It looks like the new Google's Pixel 4 watch comes with yet another incompatible change in charging technology. This is a ridiculous situation. The original Pixel Watch used one type of wireless charging. Then the Pixel Watch 2 & 3 removed wireless charging and swapped to a different charging mechanism. And now the 4 has changed again. So three different charging cables in under three years.…
At that scale, the connector and the necessary electronics are too large.
Let’s ignore the iPod nano 6th gen, which managed to fit a 30 pin dock connector and a headphone jack into a watch sized body
With vastly lower power requirements compared to a smartwatch
Not really relevant: power requirements would affect battery size much more than charging port size. And USB-C supports much greater power transport than the old dock connector.
Right, my point is that we want to use that space for battery, not bulky connectors.
Given that an iPod nano only lasted a few hours on a charge and most smartwatches can last multiple days, I’m pretty sure that’s not so. Even if they had apples-to-apples identical functionality I think a modern device would consume less power simply due to current chips being more power efficient via using smaller dies and lithography processes.
Plus, an iPod has to crank its weedy little processor full time as long as it’s playing music. Your smartwatch pretty much only has to do anything when an external stimulus wakes it up, be that pressing a button or tapping its screen or receiving an alert or whatever. I’ve developed software for some of the Garmin models myself and I can tell you that the power consumption and processing time limitations imposed by the system are extremely stringent. The majority of the time even in a second-by-second basis your watch is completely idle, specifically to consume as little power as possible and conserve the battery.
The last gen iPod nano touted a 30-hour battery life. Also, you don’t need to peg the CPU for rendering audio - this can be accomplished with a very low-power DSP. The lack of radios also offers significant savings when compared to a smart watch, which you forgot needs to be able to receive notifications, not just wait for low-power sensor input.
I’ve professionally developed the firmware for several embedded systems and consumer electronics devices with very strict power requirements.
The 7th gen iPod Nano which you’re referring to (not the 6th gen the commenter above posted, which had a rated 24 hour battery life) had a 200 mAh battery.
A lowly Garmin Forerunner 230 like the one strapped to my wrist right now has a 150 mAh battery and achieves five weeks of battery life with notifications enabled (which I did not “forget”) and the BLE radio twittering away all day, GPS time and position updates, activity tracking, and the screen displaying content all the time. Not 30 hours. 840 hours.
Just acting as a plain watch with the connectivity turned off Garmin claim it’ll last 12 weeks (2016 hours).
I should not have to point out to anyone that it is physically impossible for an iPod to achieve a significantly shorter runtime on a larger battery without consuming more power in the process.
Now imagine at best halving the physical space for that hall battery by adding a waterproof USB-C port and associated PD electronics - which at that scale would mean significantly more than a 50% reduction in battery life.
Some watches already have USB - C. but I find it interesting to see if you are correct or not.
I would see standardizing wireless charging as a decent alternative…if it didnt take up even more space.
It’s also hard to make a port like that water resistant. Using wireless charging is easier to make flat and seal tightly.
If you mean a USB-C port in general, they can be made waterproof. If you mean something specific to putting one in the most compact form factor possible, that might be true.
That kind of waterproofing wears over time (years). It keeps it’s resistance, but not a submersible seal. Watches have longer use years than phones on average.
And that requires more space than a typical port. In a compact device that is difficult. A flashlight is literally one of the simplest electronic devices there is and bulk is often a plus for comfort.
You might be surprised at everything going on inside a modern flashlight. I’ll grant that it’s probably easier to find room for extra seals around the port than in a smartwatch though.
Still not nearly as complex or compact as a smart watch. A little microcontroller versus an arm processor.
A switch mode LED driver can be made very tiny with as few as 4 components. Battery protection and a single cell battery charger can also be very simple.
Then again my flashlight has a microcontroller with open source firmware on it
They can be waterproof but are also non functional until the water is fully cleared from the port.
oh quit that bs. There was waterproof (not resistant) micro usb more than a literal decade ago. If anything they should have gottn better.
And that requires more space than a typical port. In a compact device that is difficult.
Eww, micro usb. I get the shakes just thinking about it.
deleted by creator
It’s not that it’s too large to exist, but it’s certainly large enough that it’ll make a dent in the battery space, and smartwatches are already battery-starved compared to dumb ones.
