With the apple watch and other watches they keep showing all these interchangeable bands and fancy gold watch bands, but I'd just like a decent one with an extra battery or several small cells in the band. If it's something I'm supposed to wear and use all day, it should last that long. Hopefully at least 3rd party companies will make that so.
Aha!
The Microsoft band, not a smart watch, but does have the battery cell in the band concept.
It's a fucking monster. I would want a watch that could/would slide inside the cuff of anything I'm wearing. I'm surprised they dressed the hand model in cufflinks, as that watch clearly fails that test in the most spectacular way possible.
I just bought a Moto360 two days ago! I am loving this thing. I have been taking notes with my thoughts on it and will share after some time, but here is my initial take:
I got Google Glass in the first round, almost a full two years ago. The number one benefit of Glass was that I no longer took my phone out of my pocket. It was very convenient, and also liberating from the "oh I'll check 5 other things while I have my phone out" distractions.
I love Glass, and it does a lot of things right, but at this point, there are problems with it that prevent me from wearing it on a day-to-day basis. Still, I love that feeling of not taking my phone in and out of my pocket all the time, so I pulled the trigger on a smartwatch.
The $250 price point feels perfect. With Android Wear integration, this thing handles all the notification displaying I could ask for. I am also very impressed by its ability to respond to text messages: tap for a variety of stock replies, or us voice to speak a reply, but if you bring the watch up to your wrist like a secret agent, you can basically whisper your reply and it will still be very accurate.
For the first two days wearing it I have gotten an estimated 25-26 hours of battery life. Not even close to dead when I take it off at the end of the day.
This thing is extremely easy to interact with. It turns on when you simply lift your arm and tilt your wrist. It works every time. If you want it to turn off immediately (instead of after a few seconds), just tap the whole face with your palm. Alternatively you can wake/sleep by pressing the side button.
Things I miss from Glass are photo/video, and heads-up turn-by-turn GPS. Aside from those, the Moto360 handles the other things I wanted Glass to do. I am OK with waiting for Glass-like devices to mature, and giving up those two big features in the meantime.
It's a fucking monster. I would want a watch that could/would slide inside the cuff of anything I'm wearing. I'm surprised they dressed the hand model in cufflinks, as that watch clearly fails that test in the most spectacular way possible.
To be fair both of my regular watches struggle or are fiddly to get into any of my french cuff shirts, this one looks to be too big in the photo.
Things I miss from Glass are photo/video, and heads-up turn-by-turn GPS. Aside from those, the Moto360 handles the other things I wanted Glass to do. I am OK with waiting for Glass-like devices to mature, and giving up those two big features in the meantime.
Is there any GPS integration and how big is it on your wrist?
It's a fucking monster. I would want a watch that could/would slide inside the cuff of anything I'm wearing. I'm surprised they dressed the hand model in cufflinks, as that watch clearly fails that test in the most spectacular way possible.
To be fair both of my regular watches struggle or are fiddly to get into any of my french cuff shirts, this one looks to be too big in the photo.
My point is those kinds of cuffs are the most difficult test for a watch to slide into. It's like french cuff shirt are harder than button cuff shirt sleeves are harder than long sleeved tshirt are harder than sweat shirt are harder than jumper are harder than jacket.
A big watch fails at every level. A medium watch fails at shirt sleeves. A small watch you be stuck only with french cuffs. And yet here is a product shot with french cuffs and cufflinks, with the watch overlapping the cuff itself. It doesn't make sense to me at all.
Also it's not just the size, but how easily the watch would catch against the cuff.
The Moto 360 didn't give me any cuff issues yesterday with a normal button-down long-sleeve short, or my loose jacket. At least no more than a typical watch its size would have. The cuff stuff is totally a valid concern, but not one I'm too worried about b/c I very rarely wear long sleeves in the first place.
Yesterdays estimated battery life at the time I went to sleep was 31 hours.
The wrist talking is even more convenient thank I though. Raising your wrist activates the screen, which enables any Google Now command.
It seems that while many people complained about battery life at the launch, Motorola and Google have done really good work extending it so getting through the day is no problem. 31 hours of battery remaining at the end of the day is going to be a very hard target for Apple to match with its watch.
