Soon everyone will be doing it with a strap-on: The Reg's 20 festive wearables Under the tree this Christmas, wearables beyond woolly socks, gloves and tasteless jumpers will be in abundance. Wristbands and smartwatches that track our activity now cover a diverse range of prices and functions. Most offer ‘lifelogging’, the latest buzzword used to describe monitoring everything you do from exercise to sleep …
I clicked throught the 10 pages of marketing and thought to myself, shit, who would want any of this stuff.
After three seconds of thought I split people into two polarised groups (a very serious study if ever i saw one).
"The anti-everyone group ( I belong in this group with Steve along with a lot of El Regtards)"
You like watches, you already have a real watch ( at least one probably more).
You are sporty kind of person, you already have a Polar/Garmin/Suunto.
You are a Geek, but not stupid enough to but this gear, at least when you can buy an indestructable Casio G-Shock with 14000 functions.
"That everyone group ( you know who you are - there might even be some closet Regtards)"
You drink KoolAid, Ok then why not, it will match the fluorescent ski bonnet...
You already have an iPhone, thes add to the Shiny shiny collection.
You wear shell suits, and maybe like the Chav approach to life.
Fashionistas wet dream material here.
I get about 36 hours of battery life out of mine and I use it a lot. It's possible you had a dodgy one.
I know there was a software update back in October, I think, 4.4W.2, which improved the battery life, but not to the extent of adding 30 hours!
On another note, I'm not so sure the Moto 360 does altogether stop monitoring heart rate as the Moto Fit application (not sure if this is unique to using Motorola Connect as I pair it with a Moto G 4G) and I'm sure there was a built in app before Moto Connect updated it to that, checks for X minutes (default was 30 minutes) of elevated heart rate activity. Not sure how it would determine that without constantly monitoring.
I know what you mean about talking to the watch but, like other embarrasing activities, I only do it in private or to show off.
I have one, and I really like it. it's unobtrusive, fairly stylish and a great bit of tech. The phone software is pretty terrible though, proper integration and sync could make it a lot better
The unfortunate downside to this is that when my samsung phone broke i replaced it with a iPhone, making it slightly less of a smart, smartwatch. Given that it uses blutooth I cant imaging knocking up a generic andriod or IOS app for it would be much of a stretch, and it's certainly not must have enough to sway someone to buy a samsung phone just to get one. Samsung need to pull their finger out and open them up to a wider audience.
I splurged and treated myself to an LG G for Xmas.
Kind of pointless as far as what it can do since my actual cell is a Windows Phone. Google has hinted at porting the Wear app but, again, pointless for me as I only turn the phone on when I want to make a call and immediately turn it off afterwards and, as no one has the number, I've no need for notifications, either. (It's paired with an HTC One, in case you're wondering.)
The fitness features? Meh. I may try the new music control features, though.
I really just bought it for the novelty of changing the watch faces and it works pretty well for that.
I like the square design, it looks pretty sharp but the rubber strap is a flaky skin magnet so I'll have to switch the band out.
All in all, very pleased with it.
The Sony SWR50. Everything I want in a smartwatch, it was a close call with that at the Moto360, but I tried them both on, and the Sony looked better on the wrist (curiosly, the Moto looked better OFF the wrist, in promo shots and on the charger). I think it's down to Sony's clever design that makes it look thinner than it is.
I've got a regular Pebble watch. Not as expensive as the Pebble Steel (or any of these other smart watches), and it does everything I need it to - which is really just a basic interface for my phone so I don't have to get it out very often. Control my music player, read texts and emails, start recording GPS tracks, etc. I don't need another phone on my wrist. If I need to do any heavy lifting then I just get my phone out.
Who actually needs an exercise tracker?
Pro/elite athletes have a team to analyse their performance, properly. Because they have performance targets.
Anyone else has no need for this stuff. If anyone wants to get fitter they just need to do more than they already doing. And you don't need a shiny wrist ornament for that.
Which means that the only possible punters to buy these gadgets are going to be the Lycra posers.
