Initial impressions of Android Wear - On a Sony Smartwatch 3

Official Sony Site for Smartwatch3

Reason for Buying the watch – built in GPS

Android wear is out a while (March 2014 Google I/O conference) and there is renewed interest given the Apple Watch pre-ordering frenzy. I have to admit I considered the smartwatch phenomenon a bit of a gimmick with little real usefulness, I already spend 8+ hours a day on a laptop, bring an iPad Air into meetings and use a Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone, why do I need another screen with tiny text and 2 to 3 day battery life its yet another thing to remember to plug in

I’m moderately active so with a birthday coming up my wife was asking me what I’d like as a present I started looking into GPS running watches. Some of the fitbands (such as Jawbone, Fitbit etc.) are just pedometers wouldn’t have the accuracy to give distance and lap page (running per mile) so I looked into GPS watches such as Garmin forerunner ranges.

Although well regarded and accurate the display and user interface of the actual watch looked very dated to me.

So I eventually looked at Android wear and found a used Sony Smartwatch 3 on an Irish (www.donedeal.ie ) website for €150 second hand.

Apparently the Smartwatch 3 is the 1^st Android wear watch as the other 2 used a proprietary Sony software.

As a watch it’s functional even when disconnected from your smartphone, when you tap the screen its full colour but most of the time its greyscale as shown (to save battery)

1.1 Notifications and app integration

Notifications popup from anything that appears on your phone. Some apps have additional integration though such as WhatsApp, Evernote, Hangouts as shown below

You can reply to these notifications using voice commands

Google Hangouts notifications

2 Unexpected benefits

I’ve had a number of, “oh, that’s interesting” moments as follows:

You can leave your phone charging on your desk in work and walk around the office, when calls come in you can decide if it’s worth rushing back to take the call, or even answer it from your watch (although there’s no speaker on the watch to hear them but at least you don’t miss the call)

Also I leave it charging in the kitchen of my house and the Bluetooth notifications stay in range even upstairs in a 2 story house.

The Sony marketing would lead you to believe that the Sony Smartwatch 3 is a “perfect companion” for a Xperia smartphone, however it works perfectly well with a Samsung Galaxy S5 or any other Android 4.x and 5.x phone

I installed the Sony “life logging” app which looks nice but doesn’t seems to do a whole lot so uninstalled it fairly shortly afterwards

When you are on a call with the phone to your ear and someone else rings you the 2^nd call’s face profile appears on the phone
Although not advertised anywhere I could find as a feature of the phone, it can track your sleep using an app called “sleep as android"
You can setup a notification when your watch loses signal with your phone saying “no, connection, did you forget your phone?” which reminded me to go back into the house to collect it a few times
Although you have to charge it every 2 days or so (maybe 3 days at the outside) it charges VERY quickly (i.e. in Less than an hour) so this isn’t like a smartphone battery recharge

Usefulness for Activity/Fitness

I already have a Samsung Galaxy S5 and rarely use the Heart rate monitor or pedometer to measure levels of fitness, the step count between the watch and S5 are usually similar but the watch count would be slightly higher (because its with me all the time).

It does appear to be waterproof, in the shower anyway
The GPS Apps seem to be early stage, I tried the following

Google MyTracks
Runkeeper
Endomondo
Ghost Runner

Endomondo is my usual preference but when doing a recent 5 mile road race this year it said I had reached 1km about 5 minutes after I passed the 1 mile marker so it was WAY off. Other software apps are more accurate though so its not a hardware watch problem.

Usefulness for Everyday wear

The black rubber strap attracts dust but is easily wiped clean, you can get a metal strap too and the actual watch pops out easily
As an administrator for lots of IT services in work 2 factor authentication codes would be great to see on the device, also, if your phone and watch had a really strong signal (i.e. on your person) perhaps your phone lock screen password could be inactive
It’s advisable to set “do not disturb” hours on your phone, otherwise you’ll get woken up every time an update happens at midnight when a calendar reminder sends you notifications. There’s also options on the watch to send priority notifications only.
Its handy when in the car to glance at the watch when a notification comes in (if stopped in traffic) and you can’t reach your phone in your pocket
Google play has a dedicated section now for Android wear watch faces and apps which makes it easier to find them. The number of faces has also increased

5 Summing up

I thought I’d just use the Sony watch for runs and to measure steps but 2 months in I’m still using it as my main watch so having the notifications and alerts is kind of addictive and outweighs the inconvenience of having to charge it all the time...

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Initial impressions of Android Wear - Sony Smartwatch 3