It seems just unwilling to sync anything to the watch, so there’s nothing to listen to when I go for a run without my phone
It’s just baffling, the watch has like 32 GB of storage?
Camera remote
I mainly own my watch for notifications and calendar reminders.
Timers, again every day.
To each their own.
I use my watch for time, step counting, and ringing/vibrating. Having my phone on silent and not missing calls (not messages, messenger are not allowed to send notifications to my watch) is such a step up for me :)
Once you get to a week of battery life like a Garmin or those cheap armbands without screen that becomes a much better feature
No reason was ever given, especially as they actively removed an otherwise working feature, so I can only assume “user hostility” and/or “classic incompetence”. Probably both, being Microsoft.
But the reality is different. On my smartwatch (an older Samsung, but same Google OS merged with Tizen) there's a PIN required if you enable payments on the watch. I understand why, the secure element requires it. But it makes every other feature of the watch useless to me. I don't have any secrets I want a watch to protect. I want to be able to time workouts while standing on a treadmill.
They could solve this, only have large amounts require the code while letting me buy a coffee without it, but I'm sure there's some line in an agreement between Google and the banks prohibiting this. The risk has to be transferred to the customer, even if the likelyhood of somebody buying a coffee with my watch is low.
Product design should consider all of these things, but getting out the next smartwatch without thinking it through is more inline with quarterly objectives. There isn't even a Steve around to piss off enough to do something about it.
How exactly? Samsung watches only require the pin to be enabled if you want payments enabled. You only have to enter the pin if you have taken the watch off. As long as it can detect that it remains on your wrist then payments continue to be enabled no pin required...
I would say I'm quite a power user usually. I very carefully explored every feature my apple watch has and tried to incorporate as many of them as I could. Very, very few features stuck because they were genuinely helpful. Almost everything being pushed is a gimmick or a feature bullet point from some product manager.
The actual good stuff:
Time
Workouts
Payments
The occasionally useful stuff:
Notifications
Noise DB levels to see if I need to put on ear protection
Workoutdoors app for on-device maps and path breadcrumbs
The once in a blue moon stuff:
Music controls and on device playlists
On device audiobooks
Weather complication
Voice memos
Alarm
Shortcut to call my husband
The feature I tried to get working but gave up on: Tap to talk to ChatGPT and get a 100 word or less reply