One week review of the Apple Watch (vs Pebble Time) [part 2/2].
Why did I include the Pebble Time in the title? Spoiler alert: both parts of my review reveals how close Apple was from a real revolution: one Pebble Time away… The title had to reveal that state of mind, because I believe a smart watch to be more about enhancing our daily lives with solid essentials than entertaining with flashy experimental new things in a pot pourri.
Both watches will definitely need more time to review as there is lots of space for updates and third-party app development. The later will probably be transformative at some point and while the two devices already have many potent daily life-enhancing qualities, we can feel they are only waiting for some kind of revelation in code. But they do already have some kind of DNA, intrinsic qualities arising through the willful technological choices of their designers.
For now, I will focus on the Apple Watch, and will subdivide this longer review in two: work-week (basic time and communication functionalities), and week-end (activity/energy/position tracking). Thought again not as complete and rigorous as a full review should, this is a complement to my previous One charge review of the Apple Watch [part 1/2].
Work-week.
Days going by, the Apple Watch keeps looking nice. Sober and minimalist both in its steel and aluminum iterations, it will blend pretty well with any look (but will it blend?). Imagine it as a blank blackboard you can personalize thanks to the switchable wristband and watchface control panel. If you are more of the weird tokyoflash-style aficionado, for now you can forget about that, Apple does discussably limit your options in style to a choice of theirs. Worse, the ‘reserve mode’ watchface (the one I got way too much of, when the battery goes under a certain charge) simply isn’t on par with the looks of the hardware. And this digital watchface abyss doesn’t even have date display…
As a watch, it will serve you well overall, with all the chronometer and timer extras. Except if you crave for discretion when checking the time, as everytime you will need to run that characteristic wrist movement sequence or tap on the screen for it to turn on. This will undoubtably be your premiere frustration if you’re used to wearing a traditional wristwatch. You simply can’t read time without some kind of explicit gesture. In a meeting, chatting with friends, holding something? You will need more than an inconspicuous glance. Very annoying and frustrating. The watch doesn’t adapt as much as you will.
And it extends to notifications. It may be hard to differentiate vibration types (what seems obvious when standing still can be hard to detect otherwise), and the lesser vibrations sometimes you will miss (as I did with a few phone calls…).
When you do feel it however, you still might end up frustrated. Again, discreeter and socially more comfortable gestures will often not be ample enough to activate the screen. You’ll often wish to know more of the origin of that notification without disrupting your current interpersonal interaction, basically without jeopardizing politeness to curiosity. So there will be no real improvement from having your smartphone in your pant’s pocket, even if your cellphone is tucked away. A barely noticeable eye glance to the watch to filter out unnecessary notifications will not suffice.
The Apple Watch is also a fashion statement, so it is meant to be seen. And on that front, my longer experience showed most people thought it looked a bit weird with that screen turned off. They all knew it was an Apple Watch, but it could well have been some kind of talisman or arthritis fighting wristband.
Overall, user interface gestures did start to make some sense after a few days. Swiping up or down felt more natural, but often there was too much information anyway to scroll through after… And it still didn’t feel as natural and comfortable as it should have. Again, the watch will require you to adapt. I often felt disgruntled by that mix of up/down swipes, force-touch, and scroll-wheel rotations, searching for some yet inexistant option. Oh, and the screen is a fingerprint magnet…
Some disappointment in the smaller details of system software finish. Often appearing in crude ergonomy, or in subpar graphical finish (c.f. app selector illustration). I would argue it reveals either a rush to finish the product on time, either some lack of refinement in the software production process (e.g. shaky software ‘proofreading’), or simply that the focus was on something else. Interesting fact to contextualize within Apple’s open philosophy of top-tier ‘quality’.
On the third party app front, after a week, the small screen real estate still didn’t feel big enough to really use full blown app extensions. There were some incentives to go beyond gadgeting with some, but I systematically ended up going back to the iPhone for the serious work. Most basic functionalities did however work, usually providing a compact and digest view (or interface) for the corresponding iPhone app.
The agenda, email client, … did also provide shortcuts to the most relevant information I was looking for, but rarely did I feel fully contempt without checking on the motherphone for finer details or better understanding.
The SMS/iMessage, Phone app, and the ability to request Siri with a longer scroll-wheel-press (aka of the digital crown), while certainly being limited and not always very good at transcribing thy words, did provide useful extra features. They enabled voice commands, text or vocal responses, and the basic use of the watch as a phone. I did use them with some satisfaction, thought the voice commands, dictation and phone calls all made me feel ackwards in the presence of unaccustomed bystanders.
Within my work week, the Activity app did provide some extra information and guidance to what my daily physical activities were. It counted steps, evaluated the number of stories I climbed and the equivalent calories burnt, but did that really matter? Did I really believe or care to know my body had been doing all of this while at or going to/leaving my job. This might be an incentive for people to take greater care of their health (but it is definitely debatable, I will talk more about energy and activity tracking later), and after fussing a bit with it at first, I now only go there when I get bored. The circular representation is pretty, but definitely a bit lame.
