Well, actually Tic Tock, since it’s a Ticwatch E. I finally broke down and bought an actual smartwatch instead of those cheap Chinese ones with a 10′ BT range and little functionality beyond reading notifications. After a slightly rocky start last night, it seems to be functioning as it should; I have access to Google Girl, and wifi connectivity, and that’s really all I wanted. I refuse to give the gouging bastards at AT&T money every month for an extra line so I can leave my phone at home and still take the non-existent calls that I get so frequently, and besides, I feel weird if I don’t have my phone, so as long as I can see notifications, send texts or email, and have voice access to Google Girl, it’s good enough, and worth neither the cost of an extra line nor a $300+ watch.
I got the E instead of the S so I can change straps; the first thing I did when I got it was turn off all of the fitness stuff and the heart rate monitor, and I don’t intend to use it for outdoor sporting, so as long as the GPS has a general idea of where I am, it’s good enough. I don’t like the strap it came with, but one good thing about the Ticwatch E is that it takes standard 20mm straps without adapters. Ticwatch S has GPS in the band, so it can’t be changed, and since I don’t care about super-accurate GPS, but do care about using a standard band, I went with the E.
It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s quite responsive, and not huge like the Gear Frontier that I would otherwise have liked. No NMFC payments on the Ticwatch, but Schnuck’s is the only store around here that has it anyway, so meh. I got a couple of glass screen protectors, and a cool metal strap I hope won’t look too bad with a polycarbonate-bodied watch. Both will be here Monday; I didn’t order them with the watch because I didn’t want to bother returning cheap things had I opened the watch and thought, “God, this thing is too ugly to put upon my person!”
It came with a couple of okay faces, and some seriously hideous ones, but I downloaded the Holo watch face for free, and it’s perfect. Time I can see, configurable for 24h time, date format (and even the spacers) that I can have the way I want, and the swooshie-thing is actually a battery display. That is awesome; I don’t need to know whether the battery is precisely at 78% or 79%, and I don’t want a stupid little battery icon. This looks nice, and gives me enough information to know whether I need to charge it or not. Since I’ve turned off all the fitness crap, step counter, and heart rate monitor, I think I’ll be able to get away with leaving the always-on screen and Ok Google detection on, and still not run out of juice.
The only apps I’ve downloaded have been the watch face, Hangouts so I can message R, Messages so I can send texts, and TinyCAM Pro because I wanted to see whether it would work. I took this last night, so the image is B&W, but I can indeed see my cameras on my watch. At least on wifi; I haven’t yet figured out for sure whether this watch will “piggyback” on my phone’s mobile data. I think it does, but I’m not positive yet.
I just took another photo of the same camera during the day.
Overall, it’s not a bad-looking watch; it can’t be the size of a dumb-watch because then the screen would be too small, and it has to be thicker because it’s not just displaying time, but it doesn’t look too dorky to wear. So far, I’m happy with it, and glad I didn’t cough up $300+ for a Gear. This should be good enough for my purposes, and at only slightly more than half the price of a Gear, I’ll take it. Hopefully, it won’t crap out on me after 6 months or something.