Its a terrible idea for a number of reasons, but as everybody else is saying, that doesn’t mean you give up on standardization.
I wrote the post above. So far, the USB-C watch has lasted over 3 days and still has over 50% battery power.
Obviously, at that price it isn’t running a cellular radio or GPS. BLE is amazingly efficient - as are the built in sensors.
That gives me no information. What’s the battery size? I’ve had multiple smartwatches and all their batteries could last a week or a day depending on usage, setup and features.
The point is USB C is noticeably larger than pogo pins for the sake of including a whole bunch of additional pins a smartwatch has zero use for. Larger means less room for other stuff. The ideal state for a smartwatch is having an always-on display and heart rate monitoring, among other things. All watches out there, even the most efficient ones, could use more battery and efficiency than they have. Because all smartwatches are coming up short from their desired usage and are working around their limited battery life.
The idea of making that worse for the sake of having a clearly unfit for purpose connector as opposed to standardizing a connector that actually does the job is really weird. There is no need to have a different charger on every watch, but there certainly isn’t a need to sacrifice any functionality or performance at all for the sake of USB C. And not all watches are the same size, so this would impact smaller watches more, which now is limiting what type of watches you can make if you make USB C a standard. And if it’s not a standard, then it’s not fixing the problem.
And all that’s even before you begin to consider that watches are more comfortable to charge when they have a stand to do so, since they’re small, light and fiddly, so it’s entirely possible for a bulky USB C cable meant for fast charging to be heavier than them or stiff enough to actively move them around. There’s a reason watch chargers tend to come with very thin, flexible wires. All you need to fix this problem is a magnetic stand that can hold any watch. Half the USB C cables I own would knock over my watch stand if plugged into my watch or drag my watch across the table.
You can make a watch that charges via USB C and still works. That’s not an optimal solution, but you can. But it’s not a valid standard because you can’t very practically make all watches charge via USB C. Standards need to be standard.
The website claims 280mAh. That’s a smaller than the newest Pixel watches - but then it is only about 10% of the cost of those models.
Agreed! But that rather depends on what you want to use it for. This model is charge only. But it could be useful to use it as a USB drive to store music, or to get health data off it. The main advantage for my personal use-case is being able to charge while wearing it.
Yes! This does have always-on heart rate monitoring and step count. The screen is only on when you glance at it or tap the button.
Agreed! But as the Pixel watch has gone through three different charging standards, all of which are incompatible with other watches, we don’t seem to be any closer to solving that problem with wireless.
That’s a personal preference. My Pixel watch stand is fiddly to use - the magnets don’t always align. And the puck charger is pretty lightweight and moves around easily. By contrast, my lightweight USB-C cables don’t move my watch when it is charging directly.
I agree! But sometimes it is nice to experiment with things to see what works. And I’m very happy that this normal-sized watch is able to charge with the same cable I use for my toothbrush, eBook, headphones, fan, and phone.
Hold on, so now you want to use USB C for data transfer? Which means you want to what? add more storage to the watch? That sure seems like a solution looking for a problem you’re only floating as a result of choosing USB as the charge port, which we probably shouldn’t do.
And that’s not just much less battery than on the Pixel at 420mAh, it’s even smaller than the CMF Watch 2, which reports 305mAh and is only seventy bucks (and if anything seems smaller than all of your examples). So yes, there is an impact on battery. And no, that’s not acceptable. Because again, ALL smartwatches need more battery than they currently have.
The point of the always on HR monitoring and screen isn’t that they exist, it’s that they are a massive battery drain. A smartwatch where you turn those off will last several times more than the same watch with them on, particularly on entry-level devices like ones you point at. And you would ideally wnat those on in a perfect smartwatch while still getting multi-day battery life. Right now we just don’t have that because you can’t work your way around physics.
Now, for an experiment? Sure, go nuts. Put a solar panel in there. A hand crank. Who cares, weird hardware is weird and weird is fun.
But to solve the problem with the ever-changing charger standards from the mainstream manufacturers weird won’t cut it. You need a solution that fits all cases with near-optimal performance. USB is just not it for this form factor, and if anything focusing on it distracts from the very real need to come to a proper standard in this space, which I find somewhat annoying.
