You probably mean the marvel of mechanical engineering that has zero dependency on the outside world, needs no software updates, and will still continue running as new for years after all the smart watches will turn into useless pucks?
Is there a term for complementing something that is objectively much worse than what came before only because it's better than what we have now.
Stockholm syndrome?
Watch batteries used to last month's/ years / didn't need batteries at all.
It's the same with phones, they used to last a week easily, now we get excited when they last 2 days.
What kind of smartwatch came before it, that had a battery that held for more than a week? And no, a simple watch is not a smartwatch, so that doesn't count.
Phones used to be powered directly from the wire and work even during a power outage and now they have batteries and die, but I'm still willing to trade that feature to have a GPS and text messaging.
Further Casio made a range of smartish watches back in the day. I don't know battery life's but they weren't measured in days.
And those Casio watches were terrible. Even without a comparison to anything else, they just didn't work reliably.
If it's just for telling the time I don't exactly need a watch, I'm almost always looking at or within reach of some device that can tell me the time anyway. A smart watch is useful for other purposes.
Also while weeklong battery lives would be nice, even needing to charge daily isn't too bad, I just stick it on the charger at night while relaxing and getting ready to sleep.
I loved my Garmin, but I hated the notifications. And I couldn't disable the fitness related notifications. I'm at a point where I hate all notifications though, and have them only enabled for work and my wife. Everyone/everything else can wait.