this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Not quite everything.
Garmin has transflective screens for their watches that are not only better on the battery life, but become MORE visible in sunlight. Resolution is not nearly as good but I think for an exercise/health device that's acceptable. For some reason though, probably because the amoled screens look nicer in the store, those are considered "premium".
I think eink for any significant reading instead of OLED. Boox has an android tablet with a color screen, even though the colors are washed out looking. Eink is easier on my eyes for reading books and I'm hoping to get that tablet for reading Lemmy too since I end up looking at the screen so long.
OLED for pretty much everything else. Though the black smearing was slightly annoying in VR, the switch to LCD lost a lot with the blacks not looking black, more like gray. I hope they switch back to OLED.
This is the reason I'm still using my old Pebble Time Steel. Garmin is the only one producing quality watches with transflective displays, and I don't like their OS :(
I miss my Pebble Time Steel, but then I found the Amazfit Bip.
That same lovely transflective screen, and overall smaller and lighter than any of the Pebbles - and a 45 day battery life. (Yep. About 6 weeks between charges.)
And the latest versions switched to OLED for god knows what reason. Like there aren't enough oled smartwatches.
It can't respond to messages, though, right?
There's a lot of things that one can do that the other can't. They both have trade-offs for hardware and software.
For specifically that... I don't know. Probably not?
Yeah if you are a regular consumer the software in their watches is a bit disappointing, but you get used to it. For example, they JUST added pictures to notifications, and you still can't type a response to texts, just a few premade responses.
If you're a programmer, it's even more frustrating. I struggled to write a weight lifting app on Samsung's Tizen, but I was eventually successful. Not so much with Garmin. Garmin does not allow for SQL databases (just key value pair), and worse, they give such a small amount of space to save data it's almost worthless. I think with mine, one of their top end watches, they give like enough space for me to save a few hundred sets. Sounds like a lot but it's basically like ten visits to the gym and then it would have to delete stuff. They do have another method, but I was unable to figure out how to work with their fit files.
So yeah they make great watches but I wish they would put some time in to make the user and programmer experience a bit better.
I'm confused, and I suspect it's from limited understanding here, but smartwatches are typically paired with a phone, so wouldn't it make more sense to offload dataset handling like you're describing to the smartphone than any onboard storage/memory in the watch?
Or is that part of the odd jank of some smartwatch systems atm that they don't interoperate like that?
Yes it's true I could probably do it that way, but what I want in a fitness watch is a phone replacement while working out. For example, I don't carry my phone on a run. For weight lifting, with my old Samsung, I just left my phone in my locker and used my app to record the weight lifting I was doing. I could switch back to a workout I hadn't done in a year and see what I was lifting then. I never even thought about my phone, accidentally leaving it at the bench, or worrying about damaging it. It's really freeing to just get away from the phone for a while.
My point was just agreeing with the previous comment that, while Garmin makes a great watch, their software could be improved. The limitations they put in are also somewhat arbitrary. I have plenty of storage for songs and podcasts, so a couple MB of data storage should totally be fine.
Ooh, I see now. It wasn't clear from the previous comments that you were wanting to use it apart from your phone, which is why I asked. I've helped someone with a Garmin watch before and I definitely agree that their software could be improved from the little I experienced of it.