Now, I wouldn’t have done this if any other smartwatch would have been on sale mostly because of two things – Pebble smartwatches have long-lasting battery lives, a week in the case of Pebble 2, and second, they get the job done without being too superfluous. The Pebble 2, especially, has most of the hardware components you’d expect from a “smart” watch – heart rate scanner, an easily readable display, a rich developer community, and more. Also, while we’re on this topic, I personally don’t think touch screens are the right way for interacting with such crammed displays. Something like the dial or button is far more utilitarian. I’ve been wearing daily, day and night (while sleeping too), the Pebble 2 for the past three weeks. During this time, I’ve learned that there are only two reasons someone should consider buying a smartwatch – they want to stare at their phones less, and need something to make them realise how little they exercise. In my personal case, both of these aspects came out to be quite true.
The problem with constantly receiving notifications is that they force you to take out your phone, even if it’s a promotional message because you don’t know what it is, and there’s no way you can live with that thought. To put in perspective, here’s how my mind works – as soon as a message arrives, I unlock my phone, read the alert, dismiss it or reply, and then, I end up scrolling through Twitter and Instagram for an hour. You see the problem too? The other part of my smartwatch experience involved perceiving the fact that I’ve become extremely inactive recently. 1000 steps a day isn’t much, apparently. Wearing a smartwatch daily fixed both of these life issues I was unconsciously suffering from. I significantly spend less time on my phone now, and guess what? I’ve started jogging daily. Hurray! Plus, I can sneak my smartwatch in an exam hall, and glance at the saved notes whenever I want (Don’t tell this anyone). Okay, that was a joke. The point I’m attempting to put forward is here is that smartwatches, in general, can be in fact, useful if you want them too. However, manufacturers certainly need to figure out a way to make them cheaper now. Therefore, if you’re getting a good deal somewhere, give it a try, otherwise, you’re not missing out on much, yet.
