Dear Social Media,
Good morning! Another day in the life of a dad, husband, human, brother, son, uncle, friend, and member of society. Oh yeah, and today is Wednesday! There are less than 72 hours until the weekend begins - wahoo :) Do you ever wonder why the weekend and workweek cannot be switched? Alright, I will tell you. We would not get anything done if we all played more often then worked. Ergo, you get two full days with your family after devoting five nine-hour days to your employers. Fair shake? Well, this all depends on your perspective...
Today is May 18, 2016 and the third month using the +Fitbit Blaze fitness tracker and quasi smartwatch. I use the term quasi smartwatch because of the following:
Smartwatch Requirements
1. smart alarms
2. stop watch & countdown timer
3. apps
4. sound
5. vibration alerts
6. time & date
7. input
8. waterproof
9. calendar
10. watch face
11. battery life
12. accessories
Smart Alarms
Your resting in bed at 23:00 and everyone else in your home is asleep. Your realize at the moment your body is sick and you won't be waking up early. Does your smartwatch allow you disable the alarms or do you need to walk into another room, turn on your phone, wait for the two devices to synchronize? Luckily, the Development Team at +Fitbit thought about this one. You can easily disable the alarms and view all alarms from the Blaze smartwatch. The touchscreen technology makes it very easy. However, unlike the Casio or Timex you had in grade school or high school one cannot set a new alarm from neither the Blaze, Surge, nor even the Charge HR. Both the Surge and Blaze have touch screens and buttons to set an alarm, really Fitbit, why did you leave this feature out?
Stop Watch & Countdown Timer
Back in grade school I had a cool Casio watch. It had a stop watch feature with lap button and it just worked, never crashed. The early "so-called" smartwatches did not have the basic functionality and features of a $20.00 Casio from 1990, yeah, lame! Ergo, two of my requirements of a fancy smartwatch is both a stop watch (with lap button) and a countdown timer.
Apps
The applications that make a smartphone smarter are the apps installed by the owner. These apps have truly automated and augmented the levels of customization since 2008. Presently, neither the Blaze or Surge allow third-party apps. The Garmin vívoactive HR, just released in May, 2016, is getting close. The other option is go the route of the uber expensive Apple Watch or switch to an Android smartwatch.
Sound
The brown box from Amazon.com finally arrived. You opened it with excitement and then setup your new smartwatch or fitness tracker. Three weeks later you were careless and now you cannot find your fancy device. You search on Fitbit.com or Garmin.com for help. You discover an app for $3.99 that uses Bluetooth to help you locate which room your tracker may or may not be found. Days go by and your lithium battery goes empty. A month later your daughter finds it for you, go figure right? Ergo, why not place a nano-size speaker inside your $200.00 device that makes a sound so you can find it? Or perhaps, the device could light up and mimic an alarm mode of type for discovery?
Vibration Alerts
Do you ever need to be reminded of something, yet, you don't want to annoy your circle of friend nor your family with loud alarm noises? Excellent! Me too, and that is why vibration alerts are great! The +Fitbit Blaze notifies you quietly with a vibration alert for phone calls, calendar appointments, text messages, alarms, countdown timers, workouts, and goals reached. The buzzing in your pocked or on your wrist is a wonderful feature that avoids adding the societal problem of noise pollution. Many thanks to Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, and many others for thinking of the 1980's pager device and including the "buzz" alerts.
Time & Date
Do you recall the term, wristwatch? Yeah, me too! The primary reason for wearing a device and your wrist is to tell time. Yes, there is fashion concern for some, alas, if your smartwatch fails to easily inform you of the time and date throughout your week, well, why wear it? Now, the Fitbit Surge as the amazing functionality of an "always-on-display" it uses a screen tech similar to the Amazon Kindle of electronic ink. Using low power the display never turns off as long as your Surge is charged and turned on. I would love for a program to stealthily write 400 lines of code for the next Blaze update to allow customers to keep their color LED screen on instead of tapping the screen, raising the wrist, or clicking buttons just to get the time of day - ugh!
Input
Writ-ability and readability are two great functions of computers a technologically advanced devices. The Blaze does both, however, an option to do a quick reply to a text message from the device itself could be a useful communication tool when running. The folks over at Pebble have worked on voice recognition from the Pebble smartwatch to respond to text messages and even create an Evernote reminder when you on the go with your hands full and don't want to pull out smartphone when moving or perhaps driving...?
Waterproof
The month is now July and you just finished a lovely walk, hike, jog, or run along the beach in South Florida. The blue, warm, ocean water is now literally screaming your name to swim. Oh wait, your smartwatch is only sweat resistant... lame! Garmin is able to spend the extra R&D and run their fitness trackers, smartwatches, and GPS navigation through the quality assurance gauntlet to get ATM certified. Ergo, why do Fitbit, Withings, Misfit, and Jawbone do the same? No, I am not looking for a deep-sea diving watch, just a fitness smartwatch I can take running or lap swimming; or perhaps, for a quick swim in the ocean waves. Yeah, a 10 ATM rating would do quite nicely.
Calendar
When you're about to leave your desk for a break when is your next meeting? If you wait until the 15-minute notification buzzes, well, you may be unprepared. If you could see all of today's and tomorrow's agenda then the smartwatch wisely informs of present and future. Again, the folks over at Pebble nailed this feature with their Pebble Time series released in May, 2015.
Watch Face
There are seven days in the week. Fitbit thinks four watches are enough. I would like 14. Yeah, a unique watch for to change every-other-day of the month. The customization of the watch face is equally important.
Batter Life
Our world has made advancements in outstanding aspects of technology, medicine, health awareness, biology, and life. Why does a smart device barely last a week? Well, I tried to ignore it and minimized alarms and synchronization. I even disabled notifications and focused on paper & pen for a week. The Fitbit Blaze endured seven full days! The entire last day the watch face had the blinking red bars begging me to plug it into the clam-shell, nope, I resisted. It was not until the device shutdown then and only then I rushed to a USB port.
Accessories
How often would like a different colored pair of shoes to wear? Yeah me too! One usually has two pair, one for church and other for play. So, does your smarty device permit you to change the color? The Blaze and Alta devices hit a home run on the art of accessorizing. You can purchase additional bands and easily change your mood color at will. Now, you must surely realize that accessories come at a cost and Fitbit was not as greedy as Apple, alas, an extra band will run minimize your checking account by $50.00 to $129.95 (plus tax).
Are you still interesting in tracking every step, each nap, the restless nights of sleep, calories burned, active minutes, flights of stairs climbed? Great news then! Here's a link to Fitbit.com and I wish you the best of luck...
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