Ditching the smart watch for feature watch
There was once a viral smart watch in TikTok. What made it interesting was the price they offered: it was super cheap. The quality seemed to be good enough.
I was hooked, so I purchased it.
Back then, I suffered from FOMO. I used it every time I exercised. Stared at the quantitative numbers on it: steps count, calories burnt, heart rate, and the duration of the exercise. Connected it to Strava then made an update about the excercise I'd just done.
I kept doing that until I realized: what was all of these numbers for?
Do I really need this?
Honestly, I rarely revisit the numbers after exercise. No periodic evaluations. No specific targets. Just me willing to burn some calories at a certain period of time.
The other goal why I recorded a these numbers was to tell people on social media that I did my excerise, to which, people actually didn't care about it, at all.
Besides that, the most annoying part was the delay.
The smart watch screen was off by default, and it woke up when we raised our wrist to check the time. On some occasion, however, the smart watch failed to detect the gesture.
I had to redo it, just to check the current time. Insane.
I thought "OK, I'm done with this mess".
So, two weeks ago, I purchased a feature watch in an e-commerce platfom, which the price is not too different from the price of the smartwatch.
The result? Much more satisfying.
No more delay just to check the current time.
The main screen displays what a timepiece is supposed to display: hour, minute, second, date, month, and day. No steps count. No heart rate. Just time-related stuff. And it is really, really, really enough.
Other modes are available as well. Alarm? Built-in. Timer? There you go. It can be used to remind that certain time has ellapsed during exercise.
The style is also good, I love it.
So, there's no reason for me to keep using the smart watch. Feature watch, in my case, are sufficient.
And it may apply to you as well.
When it comes to watch, I just want to implement one of the programming principle: the Single Responsibility Principle. That a watch should have one and only one responsibility: to display the time. Nothing less, nothing more.