Hour by Hour impressions of LG Watch Urbane and Android Wear:
(anything in parenthesis is a deviation from the linear timeline…an observation I made after I typed my comments)
5-1-2015
Got my Urbane yesterday. Package was delivered to work, which is in Reno, NV...and I was in Sacramento when I received the email alerting me to the delivery. OMG! The stress. I drove back late last night so it was too late to go to work and pick it up but it was on my desk this morning when I got to the office at 7am. Very Happy! Love the size and style.
Silver was the only option when I ordered it through Verizon. Fortunately that's the color I wanted. Black band. Not a terrible band but my intention was to replace it with a silver link band anyhow so who cares what color it is?
Now to figure out what it does. I'm pretty sure it tells time.
After 7 hours of on and off use…
So after 7 hours of actual use I found out it does in fact keep very accurate time.
Voice recognition seems pretty accurate but if there is background noise it picks that up too. Case in point...while showing the watch off to an individual I spoke into the watch "OK Google". In the time it took for the watch to bring up Google I had a crowd behind me going "Wow...you got the android watch?" and so forth. So when I spoke into the watch saying "Email Bob xyz", google picked up "Email wow bob you x got y the z android watch" and it failed to impress my crowd. I jokingly told a friend that it appears I have to go find a dark corner of the building where I am all alone if I want to play with my watch. To which he replied that should not be a big deal since you've been doing the same for years when you want to....err...maybe I should not finish that thought.
Seriously though...it's a learning curve. I have to get used to when and where I can use certain features. (Watch how this progresses as I go from being excited to not being impressed to finally learning how the thing works and ultimately being mildly happy with my purchase)
It's cool. I get google cards on my wrist. But you can't really do anything useful with the cards without touching the phone. I can reply to an email (Gmail only, not exchange mail) if the card is reporting a single email. But if it is a list of two or more emails, the reply option is not there for obvious reasons. No way to pull up a single email once the second one hit the card. That's a bit annoying...why can't it go to a list and let me view the email? And then chose reply if I am so inclined? (a user at DroidForums set me straight on this observation…Exchange mail was showing as a list at the time because I get a lot of Exchange mails and Gmail was showing as a single email because I don’t get a lot of mail on Gmail)
I am looking forward to playing golf Sunday. Using GolfShot should be a bit easier with the watch. I'll report back more on that on Monday. (Golf got canceled…still looking forward to seeing how this works)
Back Country Navigator was kind of cool to play with. It reports your altitude and distance to or from a point. That should be fun when I go into the Mount Rose Wilderness tomorrow to go fly fishing. (yeah…the watch was dead so I did not get to use it on the backcountry trip)
Navigation. I took my wife to lunch and showed off the watch. She's kind of mad that I did not let her know I wanted one since our anniversary is next month. Why would I wait a month? Anyhow...as we left the sushi bar I said "OK Google...navigate to work." It worked. I was pleased. But it also launched the navigation app on my phone and the voice prompts were now coming from my pocket. There's a waste of battery power. I assume the watch has no GPS and needs the GPS from the phone...maybe I'm wrong about that. But still...could it not pull GPS from the phone without actually launching the Goggle Maps app? I'm sure this is a limitation on the technology at this time and I bet in a year or two we will see the technology solve this issue. Put a GPS in the watch and give me an option if I want to launch something on my phone too.
(After using the watch and phone together for a bit I realize this feature’s intended purpose. If my phone is in the car and I decide I need to navigate I can simple speak the instructions in my watch to launch the phone’s navigation which keeps me from fumbling around with the phone while I am driving. I get it…it’s a great feature as it is currently designed.)
Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely happy with the watch. I hated my old Seiko watch and was in the market to replace it. I was going to buy...wait for it...a watch. And as far as watches go, the LG Watch Urbane does tell time and looks awesome on my wrist. I looked at all the other AW watches and planned to buy one two weeks ago but I just had to wait for the Urbane...I am glad I waited. I got a gorgeous watch...and it's COOL that it does some things with my phone. I just want more before I buy another. This technology has a ways to go. And I am excited about where it is going.
5-4-2015
I forgot to take my charge puck home so the watch died sometime Saturday morning and I did not use it again until Monday morning when I got back to the office.
Found out that with Gmail. You can reply to any of the messages even if there are multiples, but not Exchange mail, even if it is only one email. Good to know about the Gmail. I use Exchange at work and hopefully that functionality will come in the future for my use. I still remember the early days of Android…before cupcake…where I had to purchase a third party app to be able to use Exchange (corporate) mail properly. Now it is built into Mail.
