[bpesquet]

Personal and subjective opinion ahead.

Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.

Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.

Easy choice if you ask me.

[naremu]

>No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering.

This already veers straight back into the marketing territory that everyone in this thread remarks was an eye opener when they actually got a mechanical watch.

I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor.

Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.

[nequo]

I never heard about PineTime until now! Looks like a cool gadget. What has your experience been with it, apart from it being more accurate than a mechanical?

[naremu]

It's an interesting experience, I have github send me an email on the odd occasion the community developed "OS" gets an update. Then I download the zip file on my phone browser and upload the file on Gadgetbridge for the update.

I sometimes call it my "soviet in a good way" watch, it ended up becoming my "function over fashion" watch, which means almost all day every day wear for a few years now.

pros:

decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices)

"good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering)

easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands)

flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions

multiple community "OS" options

cons:

community development can be slow, buggy

water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something

anemic hardware

The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.

[nequo]

Thanks for sharing your pros and cons!

What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?

Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?

[naremu]

>What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?

Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail.

It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. A minor philosophical quibble but one I take stoic pleasure in. It is a tool, and technology that serves me, not another.

> Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?

I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. A hardware drawback that ironically makes it a more accessible tool in my experience.

[bpesquet]

The PineTime is still an electronic gadget that you won't use for very long.

My watch takes 15 seconds to rewind each day, and 5 seconds to be time adjusted by one minute twice a week. Service is every 5 years, the last one cost me 88 €. It gets more valuable each year, and I plan to bequeath it to my son in a (hopefully) very distant future.

To each his own, I guess.

[naremu]

Rewind? As in a non-automatic mechanical?

