Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I don't know that there is one for most people, but weather is a big one for me. Customizable faces is a big draw but frivolous. Yet I love them.
Android Wear |OT| 2nd Gen is Here
- Thread starter Jzero
- Start date
I just like having my notifications and audio controls handy.
Other then that, interactive watch faces, weather, steps, and of course time at a glance.
It's an extension of your phone, nothing more, nothing less. It's either something you like, or something you don't, I guess.
Other then that, interactive watch faces, weather, steps, and of course time at a glance.
It's an extension of your phone, nothing more, nothing less. It's either something you like, or something you don't, I guess.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Ugh...
My (newish) phone just got reset, and I don't have a backup of my watch faces.
Is there any way to retrieve them from the watch (or to re-pair without resetting the watch)?
I am assuming no, but maybe somebody knows a trick.
There are a lot of custom watch faces I made, and only a couple I ever uploaded to the cloud. This is a serious bummer.
My (newish) phone just got reset, and I don't have a backup of my watch faces.
Is there any way to retrieve them from the watch (or to re-pair without resetting the watch)?
I am assuming no, but maybe somebody knows a trick.
There are a lot of custom watch faces I made, and only a couple I ever uploaded to the cloud. This is a serious bummer.
Marty Chinn
Member
I picked up the Huawei watch thanks to the recommendations from here. So after two days of usage, these are my impressions so far.
To start with, the vibration intensity is terrible. For something where one of the major use cases is notifications, it blows my mind how terrible it is. I'm constantly missing notifications because I can't feel them and there's no way to change the intensity. It seems like such a major blunder that on this basis alone I'm highly considering returning it.
The next thing is the visibility in direct sun light is also terrible. It's almost unreadable. I was hoping it would be on the level of my experience with the Galaxy S6 in sunlight, but not so here. Even doing the burst brightness doesn't help. It's fine in maybe the shade or inside the car if the sun isn't directly on it, but if I'm outside in the afternoon, it's pretty unreadable. An ambient sensor could totally do wonders too but it sucks you need to get a flat tire look to have one.
One thing that bothered me at first was the notifications seemed to nag you by being constantly present on the watch face until you dealt with them. It was pretty bothersome since it would take up like 1/3rd of the screen to do so. Not to mention, if you were playing music, you'd always have 1/3rd of the screen covered. Fortunately, you can turn this off. Although once you turn it off, it doesn't seem like notifications pop up until you activate the watch instead of awakening the watch at the time of the notification. That's kind of annoying.
For a watch that has 4GB of space, to have almost half of it gone immediately seems to marginalize any real storage you have. On top of that, it seems like it just pulls every app on your phone whether you want it or not without any choice to manage which apps are on the watch which then eats up even more storage.
The watch faces are pretty nice though and I like there's a lot of decent apps to help you create and design your own faces pretty easily. Also nice is some of the way the cards are designed to make it look flashy but still usable. It's nice seeing the picture of a person next to their message in hangouts. Also it's nice to easily read a a long message in Hangouts or even GMail by simply scrolling through it. It kind of sucks that this flashy visual look is going away with 2.0 though. Granted it makes better use of the screen space for better usability, but it just looks so plain now. Oh ya, why is it Google Now is constantly showing up to be swiped away any time I get a notification? That part is annoying.
The battery life is about what I expected without tweaking anything to conserve battery life. It seemed like enough to get through the day which is fine as I expected this is something that would have to be charged on a daily basis. I'm actually stress testing the battery life now with a watch face that stays on, rather than switch to an always on mode face that's black and white. I'm curious if this will make it through the day. I'm trying this out because the switching from the pretty to the basic is kind of jarring. It would be nice if you could do always on with something visually more consistent.
Finally, with all the complaints I've read about other smart watches that don't have a touch screen, I'm kind of disappointed with the experience of a smart watch that does have a touch screen. It seems over hyped to make it such a big negative point. Most of the interaction just matches button navigation without any real advantage to using touch. On top of that, you leave fingerprint traces which makes the viewing even worse in the sunlight. So it seems even worse to be using touch and now with Android Wear 2.0 it seems like you're going between button interaction and touch anyways. Touch seems okay, but not the huge difference maker that reviews make it seem like it should be.
To sum it up, the watch faces look cool, the physical design of the watch is pretty nice, but when it comes down to usability Android Wear seems pretty limited in what you can do with it and it has a couple big glaring issues such as the vibration intensity and visibility outside. I'm torn because it's nice inside, but rationally speaking the issues are pretty glaring. I'm going to give it a few more days, but I'm really on the fence about returning it. I expected more, and at the bare minimum I expected a good notification experience which it didn't deliver.