Yeah, after a few days of usage, it's been hovering just under 50% when I put it in the charger at night. The estimated battery life monitor shows it going to around midnight of the second day.
I wrote this watch off months ago when reading about the battery life, but apparently a major software update did the trick.
I wrote this watch off months ago when reading about the battery life, but apparently a major software update did the trick.
I saw that there was a wearables update but assumed it would not have too great an effect on the Moto360 because it uses an older inefficient processor compared to other products. This means even longer up time with the next generation of products. I do like the minimal bezel in the Motorola.
So yesterday could not have been more the opposite of the day before: I only got 16 hours and change out of the Moto360.
On Thursday I was busy the entire day, morning to night, only using it to check my notifications and send/reply to some texts using the voice detection or tap-enabled auto-replies.
On Friday, I was about 12 hours into the day and started a 5 hour drive home from my business trip. I was using my phone for GPS and for playing music the whole time. Android Wear kept feeding the watch updates every time there was a turn coming up, when the turn was actually there, how long to stay on the next road, etc. Each time, it would cause the watch to vibrate, turn the screen on, and show the text for that next step (no map on the display). Android Wear was also constantly feeding the watch info on what song was playing next. Lastly, I got a good deal of accidental screen activations from driving with my left elbow up on the door window ledge, tricking it into thinking I was checking the time.
Those three things burned down over 50% of battery in 4 hours! The watch charges in about an hour (might be a little less), so without looking at the specs, my assumption is that the battery itself is extremely small, and its life will vary greatly based on how much it is used. As of now I've swing between 16 and 40 hours. Most of the tech reviewers say to expect 24-26, and I think that's what I'll get on a typical day for me.
The display looks derpy compared to all the other smart watches available these days. It was OK when they made the first smartwatch, but now it looks dated.
That may actually be the perfect smartwatch. The Pebble was so close to perfect, but it lacked the voice control (the only way to really be able to respond to messages). The color screen is just kind of a bonus to me.
The display looks derpy compared to all the other smart watches available these days. It was OK when they made the first smartwatch, but now it looks dated.
That e-ink style interface is what I prefer, to be honest. Bright displays seem silly on a status/update secondary screen.
The display looks derpy compared to all the other smart watches available these days. It was OK when they made the first smartwatch, but now it looks dated.
That e-ink style interface is what I prefer, to be honest. Bright displays seem silly on a status/update secondary screen.
Fair point, and if it actually lasts a week I suppose I could forgive it.
The Pebble positives are the E-ink display and therefore the battery life. I use voice commands on Google Now enough that I'm not sure of whether I should buy the new Pebble.
For me the coloured E-Ink is the major story. If I could run a phone or tablet with a coloured E-Ink display, then turn on back lighting I would stop buying books and graphic novels altogether.
I saw 4 different people wearing Moto 360s today, it really isn't as big as I thought it would be and the bezel is tiny compared to some of the photos I've seen. It does have a few bugs from the slower hardware in it, sometimes when flicked up to turn the screen on, it takes a split second too long to respond to a voice command and you have to begin speaking again.
This looks very, very nice. The fact that the microphone barely does anything with iOS is a bit of a concern for iPhone owners. They say their working on it, though.
I am still quite happy with the 360. Back to my normal daily life it has been getting to the end of the day with 50-60% life left, which is more than enough.
This looks very, very nice. The fact that the microphone barely does anything with iOS is a bit of a concern for iPhone owners. They say their working on it, though.
I am still quite happy with the 360. Back to my normal daily life it has been getting to the end of the day with 50-60% life left, which is more than enough.
I don't understand how the microphone barely does anything with iOS. If you have a standard bluetooth headset with microphone, you can use it to talk to Siri. I perhaps wrongly assumed that since the first Pebble's functionality worked entirely through standard Bluetooth profiles that the microphone was just a standard bluetooth microphone.
This looks very, very nice. The fact that the microphone barely does anything with iOS is a bit of a concern for iPhone owners. They say their working on it, though.
Pebble announced that all it's watches could access the Androidwear notifications prior to unveiling the new watch hence they could show of the voice commands on the Kickstarter video.
This looks very, very nice. The fact that the microphone barely does anything with iOS is a bit of a concern for iPhone owners. They say their working on it, though.
