new watch
A long time ago I had a Pebble smartwatch. Remember those? They were just the thing for undiagnosed ADHD wearers. Long battery life so you didn't have to remember to charge them all the time, a warning on your wrist when it lost contact to let you know when you'd absently left your phone somewhere or let its battery run down, good control over notifications so you could amplify the ones you wanted with a buzz on your wrist as well as in your pocket, and a very simple quick text reply so that you could acknowledge a message without falling into your phone and forgetting what you were there to do.
They got bought by Fitbit, supposedly for the people and the underlying tech, and shut down so as not to be competition. Eventually mine stopped holding a charge, so I got the next new thing: a Vector Luna. Even better battery life, 45 days out of the box and still 30 days after years of use. No quick replies, but a good timer app that was good at reminding me to check back in to a task I'd put on the (sometimes literal) back burner. Plus it was pretty handsome -- and durable -- as a watch. They too got bought by Fitbit and shut down, shortly after I bought the watch.
The shutdown immediately meant that the weather streams that the Vector supported didn't work any more. That was a little bit of a shame, but the timer and notification functions were still so great that I had no regrets. But they also stopped developing the companion phone app, and eventually Android's notification system moved on to where their app would no longer work. This left me with no notifications, no find my phone function, and a somewhat unreliable timekeeping function. But the timer and stopwatch (and looks) were still good enough to keep me wearing the watch instead of an analog one.
Ever since the latest Android update, though, I've been looking for a replacement. There are lots of choices, and some of them even have good battery life and things like an always-on display that I probably don't need but have gotten used to with the Vector. Two or three of them are surprisingly affordable, and come with nifty features like being able to flip the display so that the buttons wind up on the other side for lefties. But those are also chock full of malware, much of it intended to feed all of your online data to the Chinese Communist Party.
After much dithering I decided that who was making the watch was as important as the feature set. Fossil makes one with a 30 day battery life, real hands through a hole in an always on display, and many of the other features I had on the Pebble and Vector (including quick replies and a working weather feed). It is rebranded by Skagen, another watch manufacturer, who have their own app for it. Both companies also make lots of other things besides smartwatches, which will make it harder to Fitbit to buy them. The Skagen one is a little more handsome so that's the one I got.
Here's hoping it's a nice long time before I have to make this decision again.
(
Comments |Comment on this)
They got bought by Fitbit, supposedly for the people and the underlying tech, and shut down so as not to be competition. Eventually mine stopped holding a charge, so I got the next new thing: a Vector Luna. Even better battery life, 45 days out of the box and still 30 days after years of use. No quick replies, but a good timer app that was good at reminding me to check back in to a task I'd put on the (sometimes literal) back burner. Plus it was pretty handsome -- and durable -- as a watch. They too got bought by Fitbit and shut down, shortly after I bought the watch.
The shutdown immediately meant that the weather streams that the Vector supported didn't work any more. That was a little bit of a shame, but the timer and notification functions were still so great that I had no regrets. But they also stopped developing the companion phone app, and eventually Android's notification system moved on to where their app would no longer work. This left me with no notifications, no find my phone function, and a somewhat unreliable timekeeping function. But the timer and stopwatch (and looks) were still good enough to keep me wearing the watch instead of an analog one.
Ever since the latest Android update, though, I've been looking for a replacement. There are lots of choices, and some of them even have good battery life and things like an always-on display that I probably don't need but have gotten used to with the Vector. Two or three of them are surprisingly affordable, and come with nifty features like being able to flip the display so that the buttons wind up on the other side for lefties. But those are also chock full of malware, much of it intended to feed all of your online data to the Chinese Communist Party.
After much dithering I decided that who was making the watch was as important as the feature set. Fossil makes one with a 30 day battery life, real hands through a hole in an always on display, and many of the other features I had on the Pebble and Vector (including quick replies and a working weather feed). It is rebranded by Skagen, another watch manufacturer, who have their own app for it. Both companies also make lots of other things besides smartwatches, which will make it harder to Fitbit to buy them. The Skagen one is a little more handsome so that's the one I got.
Here's hoping it's a nice long time before I have to make this decision again.
(
Comments |Comment on this)