Smartwatches & connectivity

I own a smartwatch.

I know, very flash.

The question I get all the time (when it's noticed, which is actually not that often due to how I wear it) is... Why? What's the point? Is it worth it?

I got my watch for £100 because my provider had a deal on at the same time that I was due to renew my phone and I (independently of this) decided to go for the LG G3 that let you get the LG G Watch at a discount. Having had it for half a year or so, I probably wouldn't pay more for it, though I have mostly enjoyed it.

I wear a watch, you see, normally. I wear tiny, light, metal watches, with the face on the inside of my wrist that generally get mistaken for not-very-pretty bracelets. And I wear watches because I'm a tightly wound control freak that needs the time often. As a watch... smartwatches aren't great. Mine is a bit exciting about battery life (more on that later) and my solution for dealing that means that I need to tap the screen to see the time. This is less annoying than you might think as proven by my tendency to try to tap my analog watch when I occasionally swap out. It's also hilarious when I'm carrying something in my other hand and use my nose as a conductive tapping thing to wake up the screen. But then... smartphones aren't great phones because of battery issues either. (Remember when phones were charged weekly?)

(Note: the below section is somewhat outdated. See some new notes on the subject adding to these in my other post.)

Battery life on the G watch varies greatly. I mean, that's true for everything, but here it also depends on setup as well as usage due to the nature of wearables – it's always on. You can have the screen be on all the time (I don't know what reviews say, but I don't think that would last me from when I get up to when I come home after work). You can have the screen wake up on taps... or when the watch thinks you've moved your arm to look at the watch, which is... a bit random; let's just say I don't recommend knitting in that mode (that hits the iffy 15% battery shortly after I get home from work). Or... you can have either one on, but leave your watch perpetually in Google Wear's new “cinema mode” (a.k.a. we've listened to what people hate about smartwatches). The cinema or theatre mode turns off your screen until you tap it (no motion gestures wake it)... and turns off all vibration notifications. All of them. Even for timers and alarms you set on the watch – the latter don't even try to go off. It sounds... pretty bad. And, honestly, it's not great... but it raises battery life performance to 3-4 days (bonus points for turning it off at night).

I will admit, as I charge my phone regularly (though it's a bit weird now I have a spare battery and direct-to-battery charger), I figured daily watch charging wouldn't be an issue. But it was. I kept saying it wasn't... and then not wearing the watch. Since cinema mode got added, I've worn it a lot more. (Though yesterday it had been over a week since the last time when I left it at 25%, which is just the kind of battery that might not last me through the day, even on cinema mode... It did get me home, at least.) I think it's the last few hours of the day that really bug me. If it lasted from getting up at 8ish to, say, midnight, I think I'd love it a lot more. Or even 10pm. But now... what if I want to go to the cinema after work? For bonus points, the G watch is entirely button-less, so the only way to turn it ON is using the charging dock and a powered microUSB connection.

I opted for the G Watch at the time (because, savings aside, I didn't want to buy something I wouldn't buy anyway and I was considering all the alternatives) was Android Wear. The thing is... At the time (And possibly now? I'm out of the loop a little.), the Samsung wearables ecosystem was more mature than Wear. It looked good, had lots of apps... And I was just coming off a Samsung phone, so was quite happy with the brand. But the principle of the thing means a lot to me. My phone is running Android, so, as soon as I became aware of Android Wear, I was convinced they would win the wearables OS competition. I may be wrong, or it may happen only because other people also assume it will happen. But it's the one I most wanted to support, I guess, and the one I thought wouldn't suffocate itself with a closed apps market and limited integration. Samsung hadn't released Gear Live yet, though, so it was all entirely proprietary and... I kind of liked the look of the G watch, actually.

Which brings me to another point. Circular smartwatches? Really?! Why would you even do that?

I ask, knowing the answer, of course. “Because it looks more like a watch.” The difference is that I don't see why that should be a consideration at all. Wearables are tricky; smartwatches are tricky. I don't want my interactions with something already perilously frivolous to be dampened by a circular screen. We moved away from 4:3 to 16:9 for goodness sake, and we've moved into even skinnier widescreens with phones now! Interacting with a smartwatch is tricky as is: there's a limitation on input (voice, weird keyboards, what have you) and a limitation on output (it's a tiny screen compared to your phone). I can argue both of those would be impacted by a circular screen... but I appear to be the unfashionable minority. Ah well.

It comes back to “What does your watch do for you?”.

For me, it does a couple of things. Firstly, it acts as a connection to my phone at awkward times when I might not hear it and, say, my husband is trying to reach me, say when cycling (phone in backpack) or wearing an outfit without pockets (phone in a bag, hopefully nearby). More importantly, though, I find it acting as a filter.

I go through... A large amount of data on a daily basis. I'm not boasting here as I'm not trying to compare myself to you or the other guy: I think you do, too! I'm now up to 4 email accounts, which get emails daily, for the most part, at least at the minute, Facebook, texts (including Twitter notifications), as well as general phone notifications (your podcast has downloaded, I need you to let me update some apps, AAA I only have 15% battery left). The watch lets me trivially filter them out. Because... you can only set it up so well. At the end of the day, it's hard to explain to Facebook exactly what kind of statuses you want to see; now multiply that by all the different environments and situations you could be in that could affect that. And when I'm bored, I'll get my phone and open up the app and browse all the notifications... But until then, I can happily swipe them away (literally), safe in knowing this is not an urgent thing. (It really feeds into that tightly wound control freak issue I mentioned earlier – I hate having unresolved notifications. It's why me and Google Inbox get on so well.) For bonus points, this also tends to actually mildly improve battery life for me, even with the Bluetooth on all the time as it reduces on time for the phone screen, I think (which tends to be the main battery drain for new devices; doubly so for my phone, I think).

So overall... it's not vital. Not in general and not even to me, attached as I am to my tech. But it's damn handy sometimes, so it really depends what your budget for gadgets is.

Plus it makes for a neat tea-timer, even when it's disconnected from the phone.