Bicycling to and from work worked a charm with the Workout app, and I also used it for a jog. While it does again take some toll on the battery charge, it did work flawlessly, keeping good track of distance, heartbeat and energy consumption (thought the physiological model chosen surely would be prone to debate). This app might really be of interest the day Apple adds ascent and descent information, because not all places are as flat as San Francisco.
With all these functions active together, the watch still was capable of working a day’s length, but it will hardly go beyond. You will have to recharge every night, or during working hours (but here again, who wants yet another (long) cable to take along, and why didn’t we get some kind of micro USB to contactless adapter gizmo instead?). The wireless contactor doesn’t hold good enough in my opinion, and you might well find yourself with the watch disconnected, as it did happen to me a few times, resulting in a low charge when you most needed it (c.f. week-end) ... This is were I get worried about who makes those decisions at Apple. Form over function is always detrimental to the final user experience, and here it is the case again.
A few extra notes. Driving your car on sinuous roads, steering will not only turn the wheels (ain’t that a surprise?) but also repetitively wake your watch... to the detriment of its autonomy. You most probably will need to turn screen auto-on off.
Finally talking again about screen display quality, beyond mildly-lit environments, lisibility is rarely at best. First I thought the reflectivity of the surface was solely a problem for the sapphire version, but the Ion-X glass, thought a bit clearer, really didn’t fare that much better. If you are in highly contrasted or bright environments, the screen is a definite downer. You think watching pictures on such a small screen has any interest? I didn’t (thought I do like to take pictures), and while we could understand Apple’s willingness to demo beautiful wing-flapping butterflies, seriously, no one in real life conditions should care about great color gamuts and deep blacks on such a post-stamp sized display. Finally, I do repeat myself, in low-light environments you will systematically become the focus of interest with the screen glow, and you will dread that when reaching for pop corn at the movies or what else you do there with your hands. But then again, this is maybe some Apple master plan to save Humanity from pop corn ruining contemporary conceptual hipster film festivals.
To be fair, after a week, overall lisibility of the screen was good, thought way off what we had seen in the marketing material.
The only major downer during the work week, and under normal use, is autonomy. Knowing how tightly linked the screen display technology choice is to overall energy consumption, and thus the only major factor that prevented the Apple Watch from reaching pre-smartphone era autonomy, this surely did make me feel sad. In the new Apple, form seems to have succeeded in taking over function when the call is close, and the feat of all these new wrist functionalities feel compromised by that lack of a greater autonomy.
Week-end.
During the week, activity tracking worked fine but we definitely needed to go for the real meat. Apple does praise a lot that watch/phone duo for tracking your personal activity, bragging along on how good it is at helping you workout and analyze your progression. I’m not into that ‘marathons are soooo fun’ category, but I do get kicks out of hikes.
My opportunity rose with a not too straineous week-end walk. The effort was planned for a normally fit group of individuals, and consisted of a smooth two days walk (approximatively 3000 feet of ascent and descent, and 15 miles total distance a day). Two of us wore our Apple Watches to check how good they would fare in longer haul activity-tracking. It was a good occasion to know how useful and accurate basic activity tracking functions would be on a longer run, and also if the heart beat frequency indication would add anything interesting.
The cardiometer did add some interest, effectively displaying the impact of effort and temperature on cardiovascular physiology (it was a very warm day even for that altitude, but sadly the watch doesn’t inform you on your temperature or of that of your environment). I really sweated a lot, but it didn’t seem to bother the sensors or the watch overall (thought I wondered if under heavy rain the water resistance would suffice — under really heavy sweat it doesn’t… see addendum 1). Distance indication seemed precise, as were information about speed and gait. Again, lack of ascent and/or descent indications was a real deception. This is a necessity in this kind of activity, as everyone knows going up is more straineous than going down, and the watch should indicate that. I still wonder why and how this didn’t happen (still wondering how dilberty Apple decision-taking reunions are).
At first things looked pretty convincing, but soon my battery level went low. The second watch held better for some reason (we’ll call this one the Stig’s, as renown public figures have rights to some privacy too ;) — btw he had a Garmin watch on his other wrist, hopefully he’ll write about that once). After approximatively five hours walking, mine went into that dreadful ‘reserve mode’ while the Stig’s watch kept on to the end, with merely 5% left. The only differences we found between the two watches were screen intensity (mine to mid level, the other to the lowest), my use of trekking poles, and the fact that he had the sports version... Obviously my tremulating puppet wrist movements had the terrible effect of turning the screen on and off, thus affecting overall energy use.
Happily, I had the great idea to carry that one pound external 20'000 mAh solar charger along (I am preparing for a week long autonomous trekking device review), and that would surely revive my watch until the end of the road. Sadly, that ‘state of the art’ magnetic contactless connector Apple proudly designed doesn’t let you wear and charge at once (it sits were your wrist should)... And even sadder, putting my watch in the backpack or in my pocket didn’t guarantee that the magnetic connector stay put. Its weak magnetization isn’t enough. Super bummer. Duct tape fashionista you will soon call me if I keep taking my Apple Watch along.
