Listening to power users is the product management equivalent of armoring the places on the fighter plane where you find bullet holes. You should of course be looking for where the planes that didn't come back have damage.

Smart watches become shelfware pretty easily. Especially when you don't have the Apple Watch cachet.

Some of this lack of features is self-imposed by Google.

Until they allow Gemini to use MCP servers directly, it's hard to be a power user with a Google Watch. I still dream, thwarted by Google, of being able to actually talk to my watch to have it do useful things. But since "do useful things" for me mostly requires triggering actions outside of the Google ecosystem and their very small approved list of integrated partners, it's pretty useless for anything more advanced than setting a timer.

I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly.

I don’t care that the battery doesn’t last, I’ve got a wireless charger at my desk and at home and 30 minutes on that a few times a week keeps it alive for my usage.

I think you're mostly right. I use it for a few extra things though. Stuff I can think of:

* Timers

* Alerts

* Step counter/fitness tracker

* My fitness app for weight training - I can start a workout on my phone and enter my set/rep/weight counts without needing to pull my phone out

* Phone calls when I'm on walks and do not want to the "full phone" experience, but also cannot be totally disconnected. This paired with Airpods is a pretty nice balance

* Ditto the above but for podcasts/music streaming - especially if wearing workout clothing and I don't have a comfortable place to carry my phone along.

* Basic replies to my "important people" texts - via Siri dictation mostly

* My "RFID" security badge to get into my home/office/etc. using Apple Pay

* Apple Pay

* Quick glance to check the weather w/ a main screen widget

* Quick glance to check calendar

I liken it to having a mini iPhone 4 strapped to my wrist. Useful here and there, and very nice for when I want to get away from my phone or it's too bulky to bring somewhere. Essentially a basic flip-phone for comms, and a connected streaming media player.

The more power user things I do would be to change the complications on my Apple Watch to keep it in context such as AQI and or something like an ETF I want to look at or setup a world time. I frequently use the timer function on my watch and read my email and reply to emails on my watch. Less obvious is the synergy with the ecosystem such as iPhone and Mac unlocking and keeping track of the weather and using Apple Music on my watch instead of my iPhone to keep tracking my battery and flight tracking.

I also use it to keep track of ChatGPT and Claude and I think one of them I can approve tasks with.

Yeah I sold my apple watch after about 6 months and got a good old F-91W instead. The most useful thing about it for me was having an animated memoji unicorn on my wrist to amuse people. Wasn’t really worth the trouble of charging it every night. I just want to know what time it is.

Your observation is spot on. I wear my Apple watch all day everyday. Put it on charge every night without fail. Some years back I used to use it as step counter and for payment. These days I don't count my steps and use the phone for tap payment. I guess the watch is just an ornament or habit or ritual. I'm not sure.

> Alexii

Assuming “Alexa” is first declension, plural is “Alexae”

to me main use case of a watchin is setting (cooking) timers. Maybe play 2048 if I'm bored and cant pick up my phone for some reason. Plus notifications about upcoming meetings.

I guess approve claude things. Plus regular fitness watch stuff that happens in the background. Idk what else can you do with it? I don't do payments because its awkward to tap wrist on the terminal, but I do have cards on it just in case.

I'm glad Pixel Watch got better since gen 1 because gen 1 sucked at being smart watch and at being a fitness tracker.

I can imagine a power user could tell time down to femto second if you asked them.

"insulin resistance trends" - whaaaaat? how would they do THAT? That would be huge for so many people, including diabetics, obese people or women with PCOS (PCOS alone affects more than 10% of women of reproductive age)

Is that measurement accurate? Like, a person starts taking Metformin -> and a few days later the watch detects a drop in insulin resistance?

Combined with poor battery life, this is quite pointless.

I can imagine that would be okay if the watch lasted for a full month, then you could buy two watches and swap them out every now and then.

That is pretty interesting. I am keen to know in the end whether better models or better sensors win this game.

The charger on the 4 both sucks and blows. Countless times I’ve taken it off the charger to find 0%.

The nice strap they showed in the adverts broke instantly when I took it out of the box. Two pins sheared right off the in the middle of the band.

WearOS Apps are trash.

