Ask Slashdot: What Can I Really Do With a Smart Watch? 232
kwelch007 writes I commonly work in a clean-room (CR.) As such, I commonly need access to my smart-phone for various reasons while inside the CR...but, I commonly keep it in my front pocket INSIDE my clean-suit. Therefore, to get my phone out of my pocket, I have to leave the room, get my phone out of my pocket, and because I have a one track mind, commonly leave it sitting on a table or something in the CR, so I then have to either have someone bring it to me, or suit back up and go get it myself...a real pain. I have been looking in to getting a 'Smart Watch' (I'm preferential to Android, but I know Apple has similar smart-watches.) I would use a smart-watch as a convenient, easy to transport and access method to access basic communications (email alerts, text, weather maps, etc.) The problem I'm finding while researching these devices is, I'm not finding many apps. Sure, they can look like a nice digital watch, but I can spend $10 for that...not the several hundred or whatever to buy a smart-watch. What are some apps I can get? (don't care about platform, don't care if they're free) I just want to know what's the best out there, and what it can do? I couldn't care less about it being a watch...we have these things called clocks all over the place. I need various sorts of data access. I don't care if it has to pair with my smart-phone using Bluetooth or whatever, and it won't have to be a 100% solution...it would be more of a convenience that is worth the several hundred dollars to me. My phone will never be more than 5 feet away, it's just inconvenient to physically access it. Further, I am also a developer...what is the best platform to develop for these wearable devices on, and why? Maybe I could make my own apps? Is it worth waiting for the next generation of smart-watches?
Pebble? (Score:5, Informative)
Would the Pebble [getpebble.com] fit your needs?
Gotta love the honesty on that web page, it got a smile from me.
Re:Pebble? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pebble? (Score:5, Informative)
1. See who is calling without taking out your phone, button press will tell your phone you've decided not to answer the call to it stops ringing.
2. See the text of new messages from SMS/email/twitter and likely any other source you care to see. You can scroll up and down to read them.
3. 5-7 days between charges. Some apps or faces will shorten this by a LOT. 99% of the time I use the two functions above, on a 4 day trip out of town now, didn't even bother to bring the charging cable.
4. See how many voicemails, texts, email you have waiting.
5. Control Tasker (Android only) which brings up a bunch of simple things you can do.
6. Current weather
I wouldn't want to try to enter text on it, only has 4 buttons, but if you want to see if it's worth leaving the clean room it's great. You could likely set up a couple stock messages and send them if you really wanted to, not sure if there is an app or if you'd have to get Tasker to do it.
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Yes! This is exactly the sort of thread response I'm looking for! I've looked in to the Pebble watches, and I'm not sure they're quite right for me, but this is the sort of thing I want to be able to do. Essentially, diminish my need to get my phone out. Things like being able to see and read texts to see who they are from and what they say, to evaluating incoming callers...YES! I would like a little more, but this conversation's definitely along my desired lines! Not, "can I do this?" But rather, "W
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Would the Pebble [getpebble.com] fit your needs?
"apps compatible with iOS and Android",
Nice.
Re:Pebble? (Score:5, Funny)
I can imagine the 3 windows phone users sitting around a card table, and collectively sighing after reading that.
Re:Pebble? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pebble? (Score:4, Informative)
There's a fair bit of 'easy' customisability in a Pebble.
And the battery life of 'aroundabouta week' is great compared to the 'charge overnight' crowd. I like to have a watch on at night, and I can silence my phone and have calls vibrate the pebble to wake me up if needed, but I sleep pretty lightly.
Notifications are good (with an add-on app), Phone control is easy (with an add-on app), there's a bunch of little apps for just about anything. Download the Pebble app for your phone (no need to get the hardware to install the app) and have a poke about in the app store section to see what's about.
There are programs that allow you to make your own faces with a builder app on your phone. You can get apps for it that can pull any JSON data you want from a server, and the actual dev environment used to make 'real' apps isn't too bad to work with.
And the original plastic pebble is pretty cheap and waterproof to 5 atm. (um, swimming and showering and stuff), so I rarely take it off.
