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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who wants a dumber smart watch? I'll be carrying my phone at (almost) all times, so I don't need the watch itself to have a power sucking processor and the battery to go with it.

I'd be happy if it just used some low-power communication to relay information from my phone. It doesn't need a big touchscreen either. Imagine a "smartwatch communication standard" that let normal good-looking watches with months or years (or perpetual) battery time display info from all smartphone platforms would be fantastic. That way I could get an expensive watch and not have to worry about whether it's going to be an expensive paperweight in a few years. I'm happy to buy a $1000 smartphone, but a $1000 watch I want to use for a decade, even if its smart features don't work any more.

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Pebble Time is within $200-250. Battery life is almost a week (I don't take a charging cable when going on small trips). It is basically a notification display + fun aesthetics.

Though if you're talking about wearing a $1000 watch, the pebble watches as a whole might not be your vibe. The Pebble Time (especially the red one) can look like a McDonald's toy from afar

But if you remember that you're wearing things like a smartwatch to _get your shit together_ (or whatever), after powering through the initial self-conciousness of wearing a Game Boy Color on your wrist goes away. Well, did for me at least. But the first couple of weeks were almost embarassing.

Yes my hope of a simple standard would be that you could could choose any watch with any design and still have some smart features. I don't really like the idea of the big black flat screen watch, I want my smart watch to look more or less exactly like my dumb watch - which I'm admittedly wearing only as an accessory.

I'd prefer physical hands on the watch even if it meant the info display was limited. I'd be happy with a good looking chronograph that could just notify me of messages from apps, and display short texts. 2x16 chars lfs mono text would be enough to not ruin the design of the watch.

Edit: it's a thing! http://www.slashgear.com/hps-isaac-mizrahi-smartwatch-woos-l... (Perhaps a bit blingy but just what I'm talking about)

That's why I like the Pebble. It still tries to do a lot but it's made a lot of sensible compromises along the way.

I know I've mentioned it before in this thread, but you should really check out the Vector Watch. I think you're their target market. It's a smartwatch that tries to save time for you, instead of waste it. It only shows you notifications and basic information (like news headlines or nest integration), it looks good and it has a long battery life. No colors, no touchscreen, it's a watch that also happens to be smart.

Looks much better than others, thanks. Still think it's overreaching though. I don't want apps, I already have those in my phone! A simple low power radio link could relay the message "Meet joe" or "Your Uber is arriving" from my phone without the watch needing anything smart at all.

What I'm thinking of is something that all watch makers could add to a dumb watch design and only add $100 to the cost of the watch.

> A simple low power radio link could relay the message "Meet joe" or "Your Uber is arriving" from my phone without the watch needing anything smart at all.

Basically a low-powered pager type display on a watch? Sounds awesome.

>>>"I'd be happy if it just used some low-power communication to relay information from my phone."

Exactly. Just the most basic low power lcd.

I think I am going off topic here, but that is exactly What I thought, but to a much larger extend.

We have small display in retail for pricing, and many IMOD display for very slow frame rate / stationary uses. That could be used for poster, or all kind of things. Why do we not have a standard protocol for it?

A watch should be real-time low bandwidth but high-confidence communication device. Kinda like peripheral vision. You cannot interact a lot with it nor read a lot from it and I find attempts at stretching the functions too much are 'tiring'.

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