Are people really not aware that you don't have to have notifications for everything?

You can turn all the notifications off on your phone and watch.

The value the watch brings can be found in other places, for example, being able to stay connected and have music and emergency contact without needing to lug your phone with you during a run or if you lose your phone.

A smart watch means you can leave your phone at home more often in general while still being available to those who genuinely need to be in contact with you, which is great for reducing doom scrolling and the like.

A photo of my current watch as I’m wearing it right now.

After something like a year of searching I finally got:

• solar powered, I never have to charge or change battery
• analog face with digital date, no need to adjust the date every month but looks good
• date in dd/mm format
• no GPS, no heart rate monitor, no notifications

Couldn't find anything else that would tick those boxes.

You’re still allowed to buy a normal watch

I like my smartwatch. I'm extremely ADHD as well as hypoglycemic. I have a lifelong history of not eating, then working/playing/exercising until i get woozy or pass out. I'm a terrible judge of what I actually need to stay functional. Always have been. I'm stubborn and will just try to power through things when I actually can't.

The watch helps me track my sleep/rem cycles and lets me know when I've been neglecting my health. It lets me know when I'm getting stressed and need to take it easy, and it estimates how many calories I've expended on a given day.

The watch and pager functions are nice for reducing screen time when I should be working, but as a health monitor I find it indispensable in keeping me honest with myself.

I found this in my jewelry box when I was packing for moving. Throwback to the 80s! Very much doesn't work.

A well executed ad.

"the touch screen is broken"

Aren't smartwatch sales going down? Anyways, never understood why anyone would use one, especially since we also have phones that we carry around every day and that can notify us whenever.

Have been wearing a Withings Scanwatch for close to two years now. I can check the time as usual and do not have to do a weird hand movement to activate the screen. On that tiny screen on top I can see who is calling on my phone.

The dial at the bottom goes to 100. That's percent of predifined steps taken.

I like it. The Scanwatch 2 has a ton of more functioniality healthwise but it also quite expensive for a watch.

I love my phone to a not great degree, but I would hate a smartwatch. I don't like wearing watches anyways, but something buzzing on my wrist all the time would drive me batty. At least on my phone I can listen to podcasts, music, radio, etc, and I can read books and magazines. A smartwatch just feels like a shackle. Also every time I go to concerts or theater now and see the lights go down and all the smartwatches glowing in unison it's creepy.

If we're doing watches today, here's what I'm rocking lately.

I stopped using my Garmin smartwatch because they finally fell into the enshittification trap and recently tried adding AI slop and a subscription scheme into their watch app. That's a big old nope from me, dawg.