You know you have a problem, when one of the best designs in the category looks like this:
Or almost round Moto 360. As most of the people don’t use their watches to see time, your product should look good on the wrist, there is no other way around this.
It’s not the best practice to draw some kind of conclusions based on personal anecdotal evidence, but I’ll do just that right now (you could feel it will be this way, by reading the begging of the sentence). I do wear a watch, it’s analogue, pretty big watch by Tomy Hilfiger. I love watches, I use them (I don’t even notice what time it is when I pull out my smartphone), I also wear the Fitbit Flex on the other hand and like a watch, it is an accessory for me, I have a couple of different color bracelets. If they’d looked ugly (like most smartwatches), I wouldn’t even consider wearing them. So that’s my thoughts on design.
The other important thing is what do you use the watch for. On IFA Samsung showed Gear S, which is mini smartphone strapped to your wrist. It’s bulky, 2’’ screen is just too big to wear on a wrist. It has standard wristband and you can change it, which is good, I guess, but won’t help you much. Here is a promotional video of the device.
Let’s look at possible uses for the device from this ad and some hands on from different blogs:
- Notifications – there are two types of people, in my opinion, those who have too many notifications, so their wrist will constantly buzz (many tech journalists complain about that) and then, there are those, who don’t have as many notifications, so you can just pull your phone out of the pocket. I’m in the latter category and I don’t see a point in this idea of getting notifications on my wrist.
- Accept or Make calls – this one looks cool, from my understanding, you can’t do that on many smartwatches, but if you watch the promo video, you’ll see, you have to keep your wrist close to your face and in that case – why even bother? – just use a phone with loudspeaker turned on, or better yet Bluetooth headset.
- Easy text input – let’s repeat this one more time. Easy. Text. Input. Using the QWERTY keyboard on 2 inch screen. Do you even hear yourself Samsung? After using bigger screens I can’t type on the iPhone, let alone the smartwatch.
- Navigation – this one is interesting, but again, you could just as well use your smartphone. Also, using my phone for navigation, you just see how it drains battery, what about the smartwatch? Will it drain the battery as fast? My guess would be – yes.
- Music and Tracking Activities – I’ve combined these two, just because it makes sense. Here again, will it be able to keep charge while Bluetooth and GPS are on? If it can, it would be one good use for this watch.
- UV information – this is just ridiculous, but maybe someone needs it, I just won’t even comment.
- Tracking Sleep – when I first got my Fitbit Flex and started tracking sleep with it, for about a week I felt uncomfortable wearing it while sleeping, I can’t even imagine wearing 2’’ phone on my wrist.
I think the best you can do with the category of devices you wear on your wrist is some kind of health and fitness use. Without this watch and notification bullshit.