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- Hacker News
- Why aren't any smart watches incorporating e-paper displays? Seems like a perfect tech to use there, especially now that newer display tech allows pretty quick refresh rates.by kstenerud
- Modest gain in battery life for a tremendous drop in capability.by rootusrootus
- You might be interested in the new Pebble watches, which use e-ink displays.
- Google had a town hall a few years ago. The Pixel Watch (4?) had just launched and supposedly fixed a bunch of bugs like apparently you could not reliably record a run with the previous generation without that app crashing and losing the workout. Someone in the audience asked about this, and the PM who responded was wearing an Apple Watch. Apparently everyone on that team at the meeting was wearing Apple Watches or a dumb watch
They know this product is garbage
by nextstep - Heh, when I worked at HP, I bought a Brother printer.by Sohcahtoa82
- Why no Qi support on any watch ever? Those chargers are becoming commonplace in hotels, cars and homes but every frigging watch have to have their own cradle for them?
- Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers. But having to charge every day seems like a major regression compared to Garmin. I do appreciate that they are competing on location accuracy, though.
Apparently the GPS is computed in the cloud, which means this only works given LTE coverage or if you also carry your paired smartphone. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/pixel/pix...
by jeffbee - > Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers
Where are you seeing that? I only see $499 with up to $125 off for trade-in.
by Handy-Man - DC Rainmaker has done his own test: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/08/google-pixel-watch-5-gps...by jerlam
- I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-...
> From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right"
So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?
by gumby271 - I reluctantly use a pixel with grapheneos, but anything that can only run google or manufacturer provided software without an independent 3rd party is trash, having looked at wearos while trying to refuse Samsungs terms/integration I also consider it a worse grade of trash than a phone since it can intentionally create codependency on other devices for management despite having more processing power than android 2-4 phones had.by floppydive
- I'm pretty happy with a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS and a Garmin that I never connected to a Garmin account. I use https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge instead (then synced to my computer with syncthing), and I don't miss anything from Garmin.
I'm 100% Google free, and far happier with tech that I ever was.
by rcMgD2BwE72F - It really does feel like such a waste. If I switch to Android I might as well toss my Apple Watch out and vice versa. Along with the fact they basically require the phone to do nearly anything.by sporedro
- I'm using a cheap samsung watch, maybe 4? It's ages old at this point, but I need it to get contactless pay, I'm a sucker for it. I have multiple company and personal and virtual cards on it, and I don't like carrying a wallet everywhere with me.
What's specially shitty with using a wearos watch with an android phone is that clock's alarms etc do not sync, at least not between grapheneos <-> samsung galaxy watch 4. I have to use use turboclock which has a wearos app to get wakeup alarms to my watch.
- Pixel Watches have an unlocked bootloader [1] and publish factory images [2].
That being said, it appears that the main open source version of WearOS (AsteroidOS) only supports watches that are 5-10 years old [3].
I suspect that if you did try to flash this watch, you would experience a whole host of rough edges.
[1] https://9to5google.com/2022/10/21/pixel-watch-bootloader-unl...
[2] https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch
[3] https://asteroidos.org/watches/
Edit: past pixels watches have an unlocked bootloader, I assume this one will as well. I don't see this information in the announcement post.
by bhelkey - I like how the footnotes are all broken. Like the repairability footnote links to charging. Lots of money was spent making that website.by tlhunter
- Lots of tokens...by HumblyTossed
- I’m willing to bet AI made that website and nobody bothered to verify.by tw04
- So I kinda hate smart watches, a lot. Mainly because they are about notifications and apps, both of which SUCK to use on my wrist. Notifications are especially horrible (looking at you Apple, not able to disable reaction notifications in iMessage…), distracting, stressful, make it hard to stay present and focused.
What I actually want:
- sleep tracking - basic health tracking - maybe basic GPS to track hikes/runs etc
And potentially an easy way to see certain pertinent info. Like if I’m doing water sports, basic tide info, or my next calendar event, or when I need to get off the bus. But I don’t want an app, and I almost never want notifications. And definitely no clunky app to be distracted by.
Plus, I don’t want a big old screen. I don’t want to charge it a lot. I like my digital Casio a lot.
Feels like this doesn’t really exist
by anon7000 - Garmin literally made their highly successful wearable business around your requirements.by izacus
- I'm coming around to the possibility that I may want a Fitbit Air on one wrist and a dumb watch on the other.by MBlume
- What you want is a Garmin Instinct, or equivalent. Not sure if it does the pertinent-info bit -- mine has Bluetooth off almost all the time -- but it does the rest of what you want, and will run for over a month per charge.by donw
- This is kind of why I’m still using a Fitbit. Google doesn’t really pay attention to them but they do the basics of fitness and sleep.by HaloZero
- Amazfit Bip has sleep tracking, pedometer and notifications, it has also GPOS (which will significantly shorten battery life), release in 2018, it can still last 4 weeks on single charge, you can buy used for 15-20USD here in Europe
Don't expect advanced sport features like tide info or water sports, it has calendar events and can be used with open source Gadgetbridge app in phone.
by Markoff - If you care about privacy and owning your own data, then don't buy this, buy a watch with gadgetbridge support (https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/). I bought an amazfit active 2 a few years ago and it works fantastically with gadgetbridge on grapheneos. Easily gives me 5 days of continuous battery life as well.by haskman
- I have a good experience with Huawei Band. Huawei doesn't even require to pair the watch with an official app! So I never connected it to the Internet or installed their app, paired directly with gadgetbridge from the first day.by dmantis
- 30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker. I don't want to charge my watch every day.
I've been using the Garmin Forerunner for a few years now and the battery life is 2 weeks!
by tuckwat - My Apple Watch broke, I replaced it with a Casio with an Ollee Watch board. It doesn’t have the fancy features but it’s so nice to not have to ever think about the battery life! I wish the firmware was open source, there is a few features I would like to tweak a bitby dgellow
- Yeah, I bought a Pebble Time 2, and I can't imagine buying any other watch now. Having a 3+ week battery life is a game-changer.
Plus its screen is practically always-on, I've never seen any lag, it's half the price, and I have yet to feel like I'm missing any features over Wear watches.
by mminer237 - If it charges fast enough this shouldn't matter. You just charge it while you take a shower and as long as it charges enough for the day it fine.by impulser_