Are people really not aware that you don’t have to have notifications for everything?
You can turn all the notifications off on your phone and watch.
The value the watch brings can be found in other places, for example, being able to stay connected and have music and emergency contact without needing to lug your phone with you during a run or if you lose your phone.
A smart watch means you can leave your phone at home more often in general while still being available to those who genuinely need to be in contact with you, which is great for reducing doom scrolling and the like.
Right?? One of the first things I do when getting a new phone is disabling all the useless notifications and keeping the ones I care about. My phone doesn’t spam with notifications all day.
After something like a year of searching I finally got:
- solar powered, I never have to charge or change battery
- analog face with digital date, no need to adjust the date every month but looks good
- date in dd/mm format
- no GPS, no heart rate monitor, no notifications
Couldn’t find anything else that would tick those boxes.
I know a ton of people love g-shock, and i respect you guys, but to me it looks like something i would pick up on my way to drive a main battletank into the heart of russia
Sounds like an upside.
I definitely don’t love the look. There are tons of better looking watches but analog perpetual calendars are crazy expensive, classic digital watches are ugly and smart watches have to be charged regularly. The only other brand I was considering was Festina but their connected watches are huge. It’s crazy but g-shock was the only thing I found that had digital date in dd/mm format and didn’t have heart rate monitor.
if that was your clear use case, i kinda get that. dd/mm date on watches are rare, and perpetual calendars are only something i heard of in rolexes, and i would rather write a date on my hand with a ball-point pen each day before i buy a rolex for what they ask for it
And I find watches with analog (non perpetual) dates useless because they will randomly jump a day at the end of the month so I can never really trust them.
Isn’t that one of the clear use cases?
Got nearly the same month agoThe plain old digital ones with solar + radio time syncing are the best tool watches on the market in my opinion : set and forget, it even does DST automatically. The only limitation is you have to be outside during the day with the watch exposed a few hours a month or cheat with other light sources.
The only limitation is you have to be outside during the day with the watch exposed a few hours a month or cheat with other light sources.
You really don’t. Maybe other watches use more power but I left my gshock in a drawer for months, maybe even a year and when I took it out the battery was at “M.” Put it on a window sill and it was at H in no time. Haven’t actually seen it in years and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was still alive.
Mine turns off in the dark so that may help. I based my remarks off the manual. Good to know they’re pessimistic.
A photo of my current watch as I’m wearing it right now.
Here is my Bulova Sea King “Whale” from 1971 that I bought used a couple years ago. Still runs very well 54 years later.
Here’s mine. I bought it new in 2015, and I wear it almost daily. It has never needed work.
Keeping time since 1971
Mine is not quite as “antique”, only 2017
did you have a multigrain brötchen cut in half with sliced salami and cream cheese on one and krabbensalat and a sprig of dill on the other for frühstück
How did you know? For real though, I did not, how come you ask that specifically?
its just that your german-ness really showed in your post, between your username and the text on your watchface
Ah I see, though one needs to be quite familiar with Germany to spot that, are you perhaps Dutch? Also the watchface just tells the name of the company, the City its made in and the fact that its an automatic watch, for those not familiar with German reading this thread
my wife is from a little village between bremen and hamburg. im actually currently there as her father just passed away. she spent the last 3 weeks cleaning out his apartment while stress eating multiple packs of criispfrish and kinder country
Oh, I love skeleton watches! Beautiful!
Very nice. Here’s mine:
Here’s my reliable, simple Casio. Been with me for the past 7 years. I love this old fucker.
Wearing an oldie watch made in 1988 with a pulsometer on the dial. Love the beaten old thing.
That’s really cool!
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I’m not wearing it now. But I have an old Casio calculator watch I wear.
Same one Dennis Nerdy wears in Jurassic Park
Wow. That has to be 20 years old
The style, yeah, but this is a modern one.
You’re still allowed to buy a normal watch
“the touch screen is broken”
Father, I cannot click the book!
Does flipping the page by hand break the ebook?
No it just flips the device, but then you cant read anything
“Im gonna do a internet”
I found this in my jewelry box when I was packing for moving. Throwback to the 80s! Very much doesn’t work.
I’ll bet you it does, but you’ll need to put a new battery in it.