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Sadly, you can all but forget about Pebble in the EU, because it carries an incredible 50% price premium over the US price.
That's way, way too much, and brings the watch from "hey, this would be neat to have" to "jesus, I can buy a full-featured phone with an IPS and Gorilla Glass 3 for that amount of money".
I commonly (Score:5, Funny)
I commonly need common communications commonly between my common friends commonly found on my common smart phone.
Re:I commonly (Score:4, Funny)
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He sucks samzenpus' cock (SC). (Score:3, Funny)
Bennett Haselton(BH) is a frequent contributor(FC) to slashdot (SD). His frequent contributions (FC) are ridiculously verbose(RV) and full of(FO) utter bullshit(UB).
Clapper (Score:2)
commonly leave it sitting on a table or something in the CR, so I then have to either have someone bring it to me
Use it so that if you get too far from your phone, it makes your phone ring so you'll remember to take it with you. And as a way to find your phone when you can't find it.
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As much as people may continue to criticize my question, I think this is a valid function of a smart-watch. Thank you for pointing it out!
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How to write a good ticket (Score:4, Insightful)
[...]
various sorts of data access
Part of writing a good ticket is being specific about your use case and not presupposing the solution. From what you've written, the problem is not technical and has nothing to do with a smart watch. The problem is you are forgetful.
If you can be specific about what you are actually doing with your phone, we can give you solutions that may or may not involve a smart watch.
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need access to my smart-phone for various reasons
[...]
various sorts of data access
Part of writing a good ticket is being specific about your use case and not presupposing the solution. From what you've written, the problem is not technical and has nothing to do with a smart watch. The problem is you are forgetful.
If you can be specific about what you are actually doing with your phone, we can give you solutions that may or may not involve a smart watch.
This is it exactly. The solutions to the problem of not having phone-like features attached to your wrist (where you can't forget them) are either a: purchase a several hundred dollar bit of tech that you clearly dont know suits your needs, or b: tie your phone to your fucking wrist.
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(chick's aren't impressed by smart watches)
Speak for yourself. Moto360 has been a AMAZING icebreaker the last 3 months.
Step on it when it doesnt' work (Score:4, Insightful)
Priorities (Score:2)
Why do you need weather maps in a clean room?
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That's ridiculous. As weather prediction is notoriously bad, he would be far better off checking that information in his car, right before he leaves.
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Living in a climate governed by the Mediterranean, I've never had to.
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Then of course you wouldn't need weather to decide when to leave work (or IF it is worthwhile to leave work at all, I've had a couple of times when it simply wasn't worthwhile to leave work before midnight).
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Living in the Mediterranean, he probably doesn't have a job at all.
*IF* you can call that livin... Oh, wait... Never mind.
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Simple explanation, and I think camperdave said it best, you've never watched a snow-storm come in on radar. I live in Mid-West U.S. When we see a storm that we expect to drop 2 feet of snow on us, and know we can't safely get our people out with 2 hours safe notice, we shut down and send them home before it becomes too dangerous, or for that matter, impossible to leave. People's lives are not worth ANY amount of money. Weather is a major factor here.
Why I got a Pebble (Score:5, Informative)
I don't like my phone making noises and I generally wore headphones. Which left me with leaving the phone in my pocket and either putting it on vibrate and have phantom buzzes or put it on completely silent and miss texts/appointments. Got a pebble maybe 9 months ago and it's been great. As long as I'm in bluetooth range I'll get notified for SMS/Google Chat message, some Facebook updates, calendar events, and incoming phone calls. All of that is customizable and while a few apps allow you to send canned responses I don't use that currently - I just want to know something happened.
Best part is when you're in a meeting and your phone buzzes, you can just check your wrist to see what it was which is far more discrete than pulling out your phone, unlocking it, and then finding the right app.
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Or you can just get a Windows Phone which shows all of the message indicators on the lock screen.
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Or you can install a custom lock screen on Android and get the same thing.
Or use an iPhone, which I think shows notifications on the lock screen as well?
This does not prevent the "pulling out your phone" part - especially if it doesn't automatically turn its screen on, requiring further steps - and then the unmentioned "putting your phone back" part.
