¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

Kev Quirk, I Don’t See the Point of Smartwatches:

Whether it’s Apple, Samsung, Google, Garmin, or any other smartwatch brand—they’re all utterly pointless as watches, in my opinion. Let’s call them what they are: not smart watches, but wrist phones.

[…]

What are they good for?

Activity tracking. That’s it.

I second this.

Having used various smartwatches throughout the years¹, eventually I “downgraded” to a “dumb” / vanilla / plain watch.

It does one thing, and does it well: it is a reliable timekeeper!

There’s no need to charge it. It just works. Technology™.

Why are smartwatches inconvenient (not so great, if you will)? Because they create more problems than they solve:

• They need to be constantly charged. The upscale ones (e.g. Apple Watch) need to be charged every single day. Fitness tracker models need to be juiced every week, but that’s still quite frequent. The situation will change if there’s ever a smartwatch that needs charging every month, comparable to e-book readers (e.g. the Kindle Paperwhite). It’s just much more practical not to have to worry about charging.

• Notifications. They are supposedly a feature, but we’re already so bombarded with notifications on our phones and laptops all the time. Do we really need yet another device to bring hourly anxiety to our lives, which are already too busy and digital? There’s a way to partially address this, other than simply disabling all notifications on the watch: get a fitness tracker instead. Our attention span is already not so great nowadays; let’s not make it even worse.

• Durability. I assure you: regardless of whatever model you get today, in two or three years from now you’ll feel FOMO when a newer version gets released. Back when I owned them, don’t think I’ve ever kept a smartwatch for more than 1-2 years. Sure, you can sell them, instead of simply disposing of them; nonetheless, they will still lose a lot of their MSRP value, and their maximum battery capacity will be reduced. They are not meant to last.

• Security: If you have a dumb watch, you can travel pretty much anywhere without worrying much about it getting stolen. It will likely not attract a lot of attention in the first place; but, even if it gets stolen, it could be easily replaced. Whereas a smartwatch tends to be flashier and more expensive to replace. I used to intentionally leave my smartwatch at home when travelling to more dangerous places (relatively speaking) – but then, what’s the point of having one, right?

Earlier this year I was quite excited about the new Pebble watches. They were supposed to address most of the aforementioned issues:

For those unfamiliar with Pebble, it’s an e-paper smartwatch with simple functionality, long battery life and a fun, quirky design. It first launched on Kickstarter in 2012. The company was sold in 2016 to Fitbit. In January 2025, Google graciously open sourced PebbleOS, enabling anyone to build upon the amazing Pebble software foundation.

Then, once their feature list got announced, my enthusiasm vanished. It doesn’t feel that special anymore, especially not for the price point they’re asking. Back in 2015-2016 I got a used Pebble Time for about $60. Now they’re trying to sell a new model for $149. It simply doesn’t seem worth it.

In the meantime, I’ll keep wearing my good ol’ plain watch.