I am an atypical smartwatch user. I have to say that at the beginning because I have an unusual use case. I have worn a watch most of my life to tell the time and still use it for that primary function – especially when I wake up at 4am, glance at my wrist and go back to sleep.
It’s partly because I wear glasses and blurry bedside clocks are of no use to me.
After telling the time, my next requirement is ONLY calls and ONLY important messages. I want the bare minimum when it comes to notifications and distractions. I have turned off most of the app notifications on my phone, except for a few key items, like banking, messages from my wife and business partners and Uber Eats. Everything else I can look at my phone for.
Finally, I want a step counter and sleep tracker.
I am aware that is an arguably treasonous underutilisation of this powerful gadget, given that it is a sophisticated minicomputer, with an impressive array of features. The funny thing I have discovered after years of testing smartwatches and fitness trackers is how hard it is to simplify them to do what I prefer.
I can hardly blame the manufacturers – my use case is an outlier – but I have struggled to find what I want. What I want are these three things, in this order:
1) Be a watch, that I can look at at 4am, to know I can go back to sleep.
2) Let me know when my phone is ringing – it’s always on silent
3) Only show me the most important notifications I need, as above.
I do the first just about every night. I literally look at my watch with one bleary eye and go back to sleep.
The second is a pretty easy setting – although not all smartwatches send through all the calls. If you have blocked WhatsApp notifications, as I do by default,
Number three is the hardest to achieve, but that is another story entirely.
The fourth feature I need is to track my sleep and my steps. I’m a non-practising health fanatic but I like walking and know that hitting 10,000 steps a day has merit. I’m not a fanatic like some people I know about sleep tracking, but I’ve realised that sleep is incredibly important – much more so than this weird new habit society has developed where people say things like “I’m too busy to sleep” or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”.
Personally, a good night’s sleep is like rain for the brain I find.
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch4 hit all of these requirements brilliantly.
As Stuff has previously written, Samsung has “reinvigorated Wear OS, making this an Android-powered piece of premium kit we’re awfully close to wholeheartedly recommending to anyone who’ll listen”.
I’m unlikely to use the sophisticated apps that come with it for tracking exercise, especially the running coach, or the helpful rep-counter (where was that in my twenties when we all hit the gym?).
Its measurement tech is impressive. It can measure your heart rate, oxygen levels and more – all with a decent 40-hour charge.
The bezel interface is a smart addition – it gives an extra way of interacting with the watch over and above the swiping left or right (or up and down) on the touchscreen.
And it tells the time.