Why do people spend money (and quite a lot of it) for devices that have less functionality than a smartphone?
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Tablet is just a bigger screen, but not same power like a laptop.
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Smartwatch is just tracking device that sends even more of your personal data.
And BOTH are another battery that you have to worry about.
Tablet is just a bigger screen…
And this is why I got a tablet, I needed more space in my screen 🤷♂️
But then, why not get an external portable monitor connected to the smartphone?
Because then I’m giving my phone more responsibility and the goal is to take away some from it, I don’t want to be reading and get bombarded with notifications from social media, or get calls, or drain my battery by doing do. I want a dedicated device for that, an a tablet is more capable than an e-reader. I also want to practice writing and a tablet with a digital pen is good for that purpose.
It’s about what I would or could use it for that I wouldn’t use a phone for. I don’t want a giant phone. I don’t really enjoy watching videos/movies on a phone. For home control I don’t need anything but wifi and maybe Bluetooth and I’m not interested in paying smartphone prices for the privilege. Same thing for viewing weather or schedules at a glance. Having that functionality to check on a smart phone is fine. Useful. Having it on a tablet where I can glance at it while getting dressed is better. And the speakers are generally better with better battery life (more space for a bigger battery) on a tablet. If you don’t have the use case for a piece of tech, of course it doesn’t make sense.
I guess that is what I am doing: searching for a use case, but the smartphone remains undefeated!
The only use case that I can find is to use it as a backup laptop: in the event I lose or break the laptop, i could get by with a tablet.
Although i could also get by with the smartphone 🤔
Undefeated for you. I take it you don’t work in a place where smartphones are not allowed. Or where it would be inconvenient to use a smart phone, but more convenient to use a watch or tablet (out to sea on a ship for instance). There’s plenty of use cases. If you’re looking for them for yourself I’m not sure we’re likely to be able help you with that. If you’re wondering why they’re on the market at all, then it’s because other people do have a use for them.
I have a tablet with magnetic keyboard. It’s about 20% as heavy as my laptop, doesn’t make a noise when it’s trying to keep itself cool and allows me to shop online, read some news, or browse Lemmy just fine.
Tablets have bigger screen. This is important for some people but start watchs are something that i don’t find useful
I have a Garmin for trail running, but it has a compass, offline maps, barometric altimeter, bunch of other stuff. I used it to plan a 2000 mile route through Canada while driving last summer because my phone had shit-tier 2G/3G roaming. I have it scheduled to go into ultra battery conservation mode when I should be sleeping and only need to charge it every 2 weeks.
It also records activities even without a phone, just need internet to upload it to Strava later, so pretty handy to be able to run without a phone (Strava or it didn’t happen lol)
Off-topic, but: do you need some Garmin account to use these functionalities? I am looking into such a watch, but would not like to be dependent on some online service/account to use it.
The big tl;dr is that a lot of stuff will work, but a lot of things relying on historical data will not work (resting heart rate, weekly step count, sleep, etc).
But, the app/account is unobtrusive to the point that you could name yourself Mickey Mouse on creation, just to get a user ID for the watch to point to, and set permissions on the app on some schedule just to have the watch sync that data.
No sort of verification/authentication of identity at account creation and the app/services are free (I’m sure, given this day and age, there’s premium/subscription stuff but like I said it’s unobtrusive and I’ve never once been nagged to upgrade my account)
What Garmin are you using?
I could look into a watch that needs to be recharged
neverevery few weeks.I have the Fenix 6X, which normally lasts 4-5 days with all bells and whistles enabled. Three settings I use to extend the battery to 2 weeks:
Disabled backlight on gesture, kept backlight enabled on keypress, set backlight to 5% and 4 seconds.
Disabled SPO2/oximetry (huge battery hog and doesn’t ruin functionality of other things to disable)
Battery Saver set on a schedule for 10 hours per day - disables wifi/bluetooth. Basically an extreme ‘do not disturb’.
But the two week figure is when I’m not doing many if any activities. Every other Wednesday it gets to around 20% and I charge it, but when I was running a lot it was closer to once a week.
Fenix 7 apparently has even better battery life tho so you might be able to wring 3 weeks out of that thing
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I don’t have a smart watch both because I don’t really see the point in them and because adding extra things to be on me bothers me, so I wouldn’t even be wearing a regular watch.
As for tablets: It’s just a convenient compromise between a phone and a laptop for basic browsing and video watching. I can comfortably lay in bed with a tablet rested against the wall or propped up on my nightstand. It’s harder to do that with a phone or laptop and obviously the phone screen is also just smaller. I don’t really take the tablet with me unless I’m going on a long trip, but when I am it’s nice to both have the bigger screen and actually have my media device be on a separate battery from the device I need for communication and navigation.
since a lot of functionality at my job that doesn’t require me to physically be in the office can be done on a web browser I use my tablet as a work computer if the office is occupied. before this year I used my smartwatch as a phone monitor because even vibrating I can’t feel my phone ringing in my pocket or vibrate for text messages. and it was literally vitally important that I be available 24/7. these days I no longer need to be constantly available but I now have to monitor my glucose levels so I found a watchface and corresponding phone app to send that information to my phone.
tablets and watches still have a place for a lot of people.
I was also interested in glucose monitoring, but the Samsung watch7 only gives an estimate.
The technology is still way behind.
my workaround for glucose watch monitoring is an android app called gluroo. if you’re using an app that sends your glucose data to a server gluroo pulls that data from the server and displays it on your watch as a specific watchface so the info that’s displayed is as accurate as the sensor you’re currently using. the downside is that gluroo can’t pull directly from whatever app you happen to be using, so going to an area with no data service at all will show no stats even though your phone is right there.
Tablet: TV in my camper van. But it wasn’t expensive. I spent $120 on it new.
Watch: Companion to the phone. Does strava things beyond just riding a bike.
What stava things?
I’ve never used stava, but I do have a bike
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Tablets are better than a smartphone for drawing. They’re also cheaper than a pen display and have a smaller learning curve than a pen tablet. They’re also a bit more portable and tend to have better battery life than a laptop. I also like using a tablet for reading comics.
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I use my tablet for site surveys and leave my phone at home or work. It is light to carry, has great battery life, has a sim card, memory slot, headphone jack. When I’m done work I can watch a film. It’s some shitty Samsung thing work gave me, it’s great. I don’t think I would ever buy a tablet myself though.
I do not have a use for a smart watch.
A tablet is nice because it’s a bigger screen. I like reading ebooks on them. (plz don’t tell me to get an e-reader)
A watch is nice because it means you can ignore your phone, but still reply to notifications. I like the more accurate step count. I’d really like a device that counts my lengths when swimming too, but I haven’t had a chance to use one yet.
In both cases I’ve gotten devices that have more battery than I expect. I rarely found myself in a situation where charging was a hassle.
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