To start with, the vibration intensity is terrible. For something where one of the major use cases is notifications, it blows my mind how terrible it is. I'm constantly missing notifications because I can't feel them and there's no way to change the intensity. It seems like such a major blunder that on this basis alone I'm highly considering returning it.
The next thing is the visibility in direct sun light is also terrible. It's almost unreadable. I was hoping it would be on the level of my experience with the Galaxy S6 in sunlight, but not so here. Even doing the burst brightness doesn't help. It's fine in maybe the shade or inside the car if the sun isn't directly on it, but if I'm outside in the afternoon, it's pretty unreadable. An ambient sensor could totally do wonders too but it sucks you need to get a flat tire look to have one.
One thing that bothered me at first was the notifications seemed to nag you by being constantly present on the watch face until you dealt with them. It was pretty bothersome since it would take up like 1/3rd of the screen to do so. Not to mention, if you were playing music, you'd always have 1/3rd of the screen covered. Fortunately, you can turn this off. Although once you turn it off, it doesn't seem like notifications pop up until you activate the watch instead of awakening the watch at the time of the notification. That's kind of annoying.
For a watch that has 4GB of space, to have almost half of it gone immediately seems to marginalize any real storage you have. On top of that, it seems like it just pulls every app on your phone whether you want it or not without any choice to manage which apps are on the watch which then eats up even more storage.
The watch faces are pretty nice though and I like there's a lot of decent apps to help you create and design your own faces pretty easily. Also nice is some of the way the cards are designed to make it look flashy but still usable. It's nice seeing the picture of a person next to their message in hangouts. Also it's nice to easily read a a long message in Hangouts or even GMail by simply scrolling through it. It kind of sucks that this flashy visual look is going away with 2.0 though. Granted it makes better use of the screen space for better usability, but it just looks so plain now. Oh ya, why is it Google Now is constantly showing up to be swiped away any time I get a notification? That part is annoying.
The battery life is about what I expected without tweaking anything to conserve battery life. It seemed like enough to get through the day which is fine as I expected this is something that would have to be charged on a daily basis. I'm actually stress testing the battery life now with a watch face that stays on, rather than switch to an always on mode face that's black and white. I'm curious if this will make it through the day. I'm trying this out because the switching from the pretty to the basic is kind of jarring. It would be nice if you could do always on with something visually more consistent.
Finally, with all the complaints I've read about other smart watches that don't have a touch screen, I'm kind of disappointed with the experience of a smart watch that does have a touch screen. It seems over hyped to make it such a big negative point. Most of the interaction just matches button navigation without any real advantage to using touch. On top of that, you leave fingerprint traces which makes the viewing even worse in the sunlight. So it seems even worse to be using touch and now with Android Wear 2.0 it seems like you're going between button interaction and touch anyways. Touch seems okay, but not the huge difference maker that reviews make it seem like it should be.
To sum it up, the watch faces look cool, the physical design of the watch is pretty nice, but when it comes down to usability Android Wear seems pretty limited in what you can do with it and it has a couple big glaring issues such as the vibration intensity and visibility outside. I'm torn because it's nice inside, but rationally speaking the issues are pretty glaring. I'm going to give it a few more days, but I'm really on the fence about returning it. I expected more, and at the bare minimum I expected a good notification experience which it didn't deliver.
Marty Chinn
Member
By all accounts, that lets you change the patterns, and length but it doesn't change the intensity of the vibration, so it's not really a good solution.
It still makes a noticeable difference imo. It's worth trying for yourself
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I'm with you on brightness (hence I use high contrast faces) but if anything, my watch vibration is too much.
There's an app for managing the stuff that gets I stalled on the watch, I believe. But the storage on the watch is really just for apps in the first place, so that space is not all that meaningful unless you run out.
There's an app for managing the stuff that gets I stalled on the watch, I believe. But the storage on the watch is really just for apps in the first place, so that space is not all that meaningful unless you run out.
Which app I'd that?
Marty Chinn
Member
This sounds like a perfect time for me to jump back in to this thread.
It really depends what your needs and usage is but after trying out a Huawei watch for a week, I'm going back to my Pebble. I just feel like Pebble does a better job at usability and notifications than an Android Wear watch. The final nail in the coffin for me was just how unusable it was outside in direct sunlight. My Galaxy S7 is still pretty usable in direct sun light but the Huawei was not. Android Wear is certainly flashier but some of that flashy look is going away in Android Wear 2.0 to simplify and make better use of the real estate so it's not longer as big of a perk. I wanted to like it and keep it, but I just couldn't justify it at that price. I'll miss the better Nest interface, some of the additional functionality in Hangouts, and the cool looking watch faces, but the Pebble OS is just a better experience for me that nails down notifications on the watch which ends up being the biggest use case for one of these.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I was wrong, it just let's you examine what's loaded. Apollo Wear inspector.