Unless that phone is already on the desk in front of you, of course.
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My android (now) does that as well, but I can still leave the phone in my pocket.
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If you think someone checking their phone is an incosiderate knob then you're probably in a permanent foul mood.
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Finding the right app? Does your phone not offer a main screen summary of what's going on?
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I'm still using an old iPhone 3GS with iOS6 and it does that too, so I'm not sure what smartphone Enry is talking about. It must be from the paleolithic era.
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I just let the phone buzz and ignore it. What's the point of pulling it out to check? The only time it matters is if you're getting bad news, and bad news can wait. And in a meeting, I would never check it, and I am annoyed at people who do check. If I am talking to someone and they stop and look at the phone, it tells me that I am unimportant and they'd rather talk to literally anyone else in the the world including the unknown person who made the phone buzz.
Kids need to learn some basic social skills.
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At the time I was in a support role for the client. That buzz could be my wife calling (which I could ignore), could be server a up and died and needed my attention.
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Good tip. I can see where being two yards short on a 150 yard shot would devastate my own golf game.
Who wants a watch that you have to recharge daily? (Score:3)
The entire point of having a battery in a watch is so that you don't have to worry about winding it every day,,, it's good for 3 years and then you replace the battery when it goes.
If I'm going to replace my watch, something that I've been using for years, and have only had to replace the battery twice since I got it, with something newer, then that newer thing should not create additional inconveniences that far outweigh anything it can do that a watch might not, particularly when there is nothing that it will do which a smart phone does not already do anyways.
Re:Who wants a watch that you have to recharge dai (Score:5, Informative)
I can deal with my Pebble watch and it's 7-8 day time between recharges. When it gets down to 20% (day 7) I think, "Hmmm, better charge that up". When it gets down to 10% (day 8) I think, "OK, charge that up tonight".
Then I wake up in the morning with a dead watch and charge it fully in the time that I have a shower and breakfast. Or I plug it's USB cable in at work for 45 minutes when I'm at my desk.
Point is , I can deal with weekly charges.
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The entire point of having a battery in a watch is so that you don't have to worry about winding it every day,,, it's good for 3 years and then you replace the battery when it goes.
If I'm going to replace my watch, something that I've been using for years, and have only had to replace the battery twice since I got it, with something newer, then that newer thing should not create additional inconveniences that far outweigh anything it can do that a watch might not, particularly when there is nothing that it will do which a smart phone does not already do anyways.
There are a fair number of people out there who happily traded the 2-week battery life of their perfectly functional cell phones for dead-in-a-day smartphones. As it turns out, the inconvenience of having to constantly recharge a smartphone was worth putting up with in exchange for being able to do all the things you can do with a smartphone. Clearly, not everyone shared this sentiment, as you can still see any number of people using non-smartphones today--but significant numbers of people chose functionali
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use your smartwatch to store your (Score:2)
What do you make of this? (Score:2)
If you really want the smartphone in the CR... (Score:2)
This will eliminate the need for extra, expensive tech, while also keeping it handy.
Notification and Alarms, Subtlety (Score:2)
This is the #1 case for something like a Pebble right now.
- Put all your notifications on your wrist. Email, caller id, SMS.
- Reject calls from your watch!
- Never have to unlock your phone again - it's tied to the watch.
- Canned responses from your watch.
- SILENCE your phone. You can't miss the buzz on your wrist, so now you won't be that ass whose phone is whistling every 10 seconds.
- Likewise, you cannot miss the buzz on your wrist for alarms, no matter how noisy it is.
- Navigation and music control on yo
Your job (Score:2)
Are any of your reasons for needing your phone related to your job? Can you not go through a workday without playing with your phone? If you need outside communications from the clean room then your employer should provide them.
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Whatever the environment, there are jobs that require someone just to be there waiting for something unusual to happen. Even in the nuclear missile bunkers, I bet they spend about 95% of their time sitting around waiting for an alarm they hope never comes. You can only clean so much before it's time to lean. So what if OP works in a clean room? I bet there are plenty of "I'm paid to sit here" jobs in there, too.
