Fossil is quitting smartwatches::Fossil is going to stop making smartwatches. It was one of the most prolific companies creating Wear OS watches.
Quitting, you barely started.
I think “full blown” smart watches like the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear are largely a waste of money. I always considered getting one, but always read the largely “meh” or negative reviews from them. When I got my Galaxy S23 Ultra Verizon said I could get the Gear 5 for “free” I just had to pay $5/month for LTE service. The thing lasts about 15 hours on a single charge, it’s damn near impossible to type anything on, I’ve never used it to make or receive a phone call, the fitness tracking is nice, but unless you’re a hardcore athlete/gym rat you don’t really need it, and the sleep tracking is nice, but once again not really that useful. After about a year of using it, I’m largely over it.
I agree, I have a watch 6 classic, the battery life is absolutely shit. It’s less then 6 months old, I went to bed with it on power save and swim mode to prevent overnight activation via the screen at 80% charge, woke up today at 1pm, it was at 50%,it is now 6Pm and it is at 20%. I will never buy a Samsung watch again lol, they look real fancy but, this is rediculous. you should get more than 24h on a watch.
My old gear sport and my previous watch 3 didn’t have this issue until at least the e year mark.
Agreed, I regret buying my Galaxy Watch 4. The sleep and exercise tracking is nice to have but otherwise it is just an inconvenient watch because you have to remember to charge it daily.
Do you normally sleep while wearing your traditional style watch? Never got the “you have to charge it” argument because I took off my mechanical watch before bed and also take off my smart watch, which gets set on the dock. No extra effort.
I do wear my normal watch when I sleep, same as I want to do with my smart watch to track sleep. The normal watch comes off for showering on the morning and put back on right after while the smart watch takes longer to charge than that so I have to remember to go back and put the watch on once it finishes charging (if it has charged fully by the time I have to leave the house).
Smart watches looks interesting to me at first, but knowing how it only lasts 3-5 years and additionally companies loves to purposely make stuff obselete quickly, I’d rather just buy normal watch… Or just look at my phone’s clock.
I really rely on my watch for notifications in particular since it’s MUCH less intrusive to check my wrist than pull my phone out. The other big benefit for me is maps. I get a tap on the wrist when my turn is coming up, which works particularly well when walking like I’m doing a lot of in NYC this week.
That said, my watch is something like 5 years old now and I see zero reason to upgrade. I’ll wear it till it dies and then buy whatever the cheap version is.
Garmin vivomove.
Analog face, and a wee display that tells you whether you want to look at your phone when it buzzes. Counts steps and stuff if you’re into that. Week of battery (still 5-7 days after like 5-6 years of owning mine). Perfect daily wear.
+1 for Garmin!! I’ve got 2 Fenix watches and they’re so important to me I’d be lost without them.
yeah I got a watch 4 for free with my s22 ultra, I gave it a good shot and used it for a few months but went back to my garmin. I simply don’t need a lot of the “smart” features aside from notifications and fitness tracking, which garmin does better, and then there’s the battery… different worlds there
Yeah, I had a few FitBits before this and they were great, the battery lasted like 4-5 days. The software on this has gotten better, I think it may last a full day now, but still, that’s pretty bad. Also, I get tons of spam texts on my watch which is just flat out annoying.
I love my pre-smart era Fossil watch. I hope they go back to making classy digital watches again, I would buy another.
Same. Mine is a regular watch with hour and minute hands and a digital read-out in the background that I can turn on and off. It’s nothing fancy, but I wear it with a fat black leather wrist-band which is pleasing to my easily-entertained soul.
I am a simple man in many ways.
I’d love a smartwatch that, along with telling time, is just a screen that shows me my notifications and a button to pause my music.
Important thing with those is… avoid Garmin at all costs. They are nasty company who will drop support for your device 6 months after purchase forcing you to buy a new device and similar nasty moves.
Withings, Garmin and Casio have them in very different styles, plus a lot of Chinese ones which names I don’t remember.
Literally months of battery time, up to unlimited for the solar ones.
Damn. Big fan of their hybrid smart watches (e-ink screen, ~10 day battery and looked like a watch).
Anyone know of any good similar products?
Garmin is know for excellent battery life. I don’t think they use e-ink though.
A much bigger drawback (to me at least) they lack Google Pay support and keep pushing Garmin Pay which is not widely supported.
?
Is there really any functional difference which backend is providing that virtual card number? I have never seen a terminal anywhere that A) supported contactless in the first place, but B) did not work with the Garmin Pay feature of my Fenix 6. Even out in the sticks. Not-a-one.
I don’t know of any e-ink displays outside of Fossil but give Garmin a try. I use the Vivoactive 4 and get a week+ of battery.
I went from Pebble > Fossil > Garmin.
Garmin are atrocious compared to hybrid watches or the legendary pebble. Had one for like a week before I sent it back, there was so much wrong with it.
Watchy which is open source and comes in a build it yourself kit has an e-ink display.
I came across the project before but they don’t have biometric stats that I was looking for.
Withings. Small oled display, looks like an analog watch until you use it. Ton of sensors to monitor your health, or none if you don’t want that. And a huge battery. Like huge enough to lose the charger between charges 😆
Another vote for Garmin instinct (2 solar in my case). Not E-ink but oldschool style black/white LCD. Full charge with nightly pulsox is just above 2 weeks, would be 3 if i turned off nightly pulsox. With solar, if you are active outside and have a sunny climate, you probably do not need to charge basically at all.
There is also the instinct crossover for the hybrid look. But first series instincts are supposedly hit or miss on the software. And trust me, the whole analogue watch thing is nice for looks, but really you will not look at it if you have a digital clock on the watch face.