Google making two watches apparently.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/0...artwatches-with-google-assistant-integration/
If these are good enough, it might be the nudge I need to upgrade my LG Watch R.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/0...artwatches-with-google-assistant-integration/
If these are good enough, it might be the nudge I need to upgrade my LG Watch R.
AngmarsKing701
Member
Interesting. I remain in "wait and see" mode on a watch. It's certainly not a necessity, and their cost is still too much for me to pull the trigger on one. I feel like these need further maturity as products, and so I continue to bide my time. There's no pressing need for one, that's for sure, so I'll wait and continue to monitor their growth as products.
I thought it was a no-brainer, but NFC watches still aren't that common. It's not in the current betas, so not sure.
Smartwatch 3 has NFC though I think? Which is the one I have.
It does. It's either the only one, or one of the very few.
Google are using the Huawei Watch as their current flagship and that has no NFC, so hopefully the rumoured Google watches have it.
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
Bought Huawei Watch at $175 from Amazon today, now waiting until it arrives and some more, since it's my birthday present.
King of Custard
Member
Getting a smartwatch 3 for my birthday not sure what to expect kind of taking a punt and hoping I get on with it.
I'm mostly using it as an excuse to get in shape and go running or riding on my bike. I know the SW3 has GPS so that will help.
Any advice on essential apps would be great, need some good fitness ones and music and a couple of fun ones?
I'm mostly using it as an excuse to get in shape and go running or riding on my bike. I know the SW3 has GPS so that will help.
Any advice on essential apps would be great, need some good fitness ones and music and a couple of fun ones?
Nah, not with the possibility of some Google made watches.
Yes I read about it...but when? Looks like is going to be around november, is it correct?
Now I can find the Zenwatch 2 at like 179 euro (I'm in Europe), not that high not that low price.
King of Custard
Member
Crap just found an LG G watch R for £77.99, now I don't know what to get.
Smartwatch 3 VS LG G WATCH R?
Smartwatch 3 VS LG G WATCH R?
Neogaf speak! :-D I have the opportunity today...need to know what to do eh eh
King of Custard
Member
https://www.onedigitals.co.uk/asus-...f8hqnusJBHcu5nwC7F7CZ811CAr-_U6PwpBoCKHzw_wcB
Roughly 152 euros not sure about shipping costs.
I still love mine. They haven't said if it will get Android wear 2.0 but I am *assuming* it will... After seeing how much more space notification peek takes up on the screen for round watches, I'm glad I went with a rectangular one...
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
How much did a battery replacement cost, or did you do it yourself?
Dangansona
Member
Anyone in here flash the developer preview? I recently got the Huawei watch and 2.0 looks pretty cool but I'm a little afraid of voiding my warranty in case I somehow damage the watch (physically, I'm sure the developer preview is totally fine to flash).
To the dude complaining about notifications above check out 2.0's solution for that.
To the dude complaining about notifications above check out 2.0's solution for that.
I haven't used my Moto 360 in literally a year because of the battery. Thanks for the link m was thinking about sending it in but it's going to cost me +$100. Better to repair it myself.
The second generation ones are going for $150 anyway, so it wouldn't be worth it.
Jzero
Member
I'm definitely not upgrading my beat up 360 until a watch comes out that uses the new Gorilla Glass SR+ and a Snapdragon Wear Processor. Don't want another scratched up screen and shit battery life.
Jzero is in luck.
Zenwatch 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCfbMMka5M
https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/31/asus-zenwatch-3-reveal/
Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100, 400x400 1.39" and less than 10mm thick.
Zenwatch 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCfbMMka5M
https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/31/asus-zenwatch-3-reveal/
Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100, 400x400 1.39" and less than 10mm thick.
brotkasten
Member
Not a fan of the way the wristband is attached. Makes the watch look fat, much like the LG GWatch Urbane(?).
Expensive, ugly as sin and a flat tire screen despite not having an ambient light sensor. Dear god... http://www.androidcentral.com/michael-kors-access-android-wear-review
But at least you can say it is a Michael Kors watch and not a Huawei, Moto or Asus, I guess.
But at least you can say it is a Michael Kors watch and not a Huawei, Moto or Asus, I guess.
brotkasten
Member
I can't believe that we're not done with the flat tire bullshit yet. Two years since the OG 360 and we still got this nonsense.
AngmarsKing701
Member
Wow you're not kidding. That is fuuuuugly. And all that bezel and still need a flat tire? Whoever designed that should be fired.
GuitarAtomik
Member
Still no NFC on any of these? That's more or less what I'm waiting for before I upgrade.
