New Google Smartwatch & the current (sad) state of affairs for Android Wear

[PereDroid]

Looks like I'll be deciding on February 9th for my (last) Smart watch for a long time. These vs the Z3 ($229 going to be hard to beat).

 

[kodiak799]

There's some promising rumors. Looks like this new batch with AW2.0 is going to have NFC, GPS and cellular capabilities.

I'm not adverse to paying good money for a good looking smartwatch, but it has to do double-duty as a fitness watch.

I hope AW2 gives us the ability to remove apps that insist on installing themselves from our phone. That "4GB" of storage is more like 1.4GB for music, which isn't horrible but I would like a little more for workout music.

Speaking of storage.....WHY only 4GB? Does 16GB really take up more space or cost much more?

 

[redbert31]

With the price of these smartwatches being fairly high, I'd love to get as much space as possible (4gb seems low IMO) so I could get as much use and enjoyment as possible. At this point I'm not considering one for myself, rather I'm looking for one for my husband who has a good sized wrist for one. ( My wrist is way too small and there's not much I can do about that)!

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[Sajo]

4GB is plenty of storage in a smart watch for normal day-to-day use. Unless you want to download your entire music library. 4GB would leave plenty of space for a lot of watch faces and AW compatible apps.

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[kodiak799]

4GB is plenty of storage in a smart watch for normal day-to-day use. Unless you want to download your entire music library. 4GB would leave plenty of space for a lot of watch faces and AW compatible apps.

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My music is coded at high quality. I get a little over 200 songs on my watch. I'd like room to have a bit more diverse set of playlists.

And just as we saw with phones, it's really about forced obsolescence which is why they put 4GB of storage when there is no other good reason not to have 16GB.

Plus, if you're talking LTE and a true standalone device, now you need that much more storage for emails, texts and contact lists.

 

[Sajo]

Good points.

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[PereDroid]

No one needs to store songs on your LTE watch. That's what Spotify, Pandora, Google Music is for..... (Or so I'm told when I talk about having my own music. It's barbarism).

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[redbert31]

4GB is plenty of storage in a smart watch for normal day-to-day use. Unless you want to download your entire music library. 4GB would leave plenty of space for a lot of watch faces and AW compatible apps.

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Good to know... I'm going to take another look out there. My husband probably won't put that much music on it and really shouldn't have to overload apps on his smartwatch if I get it for him.

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[kodiak799]

...and really shouldn't have to overload apps on his smartwatch

I hope Google fixed this in Android 2.0. There is no way to prevent an app from loading itself on your watch if the developer goes that route (other than deleting it from your phone) and doesn't give you the option to uninstall from your watch only.

I'll have to experiment with installing on my phone when my watch is disconnected. Only problem is to update apps on your watch, when you re-sync it will then install the apps you don't want again.

 

[PereDroid]

So I stopped at Walgreens today. I use Android Pay probably every 4th time I go there. It's at the corner of my street. For the first time ever, when I walked in, my phone buzzed: you can use Android Pay here! Click the notification, and it opens to the "click to pay" screen. Beautiful.

Have they finally perfected this to the point where it will do this....With you watch? Coincidence? I don't think so.
Enough to make me get Google's watch?
I don't think so.

Edit... Agree Kodiac. That pisses me off. I do not effing want the effing Amazon app on my watch. That one ticks me off
..

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[PereDroid]

$250 for the cheap one.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

They need to figure out that these things are as "consumable" of a product as a phone and either adjust the prices (I realize some of that is to cover R&D and specialized components to fit in the small cases) or stop trying to put them out so fast expecting people to pay a few hundred dollars a year for the next model.

That's just ridiculous. I haven't seen/heard/read anyone that owns the Apple Watch or an Android Wear watch say anything that leads me to believe that they'd replace it every year. Stop trying to force the market and catch the natural wave. Every 2-3 years is pushing it for me to justify that expense at this point in my life, but still much more realistic than every year.

 

[mountainbikermark]

They need to figure out that these things are as "consumable" of a product as a phone and either adjust the prices (I realize some of that is to cover R&D and specialized components to fit in the small cases) or stop trying to put them out so fast expecting people to pay a few hundred dollars a year for the next model.

That's just ridiculous. I haven't seen/heard/read anyone that owns the Apple Watch or an Android Wear watch say anything that leads me to believe that they'd replace it every year. Stop trying to force the market and catch the natural wave. Every 2-3 years is pushing it for me to justify that expense at this point in my life, but still much more realistic than every year.

When the ram and onboard memory aren't upping to speak of, the firmware isn't improving but little tidbits are a time and it's just a little different looking version of round/square why bother? my S1 still does more standalone than anything else on the market and it's a dinosaur that got almost zero developer support. The Gears now don't even have a browser so that in and of itself was a large step backward, imo, whether it's needed/useful or not. Taking away a choice is never a step forward in my book.

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[PereDroid]

I just waNTED A ROUND ONE. tHAT'S ALL. i DON'T CARE ABOUT MUCH ELSE. tHEN i FREAKING LOST MY gEN2 360...
Sorry, acci-caps...not fixing

If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be considering the cheap Z3....

 

[Sajo]

Hey, on a positive note...Apple Watches are finally getting Theatre Mode soon with a new update. Welcome to 2015.

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