Electronic devices that only need to do a handful of basic things like smartwatches and ereaders theoretically have less software complexity, which makes writing good software for them theoretically easier. in the age of ai, the threshold of "complex" has changed drastically- giving rise to even more open source adoption. Open source versions of these sw/hw tools seem to be a natural step forward.

Between the Apple Watch kind of watches on one side, and Pebble kind of watches on another side, there's the whole Garmin ecosystem, a mention of which is notably absent from the article. They are a nice technological middle ground (though maybe not always a price middle ground), especially the classic models with non-OLED transflective screens. Granted, they are more sports/fitness oriented, but that's hardly a drawback honestly.