Smartwatches: after the Pebble on to wear OS

Since the pebble I have been a bit fed up with the selection of smartwatches.

Originally I kickstarted the Bangle JS 2 smartwatch then bought the TicWatch 3 pro, but the battery life just frankly annoyed me so much and sent it back to get the Amazefit GTR 4.

I liked the Amazafit GTR 4 because the battery life was 3-5 days but the setup was something else. It doesn’t run Wear OS but I was fine with this because battery life made a big difference.

There is a review I read after getting the watch which sums up the problems with the watch. I like to hack and customise things but the options were insane. Then to add to this was the apps which included the default Zepp app and another one to pick up on the shortcoming of Zepp. Ultimately there were so many options but some of the basic things I expect were not covered.

Replying to messages by voice wasn’t possible, although the watch does support voice commands and even Amazon Alexia integrations. The other thing which got me was the calendaring. With the pebble, the calendar was always up to date and I could trust it to know what’s next. With the Amazefit the calendar only updated when I opened the Zepp app, stop the calendar sync and then re-enabled it again. My calendar changes sometimes hourly so an updated calendar is super important.

In the end I got so fed up with a watch I couldn’t really trust, and finally I made the decision to sell the watch on ebay after reading  reviews about the new TicWatch 5. I decided the reasonable battery life, quick charge, wear OS 3 support was enough to convince me to switch (although I am wondering if wear OS 4 will make it to the watch). Its great to have proper sleep as android support again too.

Its still early days but  I do miss some things like the automatic workout stuff, I have no idea what to put diaboloing under in my workouts. But generally if I’m charging the watch every day while in the bathroom, everything should be great.

The fast charge really has made a big difference and makes up for the smaller battery life. I can see this working when away from home due to cheap USB chargers (unlike the Oura). But that element of trust when looking at my notifications, calendar and tasks is something which can’t be underestimated.