Well, I tried my hardest to find a replacement for the Apple Watch, but I just couldn't find it.
Wear falls short on pretty much any form, and I find the Watch offerings rather poor. I found watches I liked the design of, that were way too expensive. I found some I liked, but that somehow failed to have basic smartwatch features like HR monitors. And the platform just seems like an afterthought altogether, I have no idea what Googs is thinking with this one. They copied Apple with the Pixel devices (though less and less with each iteration), I don't see why they don't copy the Apple Watch.
I liked the Amazfit Bip, it's a fun thing to tinker with, but ultimately it's a 50 dollar device and it shows. It's not comparable.
The Galaxy Watch came close, but has some major flaws. First of, I had the 42mm because the 46 is just huge. But even the 42 is just too big, especially as far as thickness is concerned. Out of all the watches I've owned going back to the original Huawei Watch and LG G Watch R before that, this was by far the most annoying. Wearing it under a coat or long-sleeve shirt is just impossible, it's awkward, it's dumb and a huge design flaw for a wearable.
Then all the gushing about the battery life on the 46mm aside, the 42mm had only decent battery life. With always-on display you can barely manage a full day. It was enough, but nowhere near the 2~3 days they advertise with for this model. This wouldn't be a problem if the charger wasn't slow as shit, I am used to taking my watch off at night for an hour or so when I take a bath, this was enough to top up every smart watch I ever owned, but not the Samsung, it takes over 2 hours to charge from 30% to 100%. Unacceptable for a device you have to monitor you.
The app support is poor, but I did enjoy this watch the most for its functionality. The fitness tracking was decent enough, but the heart rate monitor was subpar, it was set to check every 10 minutes, but sometimes didn't check for hours at a time. Not sure if it just failed, or just straight up didn't do it. I did love the look and the navigation with the ring, the OS was tuned to it very well.
All in all, I gave up. I had to get an iPhone XR for development purporses anyways, so that gave me the oppertunity to go back to the Apple Watch. This thing is definitely Apple's ace in the hole. I know there are still some people that don't get smartwatches or fitness trackers, and all the power to them, but as far as I am concerned, the Apple Watch is doing the same thing in the wearable market that the iPad does in the tablet market. It outpaces the competition by such a big margin that it almost makes it seem like their product are synonymous with the entire sector.
