Android Wear 2.0 is also buggier than it should be, especially given the fact that it had an extended public beta period and its launch was delayed by months. Beyond them taking a long time to launch, it can be hard to tell when an app is actually launching, because the screen will flicker back to the list of apps before it will launch the one you just tapped. The Google Assistant also crashed often, forcing me to repeat my inquiry multiple times (or more likely, I just get frustrated with it and pull out my phone).
The changes and improvements look decent, but if you don’t first get the above things right, they’re all for naught. When will software makers learn that performance – especially UI responsiveness – is the single most important part of a consumer-oriented device?
Not that it matters to me – for some mysterious reason, these new watches won’t be coming to The Netherlands. They’re coming to the rest of Europe – just not The Netherlands. The Google Pixel is also still pretty much sold out in the two or three countries where it’s supposedly available, with no indication they’re ever going to be available elsewhere.
Here’s a tip, Google: if you want to be a successful hardware maker, maybe make sure interested consumers can actually, you know, buy your stuff?
The last throw of the Dice for google in this product area.
The number of partners it has has shrunk to how many? 1 or is it 2?
With those who get paid to speak our of their backside saying that even that the Apple Watch is a failure, I just get the feeling that this product will go the way of so many Google things and left to perish and eventually canned in the future.
Why do I say this?
Well, I have not seen anyone wearing a smart watch even the Apple type which is apparently the market leader. Samsung has a shop in Portobello Road, London for a while that was flogging their watches. I never saw anyone leave with one. The shop didn’t last very long. I was working just over the road from it so could see it from my desk.
I do see people wearing things like fitBits when out running/cycling. They are quite distinctive though.
YMMV but I don’t think that there is a killer USP for these devices at the moment.
There’s never been a USP full stop, for any Smartwatch device. The best anyone has yet come up with is “…you can see your notifications on it?” which is such an utterly low-value proposition it’s laughable.
The “notifications on you wrist” thing can be taken care of by a Pebble.
The value proposition of those smartwatches (Android Wear and Apple Watch) was that you could see your workout stats and see a live navigation map on the screen. The thing is, even if the value proposition is real, the absurd price kills any chance of those devices going mainstream.
But at least those circular Android Wear watches are pretty, unlike the Apple Watch.
Edited 2017-02-10 09:54 UTC
The thing I find pathetic is that people’s lives are so empty they want to see their own workout stats and even share them in the first place. Do you really care so much if you do 61 minutes instead of 61.1 minutes on your workout? Sheesh!
I think most people use “workout tracking“ as a way to feel they are leading a fit lifestyle. “Yay, I burned 300 calories because i walked more on the way home from work, I am on the way to losing weight“ (goes to Starbucks to drink some coffee full of sugar which of course doesn’t get accounted in the calorie count because ‘it’s just coffee’)
BTW, I still can’t figure out why Watch OS and Wear 2.0 need smartphone-grade hardware. Much like I can’t understand why the latest version of Shazam for Android can bring a Nexus 5X to its knees while an old 3.x version of the same app (which you can download from the androiddrawer site btw) launches almost instantly on an old HTC Evo). What is the new thing that new version of Shazam doing that the old 3.x didn’t and needs so much hardware? What is Google doing that the Pebble doesn’t that needs all that extra hardware?
Can’t wait for Fitbit to shame Wear and Watch OS, just like the iPad shamed the Windows XP tablet PCs of the era for their slowness and poor battery life.
Edited 2017-02-11 23:03 UTC
I’m still mourning the loss of the pebble. I really think their biggest issue came from the public not really understanding what they offered and how limited the competition is in comparison.
I just don’t have any interest in a watch that I need to charge everyday. Or that can’t do so in the time it takes me to quickly jump into and out of the shower in the morning. I think most people are inattentive enough to that kind of thing that a “you’re low on juice, charge this watch up!!!” alert means they want to get to it within 24 hours rather than 24 minutes.
Even to this day I still find people surprised to see that the pebble even has a color display. Or that it has fairly smooth animation or things like turn by turn directions when walking. Though the biggest regret I have is that the heartrate monitor really seems to need another revision that’s never going to happen now. Because I have a feeling it’s going to be a very long wait before fitbit uses the IP to put out anything comparable. And no other company seems interested in following the model pebble had. Which, given their results, I can’t totally blame them for.
Nobody has a grasp of the watch market so it isn’t like Google is going to lose if their new software flops. It’s rather so that the watch market will die off for the lack of consumer interest. Apple is apparently selling a few but mostly to people who believe their watches carry a fashionable value.
i wish everything for sale in the netherlands was available in my home state.
well it’s available, but not legal.