A watch is not clothing (Score:2)
you still have to pay the sales tax.
I'm confused (Score:2)
OP works in a clean room where he can't take his phone out from under his body condom ... but apparently he doesn't need to wear gloves?
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Are you allowed to pull out your phone, launching all manner of pocket cruft into the air which will then land on whatever it is you're trying to keep clean?
Better solutions exist (Score:2)
How about the extra-ordinary solution of wearing your phone in a pocket that IS accessible within the clean room? Or in one of those exercise arm-band thingies to hold it on your arm outside the gown? There are also bracelets that you can wear that warn you if you get too far from your phone which are inexpensive, so you won't forget your phone in the clean room
The real question becomes what is allowable for you to wear in your clean room. I'm a little surprised that a watch would be OK, or that bringing
Keep outside of your suit (Score:2)
Just lay it on the bench, dress, take it with you inside and keep an eye on it. Cheap and handy.
What should a smart watch do? (Score:2)
Sports applications - specifically it should measure the movement of your arm at the very least, if not the full exercise monitoring/recording of the fitbit and the similar items.
Medical application - specifically at least measure your pulse, if not full blood sugar, etc.
In addition it should have a good
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Basis Peak, if they ever get the notification software, is a good start, but it needs voice recognition.
Of course, I suppose, if you had a Pebble, you could just program it to bring up voice rec on your smart phone and use your bluetooth headset.
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Step 1) Someone asks what they should get on their smart watch that they are considering buying.
Step 2) I list several features they should get.
Step 3) You point out that all the features I list 'already do that'.
But you seem to think that a list of features that alread exist is not appropriate response for someone looking for features on their smart watcH? Why?
I love my Moto 360. (Score:2)
By default I get texts and emails on my watch, can set reminders and alarms and text by voice, and of course answer and dismiss calls which is surprising useful with a BT ear piece. But with some good apps like Coffee I can easily send texts, with a custom face I can see my steps and weather outside at a glance (important where I live in the winter). I hardly take out my phone a fraction as much as I used to except to type long texts or emails or occasional web browsing.
Well that was informative (Score:2)
What you actually want to do is not put your phone on the 'inside' of your "CR" gear.
If that's not an option, then I suspect neither is farting around with a wrist-computer.
Being serious. I'm a Pebble user and the main service it provides is putting your phone notifications on your wrist - it lets you break the pavlovian response of looking at your phone everytime it goes 'buzz'
However, it pretty much assumes that when
Missing information: What do you want to do? (Score:2)
At no point did you indicate what you might want to do with a smart watch. We might be able to make some guesses if you told us what kinds of things you commonly do on your smart phone. Without that information, any responses here will be less useful than a few minutes of googling.
I absolutely love my Pebble. Its primary purpose is in helping me to determine whether I should remove my phone from my pocket or not. The Pebble will show me who's calling me, or will display a text message, or the first few line
Review of 20 wearable wristbands at The Register (Score:2)
Earlier today
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
Here is how I use my Gear 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Ignore the moronic and juvenile posts from above that were more about making the poster feel superior than answering your question. But this is ./, I wasn't surprised.
I've had my Samsung Gear 2 since July, and find the following functions the most useful, in no specific order. Most smart watches have similar functions, the camera probably being the one that is the missing from many of them. .. probably not.
1. Telling time (duh)
2. Timer. Something I use a lot more than I thought I would because it's easier to use and I don't have to take my phone out of my pocket.
3. Camera. Picture resolution isn't that great, but it's good enough to document things and share on Facebook (which I don't post from the watch, I post from my phone. Might be a way to do it from the watch, just not that much of a facebook fan that I care.) Don't expect to print 8x10 glossy pictures though. After having one, I wouldn't get another smart watch without one, it's so quick and easy to use and always easily available.
4. Get text messages. You can send them, but it's either by voice which can be annoying to others, or some of the keyboards. Keeping it to short 'yes/no' type 1replies are possible, carrying on a conversation about where to go for dinner and why
5. Send and take phone calls. As long as someone is in your contacts, the voice recognition works pretty well. The comments I've had from my wife is the quality of the audio on her end is pretty good. Because the speaker and microphone is on your wrist, it can be difficult to hear or hold it comfortably to talk. I had a conversation from about 50 feet away from my phone when I left it inside my car at Home Depot and was in the contractor bay.
