@Edent

For me, the only function that I *really* want from a smart watch is notifications/alerts of calendar appointments, incoming calls and (some) messages, and some apps.

If it also told the time, that would be a bonus, but it is not a deal breaker.

@Edent In many ways, I think the big companies who offer a watch are vastly overselling the usefulness of them.

Speaking for myself: As someone with ADHD, the single most important element of them is that they can show me a notification without having to take my phone out of my pocket. As soon as the phone comes out, concentration is gone.

I've had a cheap Amazfit, an Apple Watch, and now a cheap second-hand Garmin, and regardless of what they're all *supposed* to be able to do, ultimately 95% is notifications, 4% is looking at the time, and 1% is all the other stuff, like step counting.

In fact, when I got the Apple Watch, I ended being pretty disappointed that what Apple had sold didn't really match what I actually did. Sure I *could* use it to track long bike rides, or hikes in the mountains, but I don't do those things. And the battery was never really adequate for that anyway.

So I'm now in place where, while I do value having a smart watch, I don't really see the point of spending more than about £50 on one.

@Edent i switched to a dumb watch when i realised i was mostly using my cheap smartwatch to tell the time — and since the screen didn't stay on, it wasn't good at that.

really not regretting that. i'm not setting as many timers, either.

@Edent the thing I /want/ to do on my watch, but haven't found a good non-apple implementation of, is very navigation instructions while walking. Looking at my phone every few minutes just to see the map is annoying, but I want some sort of map to see if this is my turning it the one 10 yards further on. I tried a third party app for pixel watch and when it worked it was pretty good but the reliability was "interesting debo" level at best

@Edent Funny you should ask. I'm probably a power user, but for a completely different reason than the guy in question might think. 😁️ I use Amazfit Neo. It's a Casio-like "smart" watch with an STN display. Smart being in quotes because it doesn't do that much. It just shows time & date, measures steps and heart-rate, has stopwatch, shows basic notifications (just a number), shows me who is calling me and has a find my phone feature. Real benefit of this watch is that the battery lasts for 3-4 weeks and it does basically everything I need. There are however some minor annoyances I had with it.

First, the notification is just a blinking icon (+1) that is shown for a few seconds. Really easy to miss. It doesn't have vibrations and the piezo buzzer has a really unpleasnt sound so I turned it off. Second, apart from the find my phone feature and declining a call, there isn't really a way to trigger some action on my phone.

So I tried playing around with it for a while. I installed this app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.automate) and created two things:
1) When I get an important notification, it gets automatically repeated every few seconds until I turn on the screen. So the +1 icon on my watch keeps blinking because there is a never-ending stream of fresh notifications.
2) When the find my phone feature is activated, it plays a sound on my phone and shows a specific notification ("Watch is searching for this phone"). If you cancel the action, both the sound and the notification stop. So when I detect this notification, I lower the volume to 0%. If the notification is still there after 3 seconds, I turn the volume back up so the feature works as intended. If, however, it disappears early (because I cancelled it), I can use it differently. I can, for example, take a photo. So I essentially made a remote shutter button.

The monstrosity looks like this: (doesn't even fit on the screen 😁️)

@Edent three things I do: start timer, control lights, find my phone (the newest variant of this on Apple Watch is really good)

@Edent

After collecting ALL that telemetry, I hope to god almighty he was just hitting on her.

"What do users do on their watch" aught to be a database query they do before every fucking backlog groom.

@Edent my Garmin watch lasts 3 weeks on a charge. Used for: Run, sleep and general health tracking, payments, loyalty cards, weather, notifications, torch, occasional navigation, fancy watch face with sunrise/sunset times, timers. Smartwatches have been very useful; a shame as I used to like proper ones and don't get chance to wear those much any more.

@Edent I use mine to tell the time, receive and preview notifications from my phone, as a step counter and fitness tracker, and for pointing the way to GPS coordinates when geohashing. I don't need a touchscreen to do any that, nor a colour display, and so the smartwatch I use has neither... which gives it about a month of battery life (a little more in the summer, when it gets some solar charging).

@Edent less and less of a power user over time honestly. I use my Apple Watch for: notifications, my main (max complications) detail face, audio player controls, occasionally sending a brief text response when getting my phone out would be in bad form, and even less occasionally being a remote viewfinder/shutter release (on a timer) for my phone for group shots.

@Edent Oh good, there's a terminal emulator for Wear OS, so we can play, uh, maybe Wumpus.