I wear a watch.
Like many people, I went through a period where I thought my phone was enough. However, when my travel schedule picked up and I often found myself in planes with my phone off in an effort to save my battery for whatever exotic land I found myself in next. I also found it was nice to be able to have a clock I could adjust so I knew what time it was in this foreign land before I got there. Enter the mechanical watch.
When I learned I’d be receiving an Android Wear device at Google I/O I was skeptical that I’d have a real use for it, but amused and happy to give it a chance. I didn’t have high hopes though, another device to charge? Will interaction with my phone through a tiny device actually be that useful?
I’m happy to report that my skepticism was unnecessary. I have the Samsung Gear Live and I couldn’t be happier.
The battery life will last me a couple days, which is plenty of time to get me to my next destination, and I turn it off at night if I’m really concerned about not getting to an outlet (or just being to lazy to do so).
And usefulness? It sends alerts to my watch, so at a glance can see Twitter mentions and replies, and quickly favorite or retweet them from my watch. Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to control Google Play music via the watch, walking around town I no longer need to dig my phone out of my purse to change the song (or now, adjust volume!). As an added bonus, the watch also has an icon for when it’s disconnected from my phone, so if I walk out the door and don’t remember if I grabbed my phone? Check my watch.
In addition to all this, it’s also much less distracting, I can feel in touch with people trying to contact me without having my face rudely buried in my phone all the time. I only need to pull out my phone when I actually have something to act on, which is pretty rare.
It seems I’m not alone. I was delighted to read this piece in Smithsonian Magazine several months ago: The Pocket Watch Was the World’s First Wearable Tech Game Changer. Unless some other, more convenient and socially acceptable wearable tech comes out, I’m hoping smart watches will catch on.
Perhaps the only caveat is how it looks. When I’m attending a wedding or nice dinner, I’m not going to strap on my giant black Gear Live, I switch back to my pretty mechanical watch. So I’m looking forward to the market opening up and giving us more options device-wise. In addition to something more feminine, a hybrid of mechanical and digital like the upcoming Kairos watches would be a lot of fun.
Sunday, Nov 30th, 2014 at 23:55
On the prettier smart-device front: I’m obviously biased, but I’m strangely taken with the Intel-based bangle: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wearables/fashion-technology.html
It’s feminine and techy at once, and interesting not only with that neat curvy screen but also with the fact that it has its own connection rather than pairing to a phone. I want one, but it’s hard to justify it now that I have *two* smart watches thanks to google i/o, and I’m starting doing some personal dev on those. But they’re so pretty, and I really want to support people doing work on nice tech designed with women in mind!
Wednesday, Dec 3rd, 2014 at 7:42
That is pretty nice looking :D
Tuesday, Dec 22nd, 2015 at 6:59
I prefer the round smart watches, such as the Samsung Gear S2. That and other round watches would look much prettier on your hand Pleia.