7. Get other notifications. This can drive you nuts, unless you are one of those people that insists on being plugged in constantly. I turned off the email/news notifications, just got too many. Other people that I know that have one use it for those things.
8. Calculator. Tiny buttons, good for quick calculations.
10. Store customer cards. I have loaded the bar codes for most of my loyalty cards, makes it easier in some stores with remote readers, useless in others. Since it doesn't care what the bar code is, might be useful in a clean room if you have to scan bar codes.
11. 'Look behind'. This is an app that lets you see what your phone camera sees. Great for looking under sinks and behind furniture. Probably not very useful in a clean room.
12. 'Find my phone'. Easier than finding another phone to call your phone when it's lost.
13. I like the square look more than the round look, makes more sense for a computer screen.
Caveats: .. it's also water and dust resistant, that's the price you pay for those features. I set the display brightness low, which extends the timing. .. it doesn't require any tools to remove, although the same may or not be true for the one you replace it with.
1. It's not a platform to spend long amounts of time reading. The screen is small, and even with support, my arm gets tired after using it too much to read the news and other things.
2. I have to charge it up every couple of days. Because it uses a proprietary cradle, you can't just plug it in to a USB cable to charge it. But
3. Fitness programs (i.e. pedometers) chew up the battery life. If you want a fitness watch, get one. If you aren't interested in tracking those types of things, this watch is fine.
4. Don't even start to believe you are going to type emails on this. The face is just too small for anything other than very small text messages.
5. While the watch band is replaceable, finding one that fits can be problematic. I haven't spent a lot of time, but because of the way the watch is designed, I think one really needs to go to a store to find one rather than online. I've tried a couple around the house from old watches, and the ones that fit looked like crap. But
6. It's a PIA at night driving or really doing anythin
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I realize this poster doesn't often read replies, but THANK YOU! THIS WAS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS ASKING FOR! There have been hundreds of replies to this question...a handful useful, but this one takes the cake! I think that johnlcallaway has convinced me to be an iteration 1 adopter of a smart-watch. They don't do everything I want, but they do a lot of it.
P.S. - don't care about Trolls...they can bitch and moan about Apple vs PC or whatever to their heart's content for all I care..I only wanted a legitimat
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What happened to 6 and 9?
Android Wear Uses (Score:2)
I have an Asus ZenWatch. Below should be able to be done on any Android Wear device. In no particular order I use it for the following:
Check New Email
Check SMS
Check Caller ID
Check Weather
Check Calendar and Agenda
Check Google Now Cards (includes traffic card for my route home)
Check Other phone notifications
Dictate Notes
Check steps walked
Check Heart rate
Set Reminders
and Check the Time
Some Android Watches have a speaker in addition to the microphone so you answer and talk through your watch for phone calls. My
samsung galaxy gear, maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife has one because she can't fit any modern cellphone in her pockets, and her Veer finally died, so the phone lives in her handbag and she uses her watch. She can answer calls, talk, and hang up without (I believe) even having to touch it, and can send texts ("galaxy, send text. next patient has piece of steel stuck in eyeball, will need more lidocane.") which she then previews visually and tells it verbally to send, again without having to touch it. She's pretty thrilled with it. And it tells time. I'm not sure what else I'd want/need in a watch.
(I haven't gotten one because I destroy everything I touch so it'd be a waste. But I'm quite envious.)
This is what I think a wrist computer *should* do (Score:2)
Applications:
Time ( analog and digital)
Weather (current and 5 day)
Music (streaming and offline/stored to bluetooth headset)
Games
Fitness
Universal Remote (car, thermostat, door locks, tv, game controller, camera, etc)
Payments/Passbook (nfc, QR-Code wallet)
Voice Messaging/Notes
Voice Search (e.g. Siri)
To Do List
Hands Free Call
Facetime/Hangouts
Calculator
Calendar/Schedule
Translate
I want a smartwatch... (Score:2)
... that doesn't require a mobile phone like those Casio Data Bank calculator watches.