Sure, why not? My headphones have a built-in MP3 player which I can load up with 32GB of music. Flash memory is tiny and cheap - why shouldn’t my watch have my music collection on it? Is grabbing a CSV of my data via USB easier than trying to send it via BT? Might be. Let’s find out.
For you, maybe. This £16 one has lasted nearly 5 days of doing continual heart monitoring and is still on 40% battery. Even better, I don’t need to take it off if I want to charge it. Weekly charging is better than my phone or laptop.
I slightly disagree with you about the screen needing to be always on. I’m not always looking at my watch, so it might as well save battery where it can. I don’t leave my laptop screen on when I walk away from it, and that has a much bigger battery.
On that we can agree! This is a fun experiment.
I disagree. I think it is OK to have some choice in the market. Some people will prefer magnetic wireless, some wired, some plutonium batteries.
Like, mate, I don’t have the power to enact anything. I’m just one guy blogging. I’m not involved in the design, manufacture, or standardisation of anything watch related. I don’t understand why you’re getting annoyed by me talking about it though.
Flash memory is tiny, but it’s not replacing anything, it’s being added, which is a problem for cost and size. If you were going to take BT out then… sure, but that’s not what’s happening here.
Now, the conversation is different if you reframe it as “I just like this quirky dirt cheap watch with a USB port on it”. At that point I have nothing to say other than… sure, why not.
What I don’t like is the notion that USB C is either a better alternative or a candidate for standardization, which is how the post came across to me.
Oh, and I disagree about the always on screen, too. In all honestly, the two things that make smartwatches still less polished than traditional watches is a) battery life, and b) the fact that there is at best a second of lag when you try to check the time and at worst you need to shake your wrist to try to get your watch to realize it’s being looked at so it decides to wake up.
There’s no question that having a display of the time on at all times is better. It’s just not practical with the energy costs and battery storage. At one point I bought that Garmin watch that has a standard old digital watch screen on top of the modern display (speaking of weird). It was a neat idea, but it turns out that the battery life for it on normal use wasn’t much better than other watches and the dumb thing still had a backlight it turned on via motion detection, so it was just as laggy as a normal smartwatch.
I’d take a better iteration on that tech over a USB C charger any day, if we’re doing weird.
3 Days is great!
I have the pixel watch 2, and waterproofing is very important to me when it comes to a smartwatch. I work in healthcare and have to wash my hands upwards of 30 times a day. If I had to take off my watch every time or gamble on a rubber flap adequately covering the charging port, it simply would not be worth the hassle.
Some do, but the limitations of usb C (or any physical plug) are present and while it sounds nice in principle to have all the devices use the same cord it’s in general not worth the sacrifices that others have mentioned like it taking up extra room and the increased likelihood of water/sweat/particulate ingress
And yet, I literally have one on my wrist now. It’s not noticeably bigger than the Pixel 3 watch.
Here’s a video of it in action - https://tube.tchncs.de/w/vYTnG6eKghnicdNj5nkhVx
This is confirmation bias, you know it’s possible so you’re discounting downsides.
Yes, a connector can fit in the watch, but the internal footprint of the connector is comparatively huge. All the other components of the watch would need to be designed to fit around a large connector essentially directly in the middle of the device internals.
If that’s really important to you, more power to you. I don’t have an issue with it existing. I do have a bit of a problem with pretending that compromises aren’t being made in features to accommodate it.
A standardized magnetic pogo pin connector would meet my needs quite a bit better, personally.
That’s something I hadn’t considered before. What a neat idea.
https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/
The charging base is just breaking out the 5V of the USB to the pogo pins!
I’m not discounting the negatives - I’m saying it is possible and feasible.
As I point out in the article, the Pixel watch is now on its third charging format. None of which seem to be compatible with Apple or Samsung.
There are also compromises with the pogo-pin connector. You can’t charge while wearing it. You have to bring along another cable. Bits of metal can be attracted to the magnets and cause mechanical or electrical damage.
Liking that! Pros and cons? I’m pretty damned rough on my gear, why I almost exclusively wear Casio. Water is a serious concern for me.
Pros? It is cheap, it uses USB-C, step counter and heart monitor work, bluetooth calls work.
Cons? App is a bit crap, but works with GadgetBridge. UI is a bit slow and janky. Lots of watch faces but you can’t design your own.
Full review on my blog later today.