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Originally Posted by FlorenceArt
Neat! How do you wear and use it?
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I wear it as a watch, and mostly use it to tell the time and receive notifications of new Twitter, Facebook and SMS messages. It also reminds me of calendar appointments and I use it to display small text notes (e.g. a code received by email to pick up a parcel from an Amazon locker). For all these uses it save taking my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it and finding the right app or swiping down to look at notifications.
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Originally Posted by yvanleterrible
I'm curious about this. How long does a charge last on this?
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Ah, that's one of it's weaker features. With my light usage I usually get three or four days out of a charge but when I first got it and was fiddling a lot it only lasted a day. And that leads onto the reason it isn't very good as a timepiece - to conserve battery power you have to push the side button to show the time. You can have it on constantly but you'd be recharging very frequently. Using bluetooth also drains the phone battery a bit, but I have to recharge that every day anyway so it doesn't make any practical difference to me.
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Originally Posted by Jessica Lares
Yeah, heard about the Sony SmartWatch, but those things are hit and miss with other hardware that's not made for it in mind. Wasn't about to spend over $100+ only for it not to work with my phone.
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Yes I've heard it's a bit picky about what phones it works with. I've got a Sony Ericsson Xperia so as you'd expect it works well. Also some of the bad press about it is left over from Sony's first try (called Liveview) which looked almost identical but was frankly rubbish. It was flaky even with a Sony phone and basically was unusable. The SmartWatch is much better especially now it's had several firmware upgrades. As for price they cost a lot less now - I bought mine for about £80 last year.
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Originally Posted by FlorenceArt
Oh, now I see, it has to be connected to an Android phone to work, right? Bluetooth I guess?
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Yes it's really just a peripheral screen with basic touch capability, accelerometers (tilt meters) and a vibrator, and connects to your phone via bluetooth.
Edited to add: I forgot to mention the main reason I bought it. Several years ago we had the first of a series of severe winter cold periods and I couldn't cycle to work as normal. The buses were in a mess and I bought a massive polar expedition type coat to keep me warm standing at the bus stop at minus 10 degrees Celsius. It turns out I can't hear (or feel the vibration of) my mobile when it's buried deep in the pocket of my coat, and one evening I was about two hours late getting home due to the aforementioned buses. My wife had rung me four or five times and got no response, and by the time I walked in the door she was on the phone to the local hospital to see if I'd been found dead in a snow drift...
Now when my mobile rings my SmartWatch vibrates, I don't miss any calls and my wife doesn't have a heart attack.
Of course I'm also a gadget freak so it appeals to me - I've just written my first extension app for the SmartWatch using the SDK Sony provide.
Andrew