I am still quite happy with the 360. Back to my normal daily life it has been getting to the end of the day with 50-60% life left, which is more than enough.
I don't understand how the microphone barely does anything with iOS. If you have a standard bluetooth headset with microphone, you can use it to talk to Siri. I perhaps wrongly assumed that since the first Pebble's functionality worked entirely through standard Bluetooth profiles that the microphone was just a standard bluetooth microphone.
This is a very good point. I don't get why they wouldn't have this working already (the KS page said the mic only works for responding to gmail notifications, nothing else). If anything, that should at least give you some confidence that they will success in their pledge to get it working? Maybe it already does work with Siri the way a standard headset would, but that got lost in what they were saying about voice replies to notifications.
Comments
The Microsoft band, not a smart watch, but does have the battery cell in the band concept.
I got Google Glass in the first round, almost a full two years ago. The number one benefit of Glass was that I no longer took my phone out of my pocket. It was very convenient, and also liberating from the "oh I'll check 5 other things while I have my phone out" distractions.
I love Glass, and it does a lot of things right, but at this point, there are problems with it that prevent me from wearing it on a day-to-day basis. Still, I love that feeling of not taking my phone in and out of my pocket all the time, so I pulled the trigger on a smartwatch.
The $250 price point feels perfect. With Android Wear integration, this thing handles all the notification displaying I could ask for. I am also very impressed by its ability to respond to text messages: tap for a variety of stock replies, or us voice to speak a reply, but if you bring the watch up to your wrist like a secret agent, you can basically whisper your reply and it will still be very accurate.
For the first two days wearing it I have gotten an estimated 25-26 hours of battery life. Not even close to dead when I take it off at the end of the day.
This thing is extremely easy to interact with. It turns on when you simply lift your arm and tilt your wrist. It works every time. If you want it to turn off immediately (instead of after a few seconds), just tap the whole face with your palm. Alternatively you can wake/sleep by pressing the side button.
A big watch fails at every level. A medium watch fails at shirt sleeves. A small watch you be stuck only with french cuffs. And yet here is a product shot with french cuffs and cufflinks, with the watch overlapping the cuff itself. It doesn't make sense to me at all.
Also it's not just the size, but how easily the watch would catch against the cuff.
Yesterdays estimated battery life at the time I went to sleep was 31 hours.
The wrist talking is even more convenient thank I though. Raising your wrist activates the screen, which enables any Google Now command.
I wrote this watch off months ago when reading about the battery life, but apparently a major software update did the trick.
On Thursday I was busy the entire day, morning to night, only using it to check my notifications and send/reply to some texts using the voice detection or tap-enabled auto-replies.
On Friday, I was about 12 hours into the day and started a 5 hour drive home from my business trip. I was using my phone for GPS and for playing music the whole time. Android Wear kept feeding the watch updates every time there was a turn coming up, when the turn was actually there, how long to stay on the next road, etc. Each time, it would cause the watch to vibrate, turn the screen on, and show the text for that next step (no map on the display). Android Wear was also constantly feeding the watch info on what song was playing next. Lastly, I got a good deal of accidental screen activations from driving with my left elbow up on the door window ledge, tricking it into thinking I was checking the time.
Those three things burned down over 50% of battery in 4 hours! The watch charges in about an hour (might be a little less), so without looking at the specs, my assumption is that the battery itself is extremely small, and its life will vary greatly based on how much it is used. As of now I've swing between 16 and 40 hours. Most of the tech reviewers say to expect 24-26, and I think that's what I'll get on a typical day for me.
When I'm on the move, talking to Siri through the mic on my earphones gives me most of what I want—especially in this weather.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises
For me the coloured E-Ink is the major story. If I could run a phone or tablet with a coloured E-Ink display, then turn on back lighting I would stop buying books and graphic novels altogether.
I saw 4 different people wearing Moto 360s today, it really isn't as big as I thought it would be and the bezel is tiny compared to some of the photos I've seen. It does have a few bugs from the slower hardware in it, sometimes when flicked up to turn the screen on, it takes a split second too long to respond to a voice command and you have to begin speaking again.
I am still quite happy with the 360. Back to my normal daily life it has been getting to the end of the day with 50-60% life left, which is more than enough.