Smartwatch 3

Over the past year I've been eyeballing and oogling over the Android Wear smartwatches.  A friend, and word-colleague, of mine has had an original Pebble for a while (I think he may have been a kickstart backer) but I have to admit that the Pebble didn't really appeal to me - at least the original one didn't. One of the things I didn't like was the square display.  I do like watches, and I do like round displays, so the pebble was square, bulky, and not that well integrated with iOS - which is what I used at the time. I was also comparing smartwatches to traditional watches in terms of battery life.  Let's face it, smartwatches pale in comparison to traditional watches when it comes to battery life!

Even Android Wear's offerings didn't really support pulling that trigger and buying a smartwatch until I saw the LG G-Watch-R, which looked like a regular watch, but was a smartwatch as well.  For a few weeks I was mulling it over, which smartwatch to get - once the G-Watch R had reeled me in.  Finally, despite its square display, I ended up going with the Sony Smartwatch 3! So, why the change of mind?  The batteries of the LG and the Sony were comparable in how long they lasted, and most specs were pretty on-par when compared head to head.  The things that set the Sony watch apart were the on-board GPS (no need to rely on phone), it's got NFC, WiFi, and it charges via MicroUSB.  The WiFi and the NFC are a bit of a moot point since Android wear doesn't support either yet, however I can foresee Android supporting this pretty soon as competition with Apple's watch heats up. The GPS, which will allow me to go for runs and hikes around the campus without the need to carry my phone, and the microUSB charger are major selling points for me.  With MicroUSB I can use the same charger as my phone and not have to carry around another charging cable.

I've been using the watch for a few weeks now.  The most useful thing tend to be notifications.  I can leave my phone in the office, charging, and walk around the area and not miss any important notification, or have to pick up my phone to see what came in while I was away from my desk.  I have gone out once or twice for walks (when the weather was nice), and the GPS is pretty good in my experience.  The one bummer is that as of this writing Nike+ does not support the on-board GPS on Android Wear so I need to use RunKeeper to track my walks and runs. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next few months as Android Wear becomes more popular.

I've experimented a little bit with dictation for text messages.  It is a little spotty at the moment, I am wondering if it needs more training.  I think the main thing about responding to messages on this thing is that it's a bit weird, on a social level.  I feel like Michael Knight, or Captain Picard dictating to my device. In those contexts it's not unusual for people to announce "computer pause recording" but at this point in time on our planet it is more than a bit weird to say "OK google - text wife mobile phone train is running late". I might as well pull out my phone and do it.

Sleep tracking seems to be the thing to do these days (wonder if it's going to become a fad like calorie tracking).  I did get some free money to spend on the Google Play store, so seeing that some of my friends have downloaded Android Sleep, I decided to give that a try.  I got some nice graphs thus far, but let's see what the aggregate of data tells me in a month or so.  I wonder if Android Fit will be tracking more info about you, like Apple's Health toolkit, in the future.

Finally, as far as the battery goes - it gives me around 2 days on a full charge.  Not bad.  I honestly thought that I wouldn't be so psyched about having to charge my device every day (or every other day), but considering that I don't charge it overnight, and that it only takes 30 minutes to fully charge, I have gotten in the habit of plugging it in before I leave for work, and giving it a full charge each day.  This is not as annoying as I thought it would be given the utility that this device offers.