Gadgetbridge users, can you tell about your smart watch and what are it’s pros/cons.
Not a smart watch, but a Mi Band fitness tracker.
Pros:
- works well enough
- Private
- data visualizations are great
- Advanced sleep tracking
- Lots of customization features
Cons:
- needs 3rd party app to sync weather
- Doesn’t exit cleanly
- Calendar sync has never worked for me (even though I gave it necessary permissions )
How is overall app experience. I’m thinking of buying some smart band to get me moving but i have serious privacy concerns with them.
Bangle.js 2, the pros are being highly customisable and relatively high battery life with an always on display. Cons are how glitchy said customisability can get the more you try to do with it due to how small the storage and ram is.
Nice, another bangle.js 2 user in the wild ✊
PineTime.
It doesn’t do very much, but the things it doesn’t do aren’t things I’m all that interested in anyway. What it does do, it’s kinda hit and miss. But it is cheap as hell for a smartwatch and fully open source, so were I more inclined to code I could potentially improve some of the ways it does things.
I highly doubt the PineTime is stable and reliable enough for the mainstream.
I agree that it’s not what most people want, but that’s mainly because it’s pretty basic, lacks features, components like the screen aren’t as nice as other watches, etc.
It’s very stable and reliable for what it does, though. I’ve been using it as a daily driver watch, timer, alarm, etc. for a couple of years.
How much tinkering did it take to get it stable? How much ongoing maintenance is needed?
Tinkering is optional. It has basic settings like a few watch faces to choose from, screen timeout, and things like that. It basically just works. Bluetooth pairing with Gadgetbridge is easy. The firmware was buggy in earlier versions with Bluetooth losing connection a lot, but it’s very solid now.
Flashing firmware updates is probably the most technical thing a user would be faced with, but there’s not much to it and the device automatically reverts to the last good firmware if something goes wrong.
I don’t mean to sound like a sales pitch here. Just saying it’s not like running Linux where there are a lot of options and technical details the user can get wrong.
Oh no at this point I’m just genuinely curious. Does it do notifications? I wonder if it would work well tutanker from Mac OS.
Yup, it does notifications… Not familiar with that software though.
Amazefit Bip - pro: transflective display with backlight, supreme battery life (weeks), virtually indistructible (although I had massive doubts at the start), all the features I need. con: replaced the wristband almost immediately - really cheap.
Bip here. Bought 2018. Have been charging it literally only once a month.
It relieved me from the battery anxiety of my previous sony smartwatch that ran the full googles smartwatch OS. That thing lasted usually a day. Less if i did anything meaningful on it. It made me seriously think if it needed a watch that would do everything, but ended up doing nothing anyway because of the battery life.
Exactly this. It’s nice to go on vacation and not even worry about packing a charger.
Is the Amazefit made by Xiaomi? Just curious, no l not sure how they seem to share hardware.
Amazefit is a Trademark of Huami Technologies, which is a Xiaomi daughter company, according to Wikipedia.
Thanks! I guess I’ll look them up for alternatives. The local Xiaomi store only carries the Mi band 7 pro etc, no longer compatible with gadgetbridge…
Bip S user here. Formerly a pebble holdout. Nice watch at a nice price and no thanks to the Zepp app
Later comments mention the Fossil Hybrid. I just checked that watch, and have to admit it is really nice. There is a strong want urge, for me.
Then I remembered another pro for the Bip: It is comparatively cheap, at <50€ (I seem to remember 36€ at when I bought it, years ago?).
So for me, with everyday items like mobiles or watches, I use them heavily till they break. I really would hate to get a scratch on that really nice Fossil, but with the Amazefit, it would not hurt that much.
So the tldr pro is: Very good feature to price ratio.
Love my PineTime.
Pros: Cheap, open source, reliable, several days of battery life per charge
Cons: Limited feature set when compared to more expensive smart watches, unused hardware features (for now), painfully slow development cycle
Wait, that thing costs only $26.99??
Yep. Add in shipping to the US, and it’s still less than $40.
Yea, I use mine every day. You’re right, the feature set is quite limited, but it’s more than enough for what I use it for.
Fossil Hybrid HR, love it. E-ink screen means 10 days of battery, and soverign data with custom faces through gadgetbridge…it’s a watch first, and a health tracker and notification point second.
Skagen Jorn gen 6 hybrid
Pros:
- Looks like stylish regular watch with real hands
- Always-on e-ink screen
- Good Gadgetbridge support
- Battery life about 5 weeks
Cons:
- Expensive
- Slow due to e-ink screen
- Limited features compared to full smart watches
What is going on here?
Afaik Its a default setting to prevent malicious apps from abusing accessibility settings. You can bypass it by going to Settings > Apps > See All Apps > Find that app > clicking the top right menu > allow restricted settings if you want
It won’t recognise my smartwatch anyway.
You probably didn’t give the location permission — it’s necessary to pair with a BT device
I did, I gave it every permission it asked for.
Thanks
Haven’t had much luck with it on my Amazfit Bip. Wouldn’t sync properly.
I have a bip, bip lite and bip s lite. All three sync. Bip and bip lite are the easiest as there is no key.
Does it work with the galaxy watch active?
Fossil hybrid. I really like having regular hands on a watch, both for the looks over a fully digital screen and also that I don’t have to flick my wrist to see the time. It’s just there.
As a bonus: it runs about three weeks on a single battery-charge.
