I was always a little bit of an Apple fanboy (despite my somewhat negative experiences with the iPhone), but after years of waiting to see what Apple would do for wearables, it turns out Google is finally listening. The first watch I tried — and oh boy, did I never want to take off my wrist ever again. You might be thinking this isn’t an actual piece of technology by any means, but let me tell you now there is more to it than meets the eye. As I said before, it could have been better, but at least I got one, so that counts for something.
The company behind the device, Xiaomi announced today “the next-generation smart fitness band”, only on its homepage (and don’t worry, I will not tell you more about the screen). That phone case is almost as big as those from my former Moto X. It has a 7 inch TFT panel and uses Li-Po rechargeable batteries for power, which takes up just over a quarter of all your battery life, so good thing they went back to USB for charging and keeping your battery safe.
Not unlike my Motorola X-10 when I put mine through hell after purchasing a charger that wasn’t worth the cost (not mentioning the fact that some competitors had a higher rating than MI did until they came out with their own) Xiaomi promises “the best in the smart band,” so maybe the screen does offer some advantage, but I think most people are looking for some other benefit than a mere screen for the time being. Maybe the price is something people like, or maybe if they’ve had a bad experience with their previous smart band, then we can look forward to the next generation and get another round. Let’s see how it turns out.
The Case Makes Me Want To Wear Something Other Than This One
The smartphone band itself is solid enough on the outside and makes me feel secure, even though it comes with a hole where my thumb rests. But the actual band itself looks slick and smooth, so I would say that’ll make me feel comfortable regardless of whether I am wearing it around my neck or wrapped around my wrist. Now, let me talk about that screen… You can see where you are coming from. With the case on, the whole screen looks flat and boring, except for the music player — which looks great. Not the worst part of Xiaomi’s design for sure, and I am pretty stoked to see the real potential here.
But what makes me feel confident in the actual hardware inside. Because that’s what the watch is, right? Yes, it is, but its function is also very simple: just keep track of your steps. That way, if someone were to ask you how many steps you took yesterday, or are going to take tomorrow, you could always count on the watch to tell you whether these numbers are real or fake. So yes, a little bit of hardware here. However, I will also admit that the watch doesn’t measure anything. If I want to know how many steps I took yesterday, I just have to press two buttons on the top of the screen. No need to go into settings to try and find out, no worries.
This all works well on iOS, although I think developers are getting away from things just enough to figure out whether or not they are working properly on new versions of their apps. At present, everything runs fine on the latest version of Android software, so whenever your heart drops because it has officially lost eight hundred calories, you know precisely what time! Or how much water you should drink. Of course, that data is also kept on our devices. My friends have recently given them both in a couple of days and their initial reactions have been pretty positive.
The Display Can See Things On Your Phone
The display that the gadget displays isn’t too shabby as well. Both my models are fairly good, if nothing else, so the main drawback is that neither can read, write, or interact with anyone, so I’d rather use the watch when I’m just checking stuff like my phone notifications, or doing my social media updates. If you have another watch around your neck, then my advice would be to buy a different model, but for me, they’re both fine. There are no big differences between the watch, so I wouldn’t be complaining about this either.
What About Those Battery Life Problems?
Well, the problem with these watches is battery life, no doubt about it. They are designed to be used while worn, so that means they are charged, and you get 8–12 hours between charges depending on the situation. In theory, that’s a lot of battery time that you should have in reserve. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Even still, we can expect that these devices will last a day with regular usage unless you plan on using just the watch for one activity instead of multiple ones. If that happens, then the battery life will start disappearing. Sure, they aren’t expected to run off completely, but if the watch is already dead in the morning that’ll suck! Honestly, I hope that one day we can take one step ahead of tech and make a watch instead of a laptop. We’ll take a look at the upcoming Amazon Echo (or whatever), but for now, these watches might be nice to have.
The Bottom Line
I cannot wait to finish the watch with the usual swish of my arm around the side and then slip this sucker off next to my face. Yeah, I’ve told myself before, but I promise you my mind will soon change. For today, I’d recommend taking your foot off that seat for once. Come on, please. I can do this. Eventually, we’ll reach true happiness. Until then, I’ll spend every evening with my beautiful watch.
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