Gadgetory

- I've been making YouTube videos for a few years now, and every time I make a video, no matter what the subject is, people always ask me the exact same question. What's that watch you're wearing? It's different every time. This time it's a Fossil Q hybrid something or other, I don't know. But I like using Android phones, and I like wearing smartwatches, but when you use an Android phone, and you want to wear a smartwatch, your choices are actually kinda grim. There's so many of 'em, but none of 'em are really that good. So I'm trying to figure out what to do about that situation. Now, maybe the first question shouldn't be, which smartwatch should I get if I use an Android phone? The first question should probably be, do I need a smartwatch at all? And yeah, that's a totally fair question. For a lot of people, it's about fitness. It's about tracking your steps, and tracking your exercise, but I don't know, that's not me, I care about steps, but I don't work out enough, and I don't need a smartwatch for that. For me, it's about notifications, and specifically, it's about treating them as ambient information instead of something that's constantly pestering me. I really like wearing a smartwatch because when my wrist buzzes or my phone buzzes, I can just glance down at my watch, see if it's something I care about or not, and move on with my day. I try to have the same relationship with all the information streaming into my phone, that I do with just a clock. I can look at it when I need the information and ignore it when I don't. So, if you're an Android user and you want to have that same relationship with notifications that I do, what do you do? So the obvious answer should be if you have an Android phone, you should get an Android smartwatch. Android Wear. Except it's not called Android Wear anymore, it's called Wear OS, 'cause Google wants everybody to know that it also works with an iPhone. But, it really works better with Android. Anyway, the problem with Wear OS is Google hasn't done right by its users with this platform. There's a bunch of problems actually. So the first one, Ron Amadeo wrote a really good article a couple of month ago over at Ars Technica, pointing out that the vast majority of Wear OS watches use this ancient Qualcomm processor, the 2100, that hasn't been updated in two years, and there's really nothing on the horizon. And what that means is if you go out and just buy an Android Wear watch, it's probably going to be too slow, it's probably not going to have great battery life, you're probably going to have not a great experience. On top of that, if you just go out and buy an Android Wear watch, you're probably going to buy it from the people that are making them these days, which are Google's fashion partners, like Fossil, or Kate Spade, or Michael Kors, or whatever. And so you're paying a premium for this old technology. But even if you get past all of that, the basic experience of using a Wear OS watch, doesn't hold up this year. They're kinda slow, the third-party apps are not that great, if you can find them at all, and digging through the piles and piles of watch faces to find the one good one that you like just takes forever. It's really just a huge problem all around, and I've just been waiting for Google to fix it. What I would like to do is tell you that I've used all of the available smartwatches that work with Android and I've picked the best one for most people. And I've used a bunch of 'em, but I can't give you the best one for most people because I kind of don't think there is one. Instead, the best thing I can offer you is this decision tree. And your first decision is, do you want a screen on your smartwatch or not? If you do, you've got two branches. You've got Wear OS, which we've just talked about, and we've got a couple of third-party options that I like. If you don't care about a screen, but you still want a smartwatch, there's another branch over here called hybrid. And so I wanna go through these different options with you. Okay, so you want a screen. We've already gone over Wear OS. It's, it's fine. But if that doesn't appeal to you, there is a brand new smartwatch that just hit the scene. It's the Fitbit Versa. And I don't love it. As a fitness watch, it's pretty solid. It fits into Fitbit's whole ecosystem, but I think it looks pretty terrible. The watch face options are even worse. The third-party app support is non-existent. Battery life is great though. But as a general smartwatch, I don't think it's good. A better option is the Samsung Gear line. This is the Gear Sport. And I like it a lot actually. On the watch itself, it's got this rotating bezel so you can jam through your notifications really quickly. There's not great third-party app support, but there's a little bit. The problem that I have with this is if you don't use a Samsung phone, in order to get this thing up and running, you have to install at least four different pieces of software. The Gear software, the notification thing, S Health, some other thing. And you could even get up to six. And that's just a lot of Samsung crap on my phone, and I don't love it. So, the watch is fine. I think it's actually pretty good. It does most of the things right that Android Wear gets wrong, it's just, it's a lot of Samsung. Now the last branch in the decision tree is this hybrid watch. And so, here's one that I just got. It's a Skagen, again. And this is this Fossil I've been wearing. They're basically the same watch. And the thing that's interesting about this is you don't get to see the content of your notification, but it can still count your steps, and it can still show you a little bit of information. So when a text message comes in, I've configured this thing to have the minute hand point to the three. Or when it's a calendar appointment it points to the nine. Or whatever, and so when my phone buzzes, or my wrist vibrates, I can glance down at my watch and it'll point down to, I don't know, six, and I know in my head, that that's a Slack message. I'll look at it later. But if it points at 12, it's a call, and I should pull my phone out right now. The other reason I really like hybrid smartwatches is you don't have to charge the damn things every day. A battery in this thing could last anywhere from three to six months depending on how many notifications you get. It's the watch I've been wearing the most lately. So that's the decision tree for smartwatches for Android users, as far as I see it. The place where I've landed is I've mostly been using a hybrid smartwatch, but I don't know, I kinda want to go back to Wear OS. Which seems like a really bad choice, but I really like having the weather on my wrist, and I really like seeing my next calendar appointment. And to do that, you need a screen. But even though it might be the right choice for me, I don't think I can recommend a Wear OS watch to really, anybody else. There's the fact that the processor is really old. But more to the point, these watches aren't that cheap. Because Google partnered with all these fashion brands, it means that you're having to pay fashion brand prices. You're paying for the design and the brand name. And that extra money just doesn't seem worth it to me for a platform that I don't know where it's going. It's great that there are so many choices of different watch styles and different kinds of watch bands and all the other stuff that you can get with Android Wear, but if none of those choices are a home run, then what's the point of having all that choice? I really hope that this year, Google can find a way to give better options to Android users when it comes to smartwatches because looking around, it's way past time. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. And if you've gotten this far, maybe jump down to the comments and let me know what is the most important thing for you in a smartwatch. For me it was, I don't know, battery life for hybrids, maybe it's something different for you.