Are there enough d***heads to make this stuff viable?
I doubt it.
"Who actually needs an exercise tracker?"
Anyone who actually wants to quantify the calories burned.
I mean sure, "eat less" "more exercise" is what everyone can tell you, but just how much is "less" and "more" really?
So nowadays i actually look at my calorie allowance in the evening and decide i will "have" to spend half on hour on my bicycle ergometer to treat myself with a beer.
Lost 10kg in two months so far, wouldnt call those fitness trackers useless junk.
It's a plausible weight-loss. Over the short term, water loss can account for a lot of that.
However, with a medically supervised [and mostly liquid] diet, it's not surprising to lose
1/2 lb per day for long periods of time (e.g., I've seen a friend go from 300+ to 150 in one year, just on the HMR medically supervised diet).
Back to watches ... the roundup sure missed a lot of smart watches, unfortunately.
I'd like to see info about Android-running watches (not merely watches that *talk to* Android systems) ... since I've had DOS and Palm watches, I'm a long-time believer in wearing a watch I can write code for :)
Also missing: Kreyos, and Buddy Bluetooth watch (I've tried both, not greatly impressed by either)
Lost 10kg in two months so far, wouldnt call those fitness trackers useless junk.
Leaving aside the implausibility of the specific weight-loss claim here: clearly a fitness tracker can be the inducement that some people need to exercise more. So can any fetish. Fitness trackers are no more or less "useless" in that sense than anything else. People who cathect that sort of accumulation of personal data1 may derive motivation from it, but there's nothing special about that. If a poster of Rocky Balboa or a muscle-bound oaf kicking sand in your face gets someone going, the results will be the same (and they're cheaper, too).
Claims that fitness trackers make exercise somehow more "efficient" by providing additional information on results are dubious, given the imprecision of such devices and, more importantly, vastly different responses by different people to the same physical labor. While professional athletes exercising in a highly-instrumented environment probably are able to tune their activities to achieve greater results over shorter time, for ordinary folk the route to effective exercise is to exercise until it has a discernible effect.
I have friends who are into the whole fitness-tracking craze. Good for them. I wouldn't bother with one if I received it as a gift. When I feel I need exercise, I go and do it; I have ample smugness to self-motivate.
In short: anecdotal evidence doesn't demonstrate any intrinsic value in fitness trackers, even if they "work" in this sense for some users.
1There is of course a large body of critical theory on this topic, going back at least to the Frankfort School and early responses to Taylorism; and that drawing on ideas from the Enlightenment, particularly critiques of the Industrial Revolution, and cognate concepts such as Anglican theology's "instrumentality", which some readers may recognize as one of the inspirations for Cordwainer Smith's fiction.
Had one of these for over a year. The altimeter function (measures height gained) only works if you don't put it in the bundled black clip owing to the sensor being covered! The coloured clips have a small hole over the sensor, so provided you mount it the right way round it's OK. I just put it in my pocket without a clip. The sleep band is fastened with Velcro, that gets tired after a few months. I'm on my second band, but have stopped wearing it at night now. The hardware is well designed, good battery life and easy touch interface/display, but the Android app is hopeless. Lost count of the number of bug reports I've submitted and each update introduces new problems. The online dashboard is a bit better, but still has some very odd design aspects. Instead of a rolling 7day display, it restarts every Monday morning.
Will be interesting to see how big the takeup really is for smartwatches and the demographic of the users. Younger people just don't wear watches anymore (even as a not-young-anymore person, I haven't worn a watch in over a decade), because their phone is their watch anyway. So if the smartwatch can actually appeal to these people (and over time they will replace us as the dominant tech buyers) then it will be a genuine revolution. I suspect they'll have a much bigger takeup on the older side of the generational gap though.
Had mine for a few months. Build quality is pants (first the camera died, then the speaker) but it does just what I need and no more. I did install iplayer on it for a laugh but in reality I need something that will just vibrate when a call/sms/whatsapp comes in, allows me to read said message and (remote) control music on the phone.
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