Fellow Clean Room worker (Score:3, Informative)
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I thank you for your informed comment! This is the sort of answer I was asking for!
Use it to burn money (Score:2)
epecially if the name is prefixed with "i"
take your phone out of your pocket? (Score:2)
I commonly work in a clean room too.
I take my phone out of my pocket, wipe it down, and throw it in my tool box before gowning up.
Listen douchebags (Score:2)
All I wanted to know was, "am I am somehow missing some killer app that makes a Smart-Watch worth-while?"
A handful of you have actually considered my questions and the detailed description I offered of my scenario, prior to commenting, and I appreciate your comments! The rest of you are freaking children more interested in stirring up some trivial argument and wasting time. No wonder it takes so long for the true users and developers - I happen to be both - to get together and figure out what we really wa
Re:One year too early (Score:4, Funny)
In six months the fanboy noise floor will be at +120Db. The time to ask is before it is incorporated into a religion.
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The unit you want is probably dB.
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Unless he meant "Drooling bullshit".
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I appreciate your faith in Apple but I'm not convinced the watch is anything comparable with the iPhone. The iPhone's success was primarily due to it's touch interface. I remember watching an interview of Steve saying how they put everything into the iPhone, almost as a last shot of reviving Apple. The price point was scary but 3 year contracts saved them from failure since most people would never have forked out more than $300 on a phone. It was a good day at the casino for Apple and the success continued
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I remember watching an interview of Steve saying how they put everything into the iPhone, almost as a last shot of reviving Apple.
Huh? By the time Apple introduced the iPhone, they had already grown bigger than Dell. What is this "reviving" of which you write?
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On TV I saw the young dad from Parenthood talk to his wife via his Samsung smartwatch while he was climbing around on the roof of his house working on christmas decorations. Fortunately he didn't have to hold a smartphone to talk to his wife, so he could grab something to keep him from falling if he needed to.
For me, having a smartwatch allows the government and their corporate overlords monitor me more consistently than my smartphone or computer.
Ask anyone who's ever been pocket-dialed - you don't need to hold a smart phone to talk to people.
Good Voice-only Interface for Phone (Score:5, Informative)
What you need is a good voice-only interface for your phone, and if possible in your clean-room environment, some kind of Bluetooth headset. Phone rings, you tell it "answer". If you want to do something, tell Siri or equivalent, and get voice feedback. Not being an iPhone user, I don't know if Siri's good enough. (The Android stuff I've used so far hasn't been, but my car's phone-dialing interface is at least a start.)
WHAT CAN I DO WITH A SMART WATCH? (Score:5, Funny)
Did you ever see Christopher Walken in "Pulp Fiction"? ;-)
What can I do with a smart watch? (Score:2)
What can I do with a smart watch?
Do you really want /.ers to answer that ??? The most popular response will be like in real life - something about the sun not shining.
Re:What can I do with a smart watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still waiting for the killer-app for a smartwatch. I want it to be a central hub of sorts for my personal electronics that anything and everything essentially tethers through, be it over bluetooth or some 802.11 variant, so that everything can have network connectivity. The watch itself shouldn't actually do much- make phone calls as a speakerphone or through a bluetooth headset, provide very rudimentary mapping and navigation, notify of text messages and maybe read text messages and e-mail via text-to-speech, and show task lists and calendar and stopwatch timer events.
Everything else, like having a nice handset for phone calls, or a really good dialer that can do advanced contact list editing, or web browsing, or any other enhanced feature should work on the tablet or other personal device on one's person.
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The killer app for a smartwatch will be it's function as a bluetooth dongle to authenticate people. Of course, for it to serve that function well, it will have to be non-removable; otherwise someone else could pretend to be you and the terrorists would win.
In some instances it will literally be a killer app, but let's let the marketing folks take care of cleaning that little detail up.
Re:What can I do with a smart watch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I've come to realize that slashdot really is just a place for old curmudgeony tech people who automatically hate all new tech...