I wish I had gone garmin. ;(

I had an Apple Watch Series 6 for about five years and the battery degraded to the point it needed just about two charges a day.

Then I found out about the new Fitbit Air in June and picked one up. Advertised battery life is 7 days; I tend to get closer to 6. It does the sleep/activity tracking I want (though not quite as good as the AW if I'm honest).

The extra benefit is I've cut out smartwatch features from my wrist. I got tired of having notifications on a watch and rarely needed special apps or anything either. I really only used the AW for telling time, date, temp/weather conditions, and payments; but most of the time I have my phone or I'm near a computer anyway.

I tested out Pixel 3 (or 4 .. i don't remember at this point). The 30 hours is when you have all the functionality enabled all the time. Like the always on display, always on notifications etc ...

I used to auto set the watch into DnD / battery saving mode at night, and used the "raise hand to turn on the display" functionality.. I used to get 3-4 days of continuous use.

Charging used to be like "put the watch into charger after waking up. It'll be ready by the time you get ready for office".

I did miss the 30 day battery life of my Amazfit bip and 2 week battery life of Pebble before that.. but charging once a week wasn't all that bad...

But again, I mostly used my Pixel watch as a fitness tracker. Didn't really care for most of the apps - except maps.

I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that. I didn't know this going in. I had purchased the Pixel 8 I think it was and saw the watch was heavily discounted if I bundled it in so I did. Will never buy another one. I'm a heavily sleeper and need multiple alarms sometimes to wake up and would often use my watch alarm to supplement my phone. So it became a nightly routine of making sure I didn't forget to charge my watch before bed, lest it dies in the middle of the night.

I'm enjoying 20 days of battery life on my Pebble Time 2

Daily charging for normal use isn't so much an issue once it becomes a habit, but battery life during extremely long (24+ hour) activities is pretty much a make-or-break feature for me.

I've done some 50ks and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life, choosing a device that can't almost feels like admitting defeat. It's kind of stupid but I know I'm not alone in that thought process.

Yeah, I bought a Pebble Time 2, and I can't imagine buying any other watch now. Having a 3+ week battery life is a game-changer.

Plus its screen is practically always-on, I've never seen any lag, it's half the price, and I have yet to feel like I'm missing any features over Wear watches.

I've been using a Withings Steel HR for 10 years now, the battery still easily last a month, activity tracking is good and has some basic notification support. I can't imagine having another thing to charge daily.

If it charges fast enough this shouldn't matter. You just charge it while you take a shower and as long as it charges enough for the day it fine.

If all you're looking for is a step counter in your watch, check out Casio ABL100WE. The battery lasts for two years (CR2016).

garmin watches are unbeatable for battery life - my Pixel 5 - would last close to a month. now it's close to 2 weeks since it's pretty old now :(.

but Garmin software sucks. my next watch will be an Apple Watch.

My Apple Watch broke, I replaced it with a Casio with an Ollee Watch board. It doesn’t have the fancy features but it’s so nice to not have to ever think about the battery life! I wish the firmware was open source, there is a few features I would like to tweak a bit

My WiThings ScanWatch lasts a full month. But it's not a phone-on-my-wrist, it looks more like an analog watch and just has some sensors in it.

I have the pixel watch 4 and I also hate charging stuff. But I put some double sided tape under the charging cradle and I just put it there at night which I think is good because then I always know where it is as well. So im used to it now. Plus you can buy an extra for travel ex. So im happy with it so far.

> I don't want to charge my watch every day

Apple Watch SE 2 has a life of barely 8 hours :-)

Same my 4 year old Huawei watch still goes 2-3 weeks. It seems to be the devices with simpler OS's that last longer and the wearOS and apple equivalent struggle to do more than a day or two.

The Garmin Tactix with solar is good.

My watch charges itself while I wear it and it only has three hands. That’s all I need from a watch.

Especially when Garmin and some other watches last a week or more.

It's less of a big deal than I thought it'd be.

I switched from a Garmin to an Apple Watch - which has less battery life - for some development work I had to do and it turned out I barely noticed.

Charge phone, charge watch, charge headphones just became a nightly checklist.

