Look at My Watch. You Feel Yourself Getting Sleepy...

I wasn't going to post this, because it's boring. But then I realized that I don't care; it's something that has been on my mind, so I'm writing it.

I might be part magpie or raccoon or something, because I've always liked shiny things. Like watches. I remember getting a little blue watch in second grade and wearing it for years. I loved that thing. Maybe there's a correlation between liking watches and me being obsessed with getting places on time.

Anyway, several years ago I decided I wanted a watch with a digital representation of an analog dial, I don't know why. It just seemed novel. In 2013 I got one of the first commercial smartwatches, a Pebble. It let me do the digital/analog thing, as well as showing notifications from my phone, letting me control music, showing weather, and acting as a display for my running apps on my phone. It's first and foremost a watch, and with a simple e-ink display it gets several days of battery life.



I've been looking to upgrade my watch, and unfortunately I bet on the wrong horse, because Pebble is dead. So I'm looking at other options. One of the most common things I see is that people apparently want a fitness tracker. I'm not sure why we are so obsessed with counting our steps and quantifying sleep, but apparently we are. Personally, I want to get my notifications from my phone. I don't care about fitness trackers that don't work anyway.


I like Android, and the latest watch OS includes Google Assistant, so you can talk to your watch and get answers, which I think would be awesome. And getting a little GPS map on my wrist while driving seems safer than trying to use my phone while driving. You can do lots of other stuff, but with fancy LED touch screens and WiFi, the battery life on these things is miserable. You can maybe get a day's use if you don't do too much.

One alternative to that is to get a dedicated GPS running watch from a company like Garmin. They have advanced running metrics (more than you get just using your phone) and can display some of the notifications from your phone. Beyond that it's limited in its ability as a smartwatch, but it would be maybe a couple weeks of battery life. Basically I am choosing between battery life and the ability to do some things like respond to texts from my watch. What I really want is an Android watch with the Garmin features that can give me two days or more of battery life. Apparently that's not possible right now.

By this point I'm acknowledging that this is the ultimate #firstworldproblems post, and super boring. But as I said above, it's my blog. #noregrets

Comments

Lori said…
It was an interesting read.
February 28, 2017 at 4:22 PM
)en said…
So what are you gonna do?! Cmon, don't leave us hanging. I'm on the edge of my seat here! 😏
March 2, 2017 at 3:45 PM
Joel said…
Don't worry, Part II is coming... as soon as I make this critical decision.
March 2, 2017 at 3:58 PM
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