Have been wearing a Withings Scanwatch for close to two years now. I can check the time as usual and do not have to do a weird hand movement to activate the screen. On that tiny screen on top I can see who is calling on my phone.
The dial at the bottom goes to 100. That’s percent of predifined steps taken.
I like it. The Scanwatch 2 has a ton of more functioniality healthwise but it also quite expensive for a watch.
Aren’t smartwatch sales going down? Anyways, never understood why anyone would use one, especially since we also have phones that we carry around every day and that can notify us whenever.
There was one case in the last 3 years that I thought about getting one. I started running and hated having to need my phone on me and needed a watch either way.
Then I went to dinner and saw how a friend was continuously and unconsciously flicking their eyes down at their smartwatch every few minute if they weren’t talking and decided against it. I’m getting old…
Being able to track my runs with Strava while playing Spotify via Bluetooth to my earbuds without carrying my phone is amazing
I use one because it lowers my screen time. I can walk away from my phone and still be aware of texts and calls from family.
Mine is primarily a sports watch. The smartwatch features are just an added bonus.
Same, it counts my steps and it measures my runs/swims. It’s a Garmin. I don’t really have it configured for notifications or anything else.
Edge case here: my hands are constantly dirty with things I don’t want to get on my phone (relevant hobbies include machining, gardening and calligraphy). A smart watch means I can check to see if a message is important (ex: kids/partner attempting to get ahold of me) and I can answer calls and texts just using my nose/tongue + TTS. I never understood why they were such a mainstream accessory, but they are very convenient in some circumstances.
(Edit: I just remembered another use case, my partner is medically “a dingus” and constantly loses their phone as a result, but habitually is always wearing their watch. Upgrading them to a smartwatch has meant our relationship no longer suffers the daily turmoil of tearing apart several rooms looking for it. Again pretty niche, but a wonderful QoL improvement)
I work as mechanic and when my hand is either dirty or full or busy, it’s super useful to have a fitness band to help tell time or see who’s calling/messaging.
Sometime it’s also quicker to check time instead of having to pull my phone out. It’s also helpful for when i misplaced my phone.
Same here. They are just pointless devices. A smaller screen for your small screen. And I can’t understand the point of a “watch” You take off to charge. I’m using a solar powered G-Shock and take it off my hand maybe once every 3 months.
I use my Garmin instinct to track fitness. I love it
I have a MiBand which for me is primarily a regular watch with notifications.
I haven’t used audio notifications or ringing on my phone for years. I can also just allow the most important apps, while the less important notifications I’ll see just on my phone when I unlock it, unless I blocked those notifications too.
Currently this means I get SMS notifications (mostly useful for verification codes / package pick-up codes), Lemmy reply notifications (and few other e-mails), bank notifications (like payments), phone battery charged (80%) notification, and notifications of upcoming space rocket launches with webcast available (within 10 minutes).
My phone doesn’t make a sound, it doesn’t light up the screen, it doesn’t show notifications on lockscreen, it doesn’t vibrate, it doesn’t use notification LED. The smartband is a replacement.
Most of the time, it’s just a decoration.
If we’re doing watches today, here’s what I’m rocking lately.
I stopped using my Garmin smartwatch because they finally fell into the enshittification trap and recently tried adding AI slop and a subscription scheme into their watch app. That’s a big old nope from me, dawg.
I’m rocking a $5 Ali watch with a nice rainbow watch band.Wow I love this!
Nice. It is astounding what you can get for just a couple of bucks, and even more astounding that they genuinely work.
I would have bought something from a real brand but a red watch that matched the band at all was either this or like $10k, no in between it seemed.
I’m not really a watch person, but that one looks totally great!
It’s also approachably yet suspiciously cheap. I think I paid $20 for this close to 15 years ago, and Sinobi is apparently still at it making mechanical watches in the $30 range.
This one does two things: Tells you the time, and does so while not needing batteries.
All of those seem to be quartz and not mechanical.
I just took a more detailed look. They do still make quite a few mechanicals but they have indeed shot up in price. $80-90 nowadays, it seems.
My old one is definitely mechanical. I wind it up every morning.
That sounds like the right price range. Maybe yours was just massively discounted for whatever reason.