Keep in mind Google owns Fitbit and Fitbit has watches with 7 day battery life.

Pixel is for techies, Fitbit is their health tracking product.

Yeah I've been using Gadgetbridge[1]-compatible Amazfit watches and they last at least a week and have most functions I want from a smartwatch. For more complicated stuff I just use my phone.

[1]: https://gadgetbridge.org/

> 30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker.

Also quite funny considering they are highlighting the sleep features of the watch quite a bit:

"When it's time to recharge, Pixel Watch 5 and Google Health Coach elevate sleep tracking with 15% more accurate sleep stage detection, bedtime automations that automatically pause audiobooks when you drift off, and a dedicated bedtime watch face. When morning comes, Smart Wake ensures you wake up feeling refreshed. By monitoring your heart rate and movement during the 30 minutes leading up to your alarm, Smart Wake identifies optimal moments of lighter sleep to gently wake you before your set alarm time."

Sounds neat, but uh, how are you supposed to use any of that and also use the watch as a watch with a 30 hour battery life?

I’m willing to bet AI made that website and nobody bothered to verify.

Pixel Watches have an unlocked bootloader [1] and publish factory images [2].

That being said, it appears that the main open source version of WearOS (AsteroidOS) only supports watches that are 5-10 years old [3].

I suspect that if you did try to flash this watch, you would experience a whole host of rough edges.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2022/10/21/pixel-watch-bootloader-unl...

[2] https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch

[3] https://asteroidos.org/watches/

Edit: past pixels watches have an unlocked bootloader, I assume this one will as well. I don't see this information in the announcement post.

I'm pretty happy with a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS and a Garmin that I never connected to a Garmin account. I use https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge instead (then synced to my computer with syncthing), and I don't miss anything from Garmin.

I'm 100% Google free, and far happier with tech that I ever was.

It really does feel like such a waste. If I switch to Android I might as well toss my Apple Watch out and vice versa. Along with the fact they basically require the phone to do nearly anything.

Where specifically do you think they lack, and what do you suggest they focus on?

My Garmin Instinct 3 Solar watch (which has a display) has a battery life measured in _weeks_.

An Apple Watch doesn’t need a SIM-enabled iPhone for management. You can just use an old one if you have any laying around, or your current one after you’ve deactivated service on it. Just get a standalone watch plan, something like $80/year from US Mobile or other MVNOs.

Depends what you need to do.

I basically only use my phone if I need to do something that can't wait until I'm at a computer. I've got an LTE-enabled Pixel Watch that sometimes I'll wear without my phone.

If anyone messages me and I need to talk to them before I get home, I call them from my watch.

I have a friend who misplaced his iPhone for a weekend while away in another country and used his Apple watch eSIM for everything.

It wasn’t as convenient as having a phone but it was still far far better than being without anything entirely.

I tried it a few years ago and it was just annoying enough that I went back to my phone after a couple weeks. If you search online I’m sure you can find write ups from people who tried this out.

I was discussing this with my wife 10 minutes before I saw this comment.

watch / time / clock looks and works so much better on a round interface. notifications / text / buttons look and work so much better on a square interface.

So, use a watch on one wrist (round, good looking, etc), and a smartwatch on the other wrist (square, functional, 'computer')

There's no way you can mold the two together into one 'have it all' form factor

The round just looks better and far fewer people actively use the interface on the watch other than looking at the time or marking a workout. I think the squircle watches like Apple's look odd.

Google is an ad company. They don't actually want to lose any of the phone screen time on something with lower revenue real estate.

My Pixel Watch 4 lasts me two days (with AOD turned on), and I charge it while I'm in the shower, so sleep tracking is convenient that way.

I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-...

> From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right"

So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?

DC Rainmaker has done his own test: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/08/google-pixel-watch-5-gps...

> Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers

Where are you seeing that? I only see $499 with up to $125 off for trade-in.

You can disable all the health data stuff.

It would be neat to see the power budget breakdown. I suspect power draw is primarily the oled display, with the "more difficult" health sensors being second.

I love the rotating dial UI round Samsung watches used to have.

This was my thought as well. That round watch gif that shows rectangular widgets is painful to look at.