I don’t know how many of you out there try to make a life without Google, which works quite well with e/os. Only one thing is a problem: the watch. I tried to buy a new one lately and found that there is not even information available before buying if a watch can be used without having to download some app in the google store to connect phone and watch, generally I try to avoid chinese apps as well as play store at all. Which led me to buying a watch that I cannot even “boot” into a “watch display” as it does exactly nothing but tell me to connect with the vendors app.
So I really wonder if there is someone at the e/os foundation thinking about an e/os watch, a watch free from vendor connection terror.
I would love for e/os to do that! Might be a little out of scope since they don’t make hardware. Maybe Fairphone?
In the meantime there is Gadgetbridge, they are supporting many watches on the software side without needing Google or vendor specific activations, with some limitations.
I used Gadgetbridge for years with my old watch and was pretty content with it. My rant is specifically about watches one cannot enable without google, although there is no technical need besides the keys they all use today. I would expect a free watch to drop this whole idea completely.
Pebble watches are also an option. Hard- and software are open source and Gadgetbridge should work as well. I don’t own one and never tested any of that
So, I went through the whole drama of trying to do the smart watch thing…here’s what I came up with…
I got an LG Watch Urbane a few years ago, and I installed AsteroidOS on it…and while I fully accept that it may be user error, it wasn’t a great experience.
Half the time it would turn on when I didn’t want to see the time, which was a nice compliment to the other half the time when the watch didn’t detect my wrist movement and illuminate when I wanted it to.
It also wasn’t a great solution for notifications, because half the time it didn’t vibrate when I had one.
…It also wasn’t a great solution for telling time, because it was wrong as often as it was right.
I’m not knocking the AsteroidOS project; I’ll assume the issue was me or the particular watch I got off eBay, but either way, it was so inconsistent that not one function worked consistently.
…so, I decided to get a CMF Watch, because Nothing had a sale on it. I got it working with Gadgetbridge, ultimately…but I wasn’t a fan of the fact that in order to do that, I had to create an account and tie the watch to the account first in order to get the private key. In fairness, I’ve had it for about two years without it erroring out in any way, and it doesn’t run Google Wear, which is nice…but one can’t add a new watch face or some other errors without the Nothing X app, which requires the account…BUT, if all that is set up on the initial run, it does work pretty well with GadgetBridge, even if the Nothing X app is uninstalled and the account closed after the key is extracted.
So…my individual, personal, anecdotal experience is that smart watches lack the sort of polish and ecosystem that /e/OS provides to phones…so, I’d love nothing more than a nice-looking FairWatch or a first party Murena build that ships with AsteroidOS out of the box…but for the moment, it seems like there’s compromise in every direction.
To add some more products unavailable I’d like to talk about PineTime (Pro). Both old and new version are unavailable currently. I asked Pine64 (the manufacturer) but got no answer so far.