"Hate" sure is overused this day and age. The word has lost all meaning.
It's more like bored, disinterested, and maybe a little annoyed.
My answer to "what can I really do with a smart watch?" is "Probably not get dates."
And of course, there's no downside [dilbert.com] to wearing multiple personal gadgets. It's really hip. Really. You'll be the talk of the Starbucks.
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Yeah I'm in the same boat. Apple's long hyped device comes out and, oh hum. It is the new 3D TV: a device looking for a purpose. Wow now I have a remote control for my phone when I take selfies. So as long as I have a really stable place to put my $600 phone on and don't mind taking a couple steps away from it (often in public places) I can use my $350 watch to click the snapshot button. Hey look my $400 smartwatch can ... look like a watch. Act as a pedometer (which is something that I literally got in box
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How much of this is reality now though? My understanding is you still need to get your device close to the readers now. I already have that with my transit pass and credit card. Moderately more convenient than waving my wallet at the device I suppose but couldn't we just add a band to our credit cards? I guess the combination of features makes it useful. Doing away with passwords would be huge assuming we have a secure way of transmitting the success/failure around the net. Would be great to not need dozens
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Yeah, I've come to realize that slashdot really is just a place for old curmudgeony tech people who automatically hate all new tech...
IBM made a watch that ran Linux in 2000. Not exactly "new" technology. Ran X11 and everything. Not exactly "new technology."
The concept of advanced watches isn't new. Dick Tracy had a 2-way radio watch in 1946, and a 2-way TV watch in 1964. We can do these today, but nobody wants yet another gadget to drag along/lose/break/get stolen/have to recharge. Smartphones cover a broader range of functionality in a better usability factor. And let's face it - talking to your watch isn't exactly private compared
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No, what we're really waiting for is a decent battery. To get all of the functionality that we want in a watch sized object AND have it last more than 6 hours is beyond the pale at present.
To keep the power budget down, we're making too many compromises.
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A true smartwatch would provide both in addition to time based on UTC. I find it amazing that a purely mechanical watch, albeit those that cost upwards of a quarter of a million dollars can do both (provided you set the cams inside for proper longitude and latitude) but a watch with a computer inside that can do these calculations is unavailable.
Or just buy 3 $10-dollar watches, and save almost 99.99% of your money.
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A true smartwatch would provide both in addition to time based on UTC. I find it amazing that a purely mechanical watch, albeit those that cost upwards of a quarter of a million dollars can do both (provided you set the cams inside for proper longitude and latitude) but a watch with a computer inside that can do these calculations is unavailable.
Or just buy 3 $10-dollar watches, and save almost 99.99% of your money.
Sidereal timekeeping is done to the absolution rotation of Earth as opposed to the rotation relative to the sun (which changes as we orbit) so a Sidereal hour is shorter than a solar hour. You would need to find a $10 watch that drifts at exactly +0.275% which is not impossible but rather hard to do on the first try.
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Don't panic pigiron, Pebble's got you covered.
Wellllll, for sidereal time anyway.
Here's a few watchfaces I found after googling "pebble sidereal time" [mypebblefaces.com]
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The sidereal day was always much easier to time, with transit telescopes.
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It doesn't even need to be a phone. If all you need is data inside the clean room, a PC or laptop will do as well.
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I have bad metal allergies (sensitivity). The cheap metal on the back of my watches made my skin break out. So when I got my SW, the same thing happened.
Next time, why not try a layer of nail polish on the back of the watch? And if you want to go all out, you can do the bezel and side as well, in your choice of colors.
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This is the most applicable thread I've seen yet. Yes, we do have "Furnaces" (we call them Growth machines.) Ours are shielded, and as such, it is common-place for people to use Cell-Phones within the CR...not just IT. In fact, I provide WiFi to our CR techs. A simple solution such as "pockets" on our suits actually would solve my problem...the trick there is, getting management to approve and order them. Different problem altogether.
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Thanks AC. Have all that...doesn't do what I want.
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Funny, because I've been a developer for 17 years, and have written mobile apps. Note the '?' mark, and the previous question about what the best platform to develop for is.