How to choose a smart watch | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Watch­ing the evo­lu­tion of cell phones, you can see that they are becom­ing larg­er in size, which is clear­ly redun­dant for their basic func­tion­al­i­ty (calls and mes­sages). Actu­al­ly, because of this, the so-called “smart watch” appeared, that is, a device with a small dis­play worn on the arm, replac­ing or sup­ple­ment­ing a smart­phone. What smart­phone fea­tures do smart­watch­es dupli­cate? These are all its fea­tures, except those that require a large dis­play. To do this, smart watch­es are con­nect­ed to a smart­phone, or have their own mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­ule.

So, a smart watch, in a broad sense, is a device sim­i­lar to a com­put­er, designed to be worn on the arm, that is, from the watch there is only an exter­nal form, and the inter­nal device is much more com­pli­cat­ed.

In what way does this man­i­fest itself?

When look­ing at dif­fer­ent mod­els of smart­watch­es, you come across char­ac­ter­is­tics such as proces­sor, RAM, and so on. All this mat­ters only when the device is run­ning on any oper­at­ing sys­tem, due to which third-par­ty appli­ca­tions can be installed on the smart watch, for which the per­for­mance of the hard­ware is impor­tant. As a result, the watch turns out to be a kind of mini-com­put­er that can help in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions.

To date, smart­watch­es use the fol­low­ing oper­at­ing sys­tems:

• Android Wear

  As you can see, this is a ver­sion of the Android OS spe­cial­ly designed for smart­watch­es. Used by LG, Motoro­la, Huawei, Sam­sung. Despite the sim­i­lar­i­ty to the “big” Android, it uses its own appli­ca­tions.

• Tizen

  Used only in Sam­sung smart­phones. The oper­at­ing sys­tem based on Lin­ux, per­haps, can only sur­vive thanks to Sam­sung.

• watchOS

  Used in Apple Watch. The sys­tem is closed and updat­ed only through the iPhone.

In addi­tion, many smart­watch­es now have sports fea­tures. Let’s list them:

• Pedome­ter and count­ing the dis­tance trav­eled
• Heart rate sen­sor
• calo­rie count­ing
• Sleep track­er

So, they are able not only to make life eas­i­er, but also to mon­i­tor health.

It is worth not­ing that smart watch­es, as a wear­able device, are a fash­ion acces­so­ry, and there­fore they are dis­tin­guished by a wide vari­ety of designs, from copy­ing the appear­ance of ordi­nary watch­es to ultra-mod­ern and sports mod­els. The gen­er­al trend is that by default the clock and var­i­ous coun­ters are dis­played on the screen, but there is also a menu in which you can work with “smart” func­tion­al­i­ty (built-in and installed appli­ca­tions, set­tings). Nat­u­ral­ly, smart watch­es have a touch screen and a small num­ber of but­tons.

It is worth not­ing the durable case with mois­ture pro­tec­tion or full water resis­tance, which is present in many mod­els.

So, let’s con­sid­er spe­cif­ic options, because using their exam­ple it is eas­i­er to under­stand how smart watch­es dif­fer from each oth­er.

Samsung Gear S3

In this gen­er­a­tion, Sam­sung has com­plete­ly moved to devices that look like reg­u­lar watch­es.

They have two ver­sions: Clas­sic and Fron­tier, the sec­ond of which has a more aggres­sive look and mil­i­tary grade pro­tec­tion.

Sam­sung Gear 3 Clas­sic (left) and Fron­tier (right)

The watch strap has a stan­dard width and fas­ten­ing, that is, it is easy to change, a strap for ordi­nary watch­es is suit­able.

It uses a 1.3‑inch dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 360x360 pix­els. The glass is made with Corn­ing® Goril­la® Glass SR+ tech­nol­o­gy to avoid every­day scratch­es.

The inter­nal spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the watch are as fol­lows: a dual-core proces­sor with a fre­quen­cy of 1 GHz and 768 MB of RAM. Also, in the pres­ence of a hard­ware GPS-mod­ule, altime­ter and barom­e­ter. Nat­u­ral­ly, there is also a heart rate mon­i­tor.

Usu­al­ly, in smart watch­es, “flip­ping” is car­ried out using the touch screen, then there is a cir­cu­lar bezel around the screen, turn­ing to the right calls up appli­ca­tion wid­gets, turn­ing to the left — noti­fi­ca­tions.

