TBH all of the smartwatchs look pretty fugly, not just this one. (admittedly some look less fugly than others)
I guess thats what's going to happen if you have to have a big battery and a touch screen interface.
TBH all of the smartwatchs look pretty fugly, not just this one. (admittedly some look less fugly than others)Most people do find it ugly haven't you been paying attention to the forums today? It's not a good looking watch. The Moto360 looks much better than Apple's design no matter how you slice it. Android Wear didn't take off because smart watches are not popular in the first place. Apple isn't going to change that, not at $1000 a pop for the ones that have bands worth using.
Yeah, I like the smart watch idea but there is always a flaw with them thus far. Square and ugly or a black strip at the bottom of a round screen. I have a citizen watch, nothing special but it looks like a Mercedes next to these smart watch designs. As a bonus it charges off of light so no battery to deal with.
Actually this leads me to something else. These watches should also be water resistant to submerge and swim with. Something I appreciate my watch for when I do wear it. I can tell the time without grabbing my phone.
Watches IMO are for fashion.
Most people do find it ugly haven't you been paying attention to the forums today? It's not a good looking watch. The Moto360 looks much better than Apple's design no matter how you slice it. Android Wear didn't take off because smart watches are not popular in the first place. Apple isn't going to change that, not at $1000 a pop for the ones that have bands worth using.
I've only seen a few smart watches in the wild, other than my Motorola 360, and every one has been a square one. I think most were the G Watch when it went on fire sale for $130 a while back.
I'm really waiting for the Hauwei Watch pricing to come out. It looks very very nice. Most people already have some kind of "What is that? That's so cool! Only $250! Wow, I thought it would be about $500!" reaction to my M360.
I will be selling my 360 (or gifting it to an Android using family member) when the Hauwei Watch comes out. The only issue I have with the HW is it's not inductive charging, it uses pogo pins. I'm uncertain it's going to have the same kind of water resistence as the Motorola 360.
No way am I buying a glorified phone peripheral that costs more than my unlocked phone did.
Maybe around $100 I'd start to consider it.
Which makes sense. We are still gen 1 with Wear.I'd check Huawei's pricing before jumping in. A lot of people seem to have the notion that upscale Android Wear watches like this will only be mildly more expensive than a Moto 360 or G Watch R. Er, not necessarily. You could easily be looking at $500-plus for Huawei's gear (at least, in certain trim levels) or the LG Watch Urbane.
I wouldn't mind a dumb terminal concept for watches. Normally just tells time, but connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, and when in active use the phone in your pocket renders a specialized low-res UI, streams it to your smartwatch, and receives touch commands from the watch. The smartwatch itself wouldn't need much more than an ARM11 (or a Cortex-M), video decode, and Bluetooth hardware.I have to agree that they are disconnected with the target market but strongly disagree with your last statement.
There is no possible situation where it is acceptable during a work meeting / class / meal / driving a car / social event to dig into your pocket, look at your crotch, smile, then dig into your pocket again and resume whatever you were doing before your leg vibrated. The phone experience will NEVER truely work socially. It is always a strong disturbance to you and those around you.
The only real solution is to make the interaction seamless, such as with a wearable. A 5 inch or 6 inch screen just is always going to be a social disturbance. And with an aging population (needs larger text) wanting more and more utility (needs more content per screen), we aren't going back to 4 inch screens. And we ceratainly aren't going to phones with the 3 inch or less screens that would be needed to make emails, texts, notifications, etc. seamless.
The problem though is with smartwatches requiring phones. Now you need a $500 watch AND a $500 phone. You need to carry two chargers around with you (unless Apple makes their next iPhone charge with a magnet too). You need to carry two bulky devices to the gym or while running that half-marathon discussed by Apple. Requiring the phone pretty much destroys the utility of the smartwatch. The negatives now outweigh the positives.
Give me a smartwatch with just enough brains to display notifications, and just enough battery life to turn on wi-fi once a minute for a brief moment to get new notifications. That is it. Nothing else. That would be a killer smartwatch. One item to carry with you. One item to charge. One quick glance to your wrist will let you know that your next meeting has been moved and no one else will be disturbed by you getting this notification. Email, texts, meeting updates, heart rate monitoring, etc, all just a quick socially-acceptable glance away.
I wouldn't mind a dumb terminal concept for watches. Normally just tells time, but connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, and when in active use the phone in your pocket renders a specialized low-res UI, streams it to your smartwatch, and receives touch commands from the watch. The smartwatch itself wouldn't need much more than an ARM11 (or a Cortex-M), video decode, and Bluetooth hardware.
This idea would keep the watch's SoC very low power to hopefully achieve more than a day of battery life, the battery impact on the phone should be negligible due to the low SoC load, and most importantly, bring prices down.
Keep looking at your phone in a meeting and you're going to get some pointed questions asking if you have somewhere more important to be.
Just a few facts on the Apple Watch:
- Most of the internals are made by Samsung and LG.
1. Display is made by LG.
2. S1 processor is made by Samsung.
3. RAM is made by Samsung and SK Hynix.
- Apple predicts "millions of sales". I highly doubt it will sell that well considering smartwatches are niche.
- The Apple Watch is way too overpriced for the functionality it offers. No heart rate sensor?
My opinions:
1. Personally I won't buy it
2. I think it looks solid but offers little functionality
3. It's gimmicky.
So the more I read about the iWatch and read through posts over at MacRumors, I'm convinced that the watch part of it isn't even the center piece for Apple. It's nothing but a vehicle for selling ridiculously priced bands to people.