New Smartwatch - what to choose?

1

Hello boys and girls.
I’m planning to buy a new smartwatch.
Can you tell what smartwatch has the better integration with Sleep as Android?
Thanka a lot.

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2

Hello there,

I think the wearable market is as a kind of a crisis at the moment. Few years ago the option would be Pebble, which is now bought by FitBit. FitBit seems to be a good emerging platform with it’s Ionic and Versa, but they are not cheap and the SDK is limited so we could only implement sleep tracking there with a lot of reliability compromises.

  • Samsung Gear are terrible at battery life so you need to charge the device nearly twice a day with sleep tracking every day. Moreover Tizen (Gear) is developed by Samsung and thus it is extremely buggy and badly supported

  • Wear OS by Google is a little better off as unlike Samsung it supports sensor batching on most models - this allows us to collect all sensor data and still keep the watch in standby most of the night. But still battery life is a far cry when compared to Pebble where you could track sleep and use the watch for at least 7 days without charging.

  • Garmin is expensive and there are bugs in the firmware so we cannot work reliably on all models. Although battery life is probably the best in the category (still not reaching Pebble).

  • So what is left - the Mi Band (so some of the supported Amazefit watches) - it is cheap, but our connection to it is reverse engineered (through the Tools & MI Band app). Xiaomi can decide any time to break all integrations with a firmware update which they already did few times. But with that price tag maybe this is not a huge risk. Also there are two apps which support it for sleep tracking with Sleep as Android so if one does not work for you maybe the other will?

I would also recommend to at our Sonar as an alternative to an wearable - our contact-less sleep tracking (if your phone supports it). Or look at our Sleep Phaser - sleep tracking smart light.

For sonar we use ultrasonic sleep tracking, the phone HW needs to support this. If it does you can keep it on the side table for a full featured seep tracking. On some devices this is sensitive enough to detect your respiration.

Please check here:


with a video here:

Here you can find details on Sleep Phaser:

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3

Thanks a lot for those infos.
On amazfit range, which models are less prone to firmware incompatibility?

4

Hard to say… I did not hear about compatibility issues for some time till yesterday when it seems sleep tracking was broken on Amazfit GTS after watch firmware update… Amazfit gts and sleep tracking not working ANYMORE

So now it depends whether this is some change which will get on the other watches as well over time or if Xiaomi fixes this and it will be only on this model…

5

Whats best to track sleep?
Smartwatch accelerometer or sonar?
I ask you this because my smartphone is compatible.

6

Hello, I can confirm Zdenek Horak of Tools & Mi Band did resolve the recent Amazfit issues…

To your quesion…
Whats best to track sleep?

All the methods are more or less on par, with sonar or phaser you do need anything attached to your arm and you get breath rates… but Sonar support depends on the phone…

Smartwatch accelerometer or sonar?

It really depends - if you phone works great with Sonar so why not use it instead… there may be higher battery consumption though…

I ask you this because my smartphone is compatible.

You mean with Sonar… yes some users have troubles with audible artifacts, some do not like the high battery consumption and some can hear the sonar… but if you are not one of those… than why not use it… I wuld give it a try few nights and you will see for yourself…

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7

It’s also worth checking out Gadgetbridge if you prefer not to send your data to Communist China.

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