I bought it on Dealextreme back in the day, which was kind of the precursor to our current Aliexpress/Wish/Temu/Shein arrangement. It’s therefore possible that it is a knockoff (or a knockoff of a knockoff?) but the fact remains that it was absurdly cheap, is fully mechanical, and against all expectation and reason it continues to function and also keep pretty good time. It’s actually just a hair fast, and requires me to knock a minute off of it about once per week.
If you’re not squeamish you can get a thoroughly generic – or perhaps heavily “inspired” by some particular name brand – wind-up timepiece from any of the usual suspects for pocket change. $10-20, and other poster in here mentioned they bought theirs for $5.
Cool, I don’t need another watch, but I’m interested to see what kind of mechanical movement one can get for $5.
A well executed ad.
I like my smartwatch. I’m extremely ADHD as well as hypoglycemic. I have a lifelong history of not eating, then working/playing/exercising until i get woozy or pass out. I’m a terrible judge of what I actually need to stay functional. Always have been. I’m stubborn and will just try to power through things when I actually can’t.
The watch helps me track my sleep/rem cycles and lets me know when I’ve been neglecting my health. It lets me know when I’m getting stressed and need to take it easy, and it estimates how many calories I’ve expended on a given day.
The watch and pager functions are nice for reducing screen time when I should be working, but as a health monitor I find it indispensable in keeping me honest with myself.
ADHD plus anorexia?
I’m not anorexic. Im a healthy 225. I love eating. I just sometimes forget that it’s something I need to do everyday. 😅
I weigh the same as you. On the contrary, I don’t like moving at all.
I’ve got bad knees, so running (and a lot of other sports) is out, but I live to bike. I commute every day of the year, rain sleet or snow. It’s my favorite part of the day.
The most important part of staying active for me, was finding something that I actually enjoy. If I can trick my ADHD into thinking it’s playtime, and not some drudgery that needs to be completed, it becomes a game, and suddenly I can focus for 10 hours straight.
You’ve found the most important trick then. The convincing yourself that you’re having fun not getting exercise part.
Since I don’t have any friends with ADHD around me, I have a curious question. Are people with ADHD more optimistic and positive than others? Can they always see the beautiful things in the world?
I’d say I’m probably more optimistic than most, but I don’t know if I’d apply that to the whole population. It’s a disorder that affects your ability to perform in the ways society expects you to, and for a lot of people, that sense of failed duty is a weight that they bear every day.
For me tho, I’ve never really given a fuck what society expects out of me. I live for myself first. If my boss or teachers or parents are pissed because I’m not measuring up to some metric, that’s their problem. I’m in a career now where I don’t need to worry about finding a new job. They’re plentiful. So I just focus on what makes me happy and put in just enough effort to keep my head above water and save a bit for down the line. Work and education have always just been a means to that end. I’d say I’m definitely an outlier in that regard.
I really dig your attitude of not giving a damn about what others expect and living for yourself. Lmao, I often get down in the dumps because of other people’s comments. I always care way too much about what others think. But you’ve got such a unique perspective on life, seeing work and study as ways to achieve your own happiness instead of heavy burdens. That kind of mindset is seriously on point and deserves major props!
I know plenty of people who have ADHD and depression. So they’re not always positive. But I think even with depression, they’re usually more fun than most people.
I love my phone to a not great degree, but I would hate a smartwatch. I don’t like wearing watches anyways, but something buzzing on my wrist all the time would drive me batty. At least on my phone I can listen to podcasts, music, radio, etc, and I can read books and magazines. A smartwatch just feels like a shackle. Also every time I go to concerts or theater now and see the lights go down and all the smartwatches glowing in unison it’s creepy.
something buzzing on my wrist all the time would drive me batty
It’s the same when it’s in your pocket. I’d say the issue is not that it buzz all the time on your wrist, but that it buzz all the time. I disabled most notifications, except for a selection of people and apps. When I get a notification, it is usually important enough that I should check it. Everything else (including non-emergency work stuff) is checked on my own accord, when I feel like it.
Having the notifications pop on my wrist, with that system, does not feel like a shackle more than a phone constantly turning its screen on to tell you you have unread whatever.
I broke two of those. One taking something out of my pocket the crown caught and once the crown caught on rubber gloves I was removing.
Sorry to hear that. I’ve had this one for a few years now and work out in the bush all day and I haven’t had any issues.
I’ve got a Expedition Chronograph for a couple years that has been good.
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