yet. Might "borrow" it back from him.
I really wanted HTC to show off something at MWC, A smart watch that's designed in conjunction with the One (M8/9) Yes Please. Sam
Well I have pre-orerded the apple sport watch as for me it does everything I want in a smart watch, and due to work using iphones exclusively now I thought would be the best idea for the future. I did consider some of the other ones out there, But one of the main factors for me was the heart rate monitor, there are other things like the fact It will do most of its functions without the phone so will work as a good gym buddy as my iPhopne 6+ is a little bit big for carrying which training.
I think Apple's watch is the best stab at a smartwatch we have at the moment, but it isn't perfect. Problems for me mainly revolve around battery life (single day) and apparently a little bit underpowered leading to some slow app loading times. It's also a bit expensive being Apple. We need new battery tech, basically. These new aluminium based ones sound promising, but are years off. Lower power draw from the SoCs will obviously help, as well as an increase in performance for the power usage.
I do agree that the battery life is not great at a single day. I don't think I will have a problem charging it at night as I tend not to wear a watch in bed anyway, I do agree out of all the currently existing ones and once soon to hit the market (i.e summer) the apple one looks like the best attempt. I did really like the Samsung ones and I still do but as I have a work iPhone and no non work phone I can't use that, I still think its got its flaws, I seem to remember last time I tried one the app support wasn't great and but I have been told thats improved now. The price is a little bit higher than other offerings for the apple watch but it looks like a good thing to have on your wrist, if you could change straps on them it would be perfect as I am a bit nervous about the strap on the sport one but cant justify spending over £100 more because of the strap.
To be honest, I think for the most part the Apple Watch does exactly what the smart watch sector needed. It places it on the wrists of millions and creates a market. Touchscreen phones existed before the iPhone, tablets before the iPad, mp3 players before the iPod, looks to be the same deal here. Fingers crossed this watch will stimulate the market and encourage competition, much like what happened with phones and tablets. Then, maybe a few years down the line they'll become genuinely useful products (rather than useful at times, but a bit of a practicality cost). There are a lot of possibilities, but I'm a little annoyed that Apple didn't address a few points that could have been really handy. My biggest gripe is with the thing not being properly waterproof. I mean come on, that could have been such a big positive. IMO one of the biggest advantages for a smart watch like this is in health, it being easy to run, cycle or work out with in general. But not being able to swim with the sport one is simply annoying. I'm not expecting 200m dive watch here, but 1m depth for 30 minutes isn't great at all. The battery life is a bit on the short side too, but that's a natural trade off. If they could get it to last for say 5 days with decent usage, then it would be brilliant. Would mean no carrying around chargers for short trips.
I agree this is a silly flaw in the design how hard would it have been to make it waterproof in a standard swimming pool depth, I agree with your point I wouldn't expect it to replace a dive watch and most people I know who dive have a separate dive watch, But 30mins at 1m is a bit short, My normal swim time when I used to swim was about 1 hour at least, and 30 mins in a bath in your own house is entirely possible for some people. Hopefully as you said this stimulates the market and we see things progress alot more in the future and in a few years the battery will be 5days at least and they do so much
I went past one of their store over the weekend, so I popped in to check out Apple watch. My wife really liked a lighter coloured leather one, which costs £650 The thing really bugged me is that it's not as fast as it could have been. There seems to be a bit of delay for everything, animations are unnecessary and slow. (just like iOS 7 and 8) But I really really do like its construction and how it looks. Although I still maintain I'd want a round smartwatch. However, the price. This I don't get, it doesn't do as much as a smart phone, it is basically a fancy accessory for your smart phone. Unlike Omega or Rolex, it will not maintain its value. So why would anyone spend more than half the price of your smart phone on an accessory is beyond me. I'll keep my Omega as my expensive watch for special occasions thank you very much. Sub-£200 is more acceptable for a gadget that will be out of date in a few years.
Yeah, that's my biggest problem with smartwatches. You buy one for £500 from Apple, and then two years later there's a new model that is waterproof or doesn't hitch on animations because they've fitted a faster SoC in to the TDP profile. Your watch is now worth £200. Another few years and it's essentially worthless. My £300 Tissot on the other hand still tells the time and does everything else it was designed to do. It hasn't been superseded. My Pebble is a good example. As the first generation it's shortly getting replaced by the new colour model. Second hand it's worth a third of what it was at best. It'll need replacing in a few years - but I didn't pay £500 for it either. That's the advantage of it not being high end with fancy new technologies.
The main reason I am going for the Sport version as I can justify that price for everything in there. It will be less than fun over the next few years seeing the new version come out fixing issues that shouldn't have been there. It is one thing with a normal watch in that they will hold value somewhat well but due to it being technology there will always be no such luck. At least being apple it should hold its value a bit better than others