On the second day, fully charged, with display luminosity set to minimum, there was no significant change and the watch surrendered three quarters on the way. In all likelyhood this seemed to confirm the ‘tremulating puppet theory’, the movement detecting algorythm turning my screen on way too often thanks to my use of the trekking poles. The Stig on his part went without heart beat tracking, only counting steps, with no other notification or specific third-party apps working. His still held approximatively two-thirds of its charge at the end of our 6–7 hours run. You can therefore expect use of basic functionalities for a whole day, but nothing your iPhone can’t du better from the bottom of your pocket.
To add insult to pain, my Activity app didn’t seem to record any of my step data probably due to that unexpected energy shutdown…
The round-up.
Sadly nothing fundamental to add to the Apple Watch after that one week review. Most of the major observations and remarks in my one-charge review still stand. The product isn’t so much half-baked as it rather feels like the Apple decision takers, when having to choose between form and function (screen lisibility vs screen glamour, battery capacity vs screen glamour, app functionalities vs screen glamour, …), took the turn towards fashion-luxury rather than revolutionary-functional. While this device is an exceptional feat in terms of connectivity and energy/time tracking, there seems to have been a bias towards wanting to look cool rather than actually being sound. Or what usually happens to great tools when leaning too much on the jewel side.
This work-week drive actually revealed how frustrating it is to recharge such an intimacy craving device every day. Say you also wanted to use it for sleep monitoring (which it can aptly do), that would mean having to recharge it sometimes the morning after… In any case, for such a nychtemeral obsessed object, the once a day charge requirement is plain nonsense, actively breaking any serious attempt at analyzing your whole cycle.
On the other hand, if you had the chance to experiment with the work-week autonomy of the Pebble Time, you will understand why I am so definitive. Having to find a small time to recharge on a week-long time bracket is not a problem anymore if you want your smartwatch to unobtrusively follow you on a daily basis. It just is practical and feels right.
Once also used to reading on such a reflective color e-ink screen like that of the Pebble you will start wondering why Apple chose its OLED screen technology. It looks gorgeous under specific conditions, but it doesn’t work as it should.
Reviewing the Pebble Time before certainly biased my Apple Watch review. But again, this doesn’t make this review unfair. You could well compare an electric SUV to a diesel powered moped and surely end up prefering the incredible mile range of one over the trendiness and size of the other (you get the point). But after a week, the two devices did serve 98 percent of their on-time displaying date/time, messages and other notifications, doing it both with ease. Only one of them sacrificing autonomy with a ratio of 1/7 to that ‘glamourous’ but highly reflection-prone screen, forcing you to adapt your day and activities to its energy guzzling needs. Apple has successfully fought skeuomorphism abuse in the past, wondering if it will soon win against display vanity excess.
And to come back to the title, this is the one essential basic functionality any smartwatch should have: work-week long autonomy.
This doesn’t mean the Apple Watch is a piece of crap, well on the contrary. It is an incredible workhorse, a technological marvel, but with one Achille’s tendon: its display technology. All that unnessential gadgetery and youth imperfections could have been seen as bonuses and futilities had that only been done right, beyond the rather high price, this major flow will not help its wider adoption.
But give me an Apple Watch with the Pebble Time’s screen (thus autonomy) and waterproofing, or the Pebble Time with some heart beat sensor, and I’ll be contempt. And thought I don’t like the extra weight on my wrist, I will crave to wear it, everyday. And I won’t be the only one. Think about how Swatch has been successful placing its cheap but reliable time pieces on everyones wrists for years (they do have some smartwatches, I didn’t check on them as they are too single-activity focused), they adapt well to your lifestyle, and not the opposite.
For your information I’ll be checking the Pebble Time during a week long energy autonomous trek soon, so this will probably give us some more comparison points, and more stuff to debate on. The Pebble Time definitely doesn’t have as much horsepower under the hood compared to the Apple Watch, but it seems that the underdog has got quite a headstart in the intelligent-design race for now.
Addendum 1: I did a more strenuous walk afterwards, the sweat made the watch totally unusable, the touch screen didn’t respond anymore… and the heart sensor couldn’t get the signal correctly : total failure in that case — wondering again how Apple could be contempt with that, loss of control because of inadequate hardware is not a good catalyst for product adoption.
Addendum 2: Pulling the crown as on a traditional watch would make sense to access ‘protected’ settings or values. Turning the crown could also serve as a charging mechanism as you would on a mechanical watch. To respond to the ‘heavy sweat’ loss of touchscreen control, having the digital crown act à la ThinkPad pointing stick would enable screen control even in adverse humid environments.
Addendum 3: An April story in Wired by David Pierce: “iPhone killer: the secret story of the Apple Watch” offers an interesting perspective now that the watch is on the streets, and hints pretty well on why Apple didn’t get it right at first. Interesting read in retrospect.
Addendum 4: In 2013 Apple kicked off WWDC with the video “Designed by Apple — Intention”. Interesting to view, again in retrospect “designing something requires focus”.
This text is prone to modifications and naturally open to debate and commentaries.
You can also check my previous ‘one charge reviews’:
One charge review of the Apple Watch [part 1/2].
