8 years ago
5
Android Wear 5.1: A more enduring wristjob for your pleasure
Review It’s fair to say that sales of wristy wearables haven’t set the world on fire. [...] The first major update to Android Wear arrived recently so I dusted off my seldom used Asus ZenWatch, updated the firmware – a simple OTA operation – and tried to look at Wear with fresh eyes.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk
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The software looks nice, but it doesn't seem to solve the broader problem with smart watches for me -- the lack of use cases. I can't think of a situation where using a smaller, less-responsive screen would be better than just pulling out my phone. I don't need stock information at a glance. Voice recognition isn't good enough to do any meaningful text communication on the things. The navigation stuff looks usable, but I wouldn't use it while driving. Google Now isn't good enough at answering questions or doing tasks that I can trust it not to screw up -- and those screw ups would have to be fixed on my phone, anyway.
I know some people who have used these things, and they've said that the notifications are kind of nice -- but even that sort of sounds like a nightmare, to me. Constantly having something tap my wrist for attention, or vibrate, or ding? How would I ever focus on anything? Do I really need to know any of this stuff right this second?
The entire category of devices seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. They can update the software all they want, but until it does something better than the experience of just pulling out my phone, it's just not super interesting to me. And, judging by the sales of all these devices, it's not super interesting to a lot of people.
I have use for it because I've lots of meetings and appointments and is nice having something where I can glance at the notifications and next appointments information without taking my phone out of the pocket, it's also very useful to know if a new message is something important to stop what I'm doing to deal with it.
I also use the stop watch a lot and I also use it as remote for my chromecast because I'm too lazy to grab my phone.
I usually have it configured to only vibrate for priority notifications (that's one of the cool features of 5.1) so it only vibrates when really needed.
It's not completely essential for me like my smartphone is but it has it's nice to have.
That's a more enthusiastic appraisal of using one of these on a day-to-day basis than I've heard -- haha, but even there, you end with "It's not completely essential . . . but it's nice to have", so I don't know. It just seems like a lot of money to spend on something that's not in the "Hey, this makes my life significantly better!" class of devices.
If you are in doubt my advice right for now is not to buy it. Smartwatches and wearables in general are still on the early adopters phase, so right now we are all beta testers (which is strange taking into account the first smartwatches are over 30 years old). In a couple of years we'll have better and cheaper ones, and tons of apps for them.
I agree that 5.1 was a massive improvement.