Charg­ing the bat­tery here is enough for two to three days of use.

Smart watch KingWear

Not every­one can afford a smart watch that costs more than an aver­age smart­phone, and there­fore devices from bud­get Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers have appeared on the mar­ket, which, how­ev­er, do the same as expen­sive coun­ter­parts.

In par­tic­u­lar, you can pur­chase the King­wear KW88 smart watch, which runs on the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem, which has a full-fledged Google Play store.

Smart watch King­wear KW88

Thanks to this “open­ness”, appli­ca­tions orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped for smart­phones and sim­i­lar devices can be used here.

The hard­ware of the King­wear KW88 is also very inter­est­ing: it uses a Medi­atek MTK6580 quad-core proces­sor with a fre­quen­cy of 1.3 MHz, 512 MB RAM and an AMOLED screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 400x400.

The built-in cam­era with a res­o­lu­tion of 2 Mpix is ​​also of inter­est.

GPS, heart rate mon­i­tor and pedome­ter are also here.

Auton­o­my is not the strongest side of King­wear KW88, from one charge they work for a day or two.

Apple Watch Series 2

Smart watch Apple Watch Series 2

The device is def­i­nite­ly for Apple fans as it is quite expen­sive and only com­pat­i­ble with iOS devices.

As usu­al with Apple, there are enough such peo­ple. The watch itself is undoubt­ed­ly one of the high­est qual­i­ty on the mar­ket.

Apple Watch Ver­sion 2 is water­proof, and sports fea­tures include swim­ming modes. True, in such cas­es, you need a sil­i­cone strap (leather may lose its prop­er­ties).

The watch has a giga­byte of built-in mem­o­ry, so you can down­load music and lis­ten to it via Blue­tooth.

The dis­ad­van­tage of Apple watch­es is that you can only reply to mes­sages with emoti­cons, voice, or text blanks, that is, you can­not ful­ly print the answer.

As for auton­o­my, the Apple Watch with active GPS mode works for more than a day, with­out active use of GPS — two days.

Xiaomi Amazfit Sports Watch

Smart watch Xiao­mi Amaz­fit Sports Watch

This smart watch is aimed at those who go in for sports: their design and, in fact, the name speak for them­selves.

This watch has dust and mois­ture pro­tec­tion accord­ing to the IP67 stan­dard, that is, they can­not be sub­merged under water.

Nev­er­the­less, the watch is designed for fit­ness and sports, so the cor­re­spond­ing func­tion­al­i­ty is devel­oped here: a pedome­ter, a heart rate mon­i­tor, GPS tra­jec­to­ry record­ing, var­i­ous train­ing pro­grams, calo­rie count­ing and a sleep track­er.

The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the watch are at a quite decent lev­el: there is a dual-core proces­sor, 512 MB of RAM. The 1.34-inch dis­play has a res­o­lu­tion of 320x300 pix­els.

The watch lasts five days with active use and up to eleven if train­ing modes are not involved.

The minus of Xiao­mi smart watch­es is the lack of the Russ­ian lan­guage.

General recommendations

Prob­a­bly the first thing you should pay atten­tion to when choos­ing a smart­watch is its style. There are three options here:

• Orig­i­nal — such watch­es look like them­selves, look as mod­ern as pos­si­ble.
• The style of ordi­nary wrist­watch­es — suit­able, for exam­ple, for busi­ness attire.
• Sports style — more appro­pri­ate for ath­letes. There is also often full pro­tec­tion from water.

The sec­ond thing to con­sid­er is the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of appli­ca­tions. Here, the lead­ers will be well-known man­u­fac­tur­ers and com­mon oper­at­ing sys­tems.

A fun­da­men­tal point may be the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using a SIM card. If it is, the smart watch becomes a stand-alone device that does not require con­nec­tion to a smart­phone.

The avail­abil­i­ty of oper­at­ing sys­tem updates is also impor­tant — here the leader is the Apple Watch, updat­ing WatchOS every year.

conclusions

A smart watch is prob­a­bly not a device that every per­son needs. They do not seem to have become mas­sive, but new mod­els are being released, oper­at­ing sys­tems are being updat­ed. We can say that they are intend­ed for peo­ple with a high rhythm of life, for those who con­stant­ly need or want to be in touch. If you are such a per­son, then we advise you to pur­chase such a device, and our arti­cle will help you choose it.