I noticed one more minor annoyance. Friday after work I met up with a buddy at a bar. Was showing off the features. No way could I get voice recognition to work due to the level of noise in the bar. Also, on the way to the bar he kept texting me asking where I was. I tried replying to him with voice but there are too many options that need to be answered after it gets the message set...the watch wants to know if I want to send it to his home number, mobile number or MMS number. While driving it was unsafe to flip through those so it was basically useless until I got to the bar...at which point it was pointless. Too bad it doesn't speak those questions and allow for voice input to answer. But there is no speaker in the watch.
I did not swipe and hit reply when he texted me. I simple said OK Google, text message Robbie. As I was driving I really did not want to take my eyes off the road to do the swipe thingy. I wonder if there’s a voice prompt to tell the watch to reply rather than having to swipe to the option. I’ll have to investigate that later
I'm going to take a closer look at the defaults in my contacts. I do know that if I initiate the text from my phone using OK Google it doesn't seem to ask me which number to send it to unless I have a mobile number and a MMS number (which many of my employees have since we use Google Voice for texting clients at work).
5-6-2015
Ok…I’ve had the watch for 5 days now. I’m starting to get used to it. To give the Watch Urbane a fair shake, I did pair the watch incorrectly on day one which may have caused some trouble. I opened the box, turned on the watch, placed it on the charge puck and paired it with my phone. While it was pairing I read the manual that came with it and noticed I was supposed to install the Android Wear app before pairing. I installed it while it was pairing and it seemed to work just fine. Later I had trouble with battery consumption and with a few of the apps that installed. Turns out the syncing of apps was disrupted when I installed the AW App. It was stuck syncing the Dominos app and burned up the battery on my phone rather fast. On Tuesday I decided to reset the watch to factory and uninstall Android Wear from the phone. I then reinstalled Android Wear, Paired the watch and let it complete the sync before touching anything again and I can say most annoyances are working correctly now. Lesson learned…be patient with the pairing process and let it finish the sync.
I’ve learned to pay attention to background noise and voice recognition is great now. On the road I turn off my radio and roll up my windows if I want to speak to the watch. Texting while driving is as safe as hands-free calling now. I love that!
I had a business meeting in the conference room at work today. The gentleman I was meeting with was giving his presentation and I received a few messages on my phone. I hate looking at my phone during a meeting…its rude. But glancing at my watch I was able to keep tabs on all the messages that came in during the meeting. If something important happened I could have politely interrupted the meeting but nothing was pressing so I did not have to. It allowed me to pay better attention to the presentation since I knew nothing needed to be dealt with. Of course the presenter might think I’m checking time and losing interest in the meeting when I keep glancing at my watch.
I got home tonight and my phone battery was dead so I placed my Galaxy S6 Edge on the wireless charger in my bedroom which is upstairs. I then went downstairs to install a new desktop computer in the home office. While I was downstairs the wife called me and the watch alerted me. I ran upstairs to answer the call. She was just telling me she was heading home soon and would I feed the kids. That’s a really cool feature that solves the problem when the phone needs to charge and I have to go do something around the house. I don’t miss my calls anymore.
I went back to installing the computer. 20 minutes later one of the kids comes in and asks me what’s for dinner. I said how about Pizza? He liked the idea (remember the phone is still upstairs charging). I flipped my wrist to wake up the watch, tapped the crown on the side of the watch, scrolled through the apps menu to find Dominos and ordered two large pizzas, a dozen BBQ wings and a dozen hot wings and some sodas. The 13 yr old was mildly impressed…he did not even know I got this watch yet. Then the Dominos app went into tracking mode where it lets you know when the pizza goes into the oven and eventually when it is out for delivery. Both kids kept asking me what the status was like every couple minutes. That was fun. The wife walks in the door and 5 minutes later the Pizza shows up…I’m a freakin hero in everyone’s eyes. The whole family wants their own AW Watch now.
I also tried out the “Find My Phone” app tonight. I knew where it was so not sure if it’s actually useful or not but still…it worked as advertised. I was downstairs and the phone was upstairs (remember? It’s charging still?) I press Find My Phone and the phone begins playing the ringtone of choice. I could not figure out how to make it stop without touching the phone. I tapped the power button on the phone and it stopped.
I’m starting to see more value in what the Wearable can do now. I still have a wish list of features that are not yet available but as I learn how to use it I am more and more pleased with my purchase. I’m not all together convinced it is worth the original purchase price and expect that price will come down in time as newer watches hit the market but I have also paid a lot more for watches in the past. I do think it holds enough value that I don’t find myself wishing I had waited for the price to drop.
