Gadgetory

a little while back when I was celebrating my birthday I decided to treat myself I went over to a retailer that happened to have a hybrid SmartWatch that I had my eyes on and I tried it on a couple of days later I was compelled to actually buy it so the question remains why would I move away from the different full smartwatches like we have in Android wear or Tizen or of course with the pebble which I've worn for a long time now to an analogue watch that basically has a few neat tricks well it's time to find out because it's Joshua Carl what's going on everybody and this is my review of the Scoggin yarn hybrid SmartWatch now in reviewing this particular watch I also want to ponder the question do smartwatches still matter and the reason why I want to ponder this is because with this watch I realized that a lot of what smartwatches bring to the table I actually don't really need in my daily life anymore outfitted with the slim yet sleek body the Smart Watch comes with a light leather band that gives it a nice mixture of style it's casual enough to wear within normal clothing but just fancy enough to fit right in with a button-down or even a suit part of the reason for that kind of style is the fact that the hybrid SmartWatch has an analogue face that is simple and doesn't overwhelm with too much information and of course it doesn't have a touchscreen which kind of leads me to my first thought about smartwatches I think we went a little bit too far too fast remember when Android wear was originally announced we had the LG G watch and the Samsung gear live now the Samsung gear live tried to inject a little bit of style but the LG G watch I think was a great precursor to what smartwatches have become now basically a whole different screen this time just on your wrist unfortunately with it came all of the possibilities and all of the pitfalls the fact remains that smartwatches take up the same amount of attention that you would otherwise dedicate to your phone unfortunately that gave people the ability to read whole messages or notifications swiping or dialing them up little by little that's literally an amount of time that you would have spent on your phone and arguably it would have been easier to read it not on your wrist so the Scoggin yarn sells the time and then a few other pieces of information when pressing one of the three buttons on the side yeah this is a little bit like the pebble that I used to love then had to unfortunately set aside now but there are going to be programmable functions for each button the list is a bit extensive music and volume control our shutter button via bluetooth telling the date showing a secondary time zone and showing step counts on the top left of the watch is an area that shows 0 to 100 which is the percentage of 1 step goals this is also programmable in the Scoggin connected app and when the button is pressed both watch arms come together to 0 and then move to what your actual percentage is as for the actual fitness tracking the urine is a little bit too liberal with its counts but overall it gets the job done this movement of the arms is undeniably cool and it hasn't gotten old yet and it makes you remember what smartwatches were kind of supposed to be at first remember all the spy watches for movies like James Bond they were all really good looking timepieces that had hidden features now compare that to something that is all screen all the time and obviously is run on a bunch of applications those make those features less hidden and of course a little bit less cooler notifications are supposed to be the crux of the SmartWatch experience but unfortunately that is where the Scoggin yarn falls short much like with other hybrid smartwatches notifications are programmed to a specific portion of the watch and in this case it is 4 different colors on the left side you program the notifications in the connected app and then when the notifications come through a vibration will tell you that it is coming and then the arms point at the specific color based upon what you programmed it takes a little bit of memory but overall it's not that hard to get used to my main problem with this notification method especially with this watch is that the vibration is just too weak because these bodies have to be a little bit smaller to fit note the analogue style the vibration motors end up smaller as well and thus weaker that means that notifications and alarm functions which aren't even included with the Scogin yarn are simply useless to me but with that in mind and after a few days with the yarn I realized I don't miss having notifications going off on my wrist all the time we're always inundated with a lot of information in our connected world and I'm usually in front of a computer or looking at my phone fairly often to begin with so it's not like I'll miss out on an email or a message for very long and unlike my pebble or any Android wear watch I'm not being nudged to look at my wrist practically every five minutes and battery life forget about it really you basically can because the yarn and other hybrid smartwatches use coin batteries that can last for months on compare that to my pebble that worked for up to a week and pretty much any other SmartWatch that can go for no more than a couple of days without dying or needing a charge now obviously with a hybrid SmartWatch you won't be able to change the watch face and you lose all of the different applications in the wear store but again I realize that every day I don't need those kinds of features in my life especially on my wrist and also the watch looks good enough that I don't mind keeping the same watch face if it means that I can get really good battery life so do smartwatches still matter that's entirely up to you so I want to know what you think in the comments below I am but one example of the kind of path you can take when converting from a full SmartWatch there are plenty of other ways to go Finnish trackers or maybe you just want to go straight back to analog but I think it's important to know why you would want to make the jump for me I didn't know how I really felt about the different facets of a SmartWatch until I no longer had them in my daily life give it a try for yourself and you might find yourself pleasantly surprised and so there you have it the Scoggin Yorn hybrid SmartWatch we're not really giving a score to this SmartWatch because it is kind of in a fringe category but I wanted to use it as a way to pose the question to you do you guys think that smartwatches as we know them today still matter well you can talk about Android wear smartwatches Tizen watches even the pebble if you're still rocking it and you can let us know what you wear in the comments below and if you don't wear any smartwatches or if you actually we're a hybrid SmartWatch let us know also in the comments below and tell us why keep it tuned to android authority for even more videos like this and also for more about smartwatches maybe a couple of hybrids in the future but definitely more about Android wear 2.0 and beyond and you can keep it tuned here for all of the great releases coming this year because we are your source for all things Android