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Comment by jon-wood | Hacker News Reader

It is indeed a tiny screen for the phone in my pocket, which allows me to interact with my phone without necessarily having to take it out. Here's a few ways in which I use it:

* In the kitchen to time cooking, to save getting half cooked food on my phone.

* To have a quick glance at incoming notifications while walking.

* To send quick replies to some of those notifications. * To check the time (its not only a smart watch, but also just a watch).

* To track how much sleep I'm getting, and the quality of that sleep.

* To track my exercise, both while running with real time information from my phone, and passively tracking how much walking I do.

* To control music I'm listening to in the shower.

* To give me at a glance directions when Google Maps is navigating for me, rather than walking around staring at my phone.

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> allows me to interact with my phone without necessarily having to take it out

No offence, I'm sure you love this device, but to me this sounds like a wafer-thin marginal improvement that does not seem worth the effort required to keep yet ANOTHER device charged. Seriously, we're talking 2 seconds saved per look? If the argument is "it adds up", you're looking at you smart device (phone or watch) too much! With the watch you then you have to decide whether or not to take your phone and fiddle with it. IMHO everything on this list works as I want with a phone, except checking the time, so I have a Swatch from 2004 for that (which has a replaceable batteries that lasts years each).

Smart watches as they currently exist fulfill a manufactured desire (again, IMHO!)

I don't know how much time it really saves me, but in addition to the convenience I find it much less intrusive (e.g. in meetings or other social situations, or when walking) to quickly glance at my watch to read an incoming notification rather than pulling my phone out.

I saw someone with a Pebble while we were catching up over drinks. An incoming call came in, and in just a glance he'd looked down at the watch & back up again, determining that it wasn't a call he needed to answer. With a smartphone, he would've had to reach into his pocket or backpack, press the hangup/voicemail button, put it back in his pocket or bag and apologize for the interruption to the conversation.

Of course, the ideal would be turn off the phone entirely, but I thought the Pebble was an elegant & respectful way to remain on-call with work, but also remain present with others. I can see how it would be useful to some people.

If your life is significantly "digital", if you're interacting with people constantly via email, twitter, messaging apps, etc. then you're going to have a lot of notifications every day. And cutting out the "few seconds" of hassle to pull out your phone and check those notifications is a significant savings when multiplied over all those interactions throughout the day.

As for battery life, my pebble time steel lasts about a week between complaining about needing charging, which is at about the 35% range, where it could survive probably several days of use if you forgot to charge it. And if you have a smartphone it's probably not a significant inconvenience to add another cable to your charger one day a week overnight.

> To control music I'm listening to in the shower.

what

It wasn't until college when I discovered this, but a lot of people (not necessarily a majority) listen to music in the shower. I thought it was pretty weird until I saw this multiple times.

I never knew this was considered weird until right now. Music + Shower = Glorious Morning.

Consider that malinens might the weird one for being confused by the concept. Regardless, one comment doesn't make it "considered weird."

I thought it was weird because I had never seen it as a kid. But tons of people (roommates, etc.) did it in college, so no, it's not considered weird.

Also podcasts. The vast majority of my podcast listening happens while having a shower.

I am in the shower no more than few minutes. I don't have time even for one song

> * To give me at a glance directions when Google Maps is navigating for me, rather than walking around staring at my phone.

This one is actually the killer app for me. I use it while on my bicycle where pulling out my phone and unlocking it to monitor my progress is quite unwieldy. I used to use a bluetooth headset for this, but not having anything covering my ears is both safer and more convenient.

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