(anything in parenthesis is a deviation from the linear timeline…an observation I made after I typed my comments)
5-1-2015
Got my Urbane yesterday. Package was delivered to work, which is in Reno, NV...and I was in Sacramento when I received the email alerting me to the delivery. OMG! The stress. I drove back late last night so it was too late to go to work and pick it up but it was on my desk this morning when I got to the office at 7am. Very Happy! Love the size and style.
Silver was the only option when I ordered it through Verizon. Fortunately that's the color I wanted. Black band. Not a terrible band but my intention was to replace it with a silver link band anyhow so who cares what color it is?
Now to figure out what it does. I'm pretty sure it tells time.
After 7 hours of on and off use…
So after 7 hours of actual use I found out it does in fact keep very accurate time.
Voice recognition seems pretty accurate but if there is background noise it picks that up too. Case in point...while showing the watch off to an individual I spoke into the watch "OK Google". In the time it took for the watch to bring up Google I had a crowd behind me going "Wow...you got the android watch?" and so forth. So when I spoke into the watch saying "Email Bob xyz", google picked up "Email wow bob you x got y the z android watch" and it failed to impress my crowd. I jokingly told a friend that it appears I have to go find a dark corner of the building where I am all alone if I want to play with my watch. To which he replied that should not be a big deal since you've been doing the same for years when you want to....err...maybe I should not finish that thought.
Seriously though...it's a learning curve. I have to get used to when and where I can use certain features. (Watch how this progresses as I go from being excited to not being impressed to finally learning how the thing works and ultimately being mildly happy with my purchase)
It's cool. I get google cards on my wrist. But you can't really do anything useful with the cards without touching the phone. I can reply to an email (Gmail only, not exchange mail) if the card is reporting a single email. But if it is a list of two or more emails, the reply option is not there for obvious reasons. No way to pull up a single email once the second one hit the card. That's a bit annoying...why can't it go to a list and let me view the email? And then chose reply if I am so inclined? (a user at DroidForums set me straight on this observation…Exchange mail was showing as a list at the time because I get a lot of Exchange mails and Gmail was showing as a single email because I don’t get a lot of mail on Gmail)
I am looking forward to playing golf Sunday. Using GolfShot should be a bit easier with the watch. I'll report back more on that on Monday. (Golf got canceled…still looking forward to seeing how this works)
Back Country Navigator was kind of cool to play with. It reports your altitude and distance to or from a point. That should be fun when I go into the Mount Rose Wilderness tomorrow to go fly fishing. (yeah…the watch was dead so I did not get to use it on the backcountry trip)
Navigation. I took my wife to lunch and showed off the watch. She's kind of mad that I did not let her know I wanted one since our anniversary is next month. Why would I wait a month? Anyhow...as we left the sushi bar I said "OK Google...navigate to work." It worked. I was pleased. But it also launched the navigation app on my phone and the voice prompts were now coming from my pocket. There's a waste of battery power. I assume the watch has no GPS and needs the GPS from the phone...maybe I'm wrong about that. But still...could it not pull GPS from the phone without actually launching the Goggle Maps app? I'm sure this is a limitation on the technology at this time and I bet in a year or two we will see the technology solve this issue. Put a GPS in the watch and give me an option if I want to launch something on my phone too.
(After using the watch and phone together for a bit I realize this feature’s intended purpose. If my phone is in the car and I decide I need to navigate I can simple speak the instructions in my watch to launch the phone’s navigation which keeps me from fumbling around with the phone while I am driving. I get it…it’s a great feature as it is currently designed.)
Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely happy with the watch. I hated my old Seiko watch and was in the market to replace it. I was going to buy...wait for it...a watch. And as far as watches go, the LG Watch Urbane does tell time and looks awesome on my wrist. I looked at all the other AW watches and planned to buy one two weeks ago but I just had to wait for the Urbane...I am glad I waited. I got a gorgeous watch...and it's COOL that it does some things with my phone. I just want more before I buy another. This technology has a ways to go. And I am excited about where it is going.
5-4-2015
I forgot to take my charge puck home so the watch died sometime Saturday morning and I did not use it again until Monday morning when I got back to the office.
Found out that with Gmail. You can reply to any of the messages even if there are multiples, but not Exchange mail, even if it is only one email. Good to know about the Gmail. I use Exchange at work and hopefully that functionality will come in the future for my use. I still remember the early days of Android…before cupcake…where I had to purchase a third party app to be able to use Exchange (corporate) mail properly. Now it is built into Mail.
