I’ve had an Android wear watch (Moto 360) for over a year now and I’ve had two different smart devices during that time. Over that year I’ve tried a few different applications, seen new ideas come and go, and discovered what I like about smartwatches.
What follows is what I see as the useful functions in smartwatches at the moment. That is not to say that this won’t change in the future, with new and more innovations coming, but here are what I see the useful tools in smartwatches so far:
Clock
Guess what, the clock feature of a smartwatch is the feature that I think is the best about them. Sure, you can do this on a smartphone, but a smartwatch is more restrictive (restrictions breed creativity), and it’s pretty hard to fall down the Twitter or Wikipedia rabbit hole with such a small screen. Plus, it’s much quicker to raise your wrist then fiddle about in your pocket for your phone.
Smartwatches also let you change how the clock looks, switching between digital, analogue and crazy options.
Notification Management (Meh)
This is a pro/con for me. The biggest pro is that it has made me disable a lot of useless notification because they are such big distractions on a smartwatch. The ones that remain are either important or great to be able to take quick actions on (like delete a spam email).
Setting Timers by Voice
I love this function when cooking, when teaching, exercising and just all the time. Setting a quick timer by raising my wrist and dictating what I want is great. It’s particular great when your hands are full.
Voice Replies to Messages
I live in Krakow. It’s pretty cold now in winter, getting my phone out of my pocket and taking my gloves off to answer a call/read a text and then type back, is NOT fun. Being able to read it on my wrist and then dictate a quick reply is brilliant. It took a bit of getting used to, but now, I love doing it and would probably do the same even if it was hot.
Activity Tracking
I really enjoy activity tracking. It helps encourage me to stay active, get a good nights sleep, and generally take care of myself. Wrist based activity trackers have advantages and disadvantages over ones you put in your pocket (heart rate monitoring, accuracy), so it’s a bit of a natural factor until you consider.
Leaving Your Phone Aside
I’d say this is one of the biggest advantages in using a smartwatch. It just encourages you to forget about your phone. Sure, you are replacing it with another distracting connected device which you have to set up right, so it’s not a distraction machine, but knowing that I won’t miss a call can quickly check upcoming appointment access, the vital data I need from my phone and have my activity counted, really encourages me to ignore my phone more.
Smartwatches aren’t perfect and you definitely don’t need one, but there are some nice things about them. It will be interesting to see how they evolve in the future.
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