Smartwatches aren’t dead, but waiting for smart design.
If the smartwatch is going to break out of its niche, we need to think outside of the box – literally
It’s here! Hang out the bunting and crack open the bubbly: Android Wear 2 has arrived!
Or, as it might be, give a shrug and get on with your life. Because the fact is, the latest major update to Google’s smartwatch platform is a cause for great excitement among a particular geeky constituency, and of no interest whatsoever to anyone else.
In my view, the world ought to be a lot more excited about smartwatches. But I understand where the apathy comes from. I remember the first smartwatch I ever tried out, a mid-2014 Samsung Gear 2. Frankly, it felt like a toy. Carrying on a conversation with your wrist, through the watch’s tiny speaker and microphone, was fun, but obviously not practical for everyday use. And while the built-in camera was a neat idea, I quickly discovered that shooting from wrist-height is mostly useful for capturing the view up people’s noses.
Factor in a battery life measured in hours, rather than the years I was used to from my regular timepiece, and even I refused to pay £250 for this half-baked effort.
The thing to remember is that this was an early smartwatch concept, from the days before there was any such thing as Android Wear. And the technology improved quickly: within six months, we had voice control, instant Google searches, timers, reminders and all sorts of apps. For me, this swung the deal. I retired my trusty Timex and picked up an Android watch of my own. Many friends and colleagues did the same.
For whatever reason, though, the message never seemed to get out beyond these geeky circles. It’s not for lack of evangelism; whenever anyone expresses curiosity about what’s on my wrist, I’m always enthusiastic in my response. “Smartwatches are great!”, I’ll say. “They can do this, and this, and this... you should think about getting one.” They never do. I’d like to say they’re hung up on the shortcomings of those early forerunner devices; truthfully, I think they simply see smartwatches as exclusive property of the techie community.
It’s an attitude that frustrates me. After all, it’s not just geeks who can benefit from notifications and reminders. In the early days, I put my hope in the idea that the Apple Watch might inspire people to take a fresh look at wrist-borne computing. Let’s face it, tablet PCs had always seemed like awkward niche devices until the iPad came along, so perhaps the same magic would work here. The Apple Watch would open the floodgates, and we’d end up at last with a smartwatch on every wrist.
To be fair, when Apple showed its hand, it made an impact on popular consciousness in a way that Google has never managed. To this day, people ask if I’m wearing “one of those Apple Watches”. (They’ve rarely even heard of Android Wear.) Unfortunately, Apple’s decision to position the device as a superexclusive aspirational item put the kibosh on any possibility of mass-market appeal.
And so here we are in 2017, having made very little progress. Yes, for some of us it’s an exciting time: Android Wear 2.0 brings neat new features, including a truly interactive voice-control interface. We’ve been eagerly checking for the update several times a day, since Google’s staggered rollout strategy means you can never be quite sure when the update will arrive on your particular device.
But I’m not fooling myself that Google’s update is going to make the slightest bit of difference to the overall profile of Android Wear, or wearables in general. At this point, it’s going to take something spectacular – much more so than an OS update – to rehabilitate smartwatches. And the latest flagship watches aren’t going to do it either, with their incremental design and iffy battery life: the forums are suggesting new customers give them a miss and invest in last-generation hardware instead.
Nevertheless, I’m not ready to write off smartwatches. In this connected world, where we’re accessing our data more and more casually from more and more locations, the idea is an obvious winner in the long run. The trick, perhaps, is to find a new way into the idea, since the smartwatch as a discrete product clearly hasn’t taken off.
Here’s what I’m thinking. Before smartwatches came along, people happily wore regular dumb watches on their wrists for centuries. They did so because the benefit – always knowing the time – outweighed the cost of occasionally winding it (or, latterly, replacing the battery). With modern smartwatches, that calculation obviously isn’t holding: the benefit isn’t perceived as worth the costs, such as purchase price, complexity (real or imagined) and the need for constant recharging.
So let’s rebalance the proposition. How about a device that is, first and foremost, a regular watch – something anyone can feel comfortable using, with a timekeeping function that will operate for years on a modestly sized battery. Rather than being the core of the watch, let’s make the smart component module that can be charged, woken up and operated independently from the watch basics. In this arrangement, the owner can try out the smart features as and when they wish. Once they do, they will quickly get comfortable with the idea – and the geeky stigma will evaporate.
It’s not that I’ve anything against geeks: I’ve even heard it said that geeks are cool nowadays. If we want a technology to really succeed, though, it needs broader appeal. Android Wear 2.0 is a welcome arrival, but I’m saving the real celebration for the day people stop asking me what’s on my wrist – because the same thing’s on theirs.
At this point, it’s going to take something spectacular – much more so than an OS update – to rehabilitate smartwatches