I noticed one more minor annoyance. Friday after work I met up with a buddy at a bar. Was showing off the features. No way could I get voice recognition to work due to the level of noise in the bar. Also, on the way to the bar he kept texting me asking where I was. I tried replying to him with voice but there are too many options that need to be answered after it gets the message set...the watch wants to know if I want to send it to his home number, mobile number or MMS number. While driving it was unsafe to flip through those so it was basically useless until I got to the bar...at which point it was pointless. Too bad it doesn't speak those questions and allow for voice input to answer. But there is no speaker in the watch.
I did not swipe and hit reply when he texted me. I simple said OK Google, text message Robbie. As I was driving I really did not want to take my eyes off the road to do the swipe thingy. I wonder if there’s a voice prompt to tell the watch to reply rather than having to swipe to the option. I’ll have to investigate that later
I'm going to take a closer look at the defaults in my contacts. I do know that if I initiate the text from my phone using OK Google it doesn't seem to ask me which number to send it to unless I have a mobile number and a MMS number (which many of my employees have since we use Google Voice for texting clients at work).
5-6-2015
Ok…I’ve had the watch for 5 days now. I’m starting to get used to it. To give the Watch Urbane a fair shake, I did pair the watch incorrectly on day one which may have caused some trouble. I opened the box, turned on the watch, placed it on the charge puck and paired it with my phone. While it was pairing I read the manual that came with it and noticed I was supposed to install the Android Wear app before pairing. I installed it while it was pairing and it seemed to work just fine. Later I had trouble with battery consumption and with a few of the apps that installed. Turns out the syncing of apps was disrupted when I installed the AW App. It was stuck syncing the Dominos app and burned up the battery on my phone rather fast. On Tuesday I decided to reset the watch to factory and uninstall Android Wear from the phone. I then reinstalled Android Wear, Paired the watch and let it complete the sync before touching anything again and I can say most annoyances are working correctly now. Lesson learned…be patient with the pairing process and let it finish the sync.
I’ve learned to pay attention to background noise and voice recognition is great now. On the road I turn off my radio and roll up my windows if I want to speak to the watch. Texting while driving is as safe as hands-free calling now. I love that!
I had a business meeting in the conference room at work today. The gentleman I was meeting with was giving his presentation and I received a few messages on my phone. I hate looking at my phone during a meeting…its rude. But glancing at my watch I was able to keep tabs on all the messages that came in during the meeting. If something important happened I could have politely interrupted the meeting but nothing was pressing so I did not have to. It allowed me to pay better attention to the presentation since I knew nothing needed to be dealt with. Of course the presenter might think I’m checking time and losing interest in the meeting when I keep glancing at my watch.
I got home tonight and my phone battery was dead so I placed my Galaxy S6 Edge on the wireless charger in my bedroom which is upstairs. I then went downstairs to install a new desktop computer in the home office. While I was downstairs the wife called me and the watch alerted me. I ran upstairs to answer the call. She was just telling me she was heading home soon and would I feed the kids. That’s a really cool feature that solves the problem when the phone needs to charge and I have to go do something around the house. I don’t miss my calls anymore.
I went back to installing the computer. 20 minutes later one of the kids comes in and asks me what’s for dinner. I said how about Pizza? He liked the idea (remember the phone is still upstairs charging). I flipped my wrist to wake up the watch, tapped the crown on the side of the watch, scrolled through the apps menu to find Dominos and ordered two large pizzas, a dozen BBQ wings and a dozen hot wings and some sodas. The 13 yr old was mildly impressed…he did not even know I got this watch yet. Then the Dominos app went into tracking mode where it lets you know when the pizza goes into the oven and eventually when it is out for delivery. Both kids kept asking me what the status was like every couple minutes. That was fun. The wife walks in the door and 5 minutes later the Pizza shows up…I’m a freakin hero in everyone’s eyes. The whole family wants their own AW Watch now.
I also tried out the “Find My Phone” app tonight. I knew where it was so not sure if it’s actually useful or not but still…it worked as advertised. I was downstairs and the phone was upstairs (remember? It’s charging still?) I press Find My Phone and the phone begins playing the ringtone of choice. I could not figure out how to make it stop without touching the phone. I tapped the power button on the phone and it stopped.
I’m starting to see more value in what the Wearable can do now. I still have a wish list of features that are not yet available but as I learn how to use it I am more and more pleased with my purchase. I’m not all together convinced it is worth the original purchase price and expect that price will come down in time as newer watches hit the market but I have also paid a lot more for watches in the past. I do think it holds enough value that I don’t find myself wishing I had waited for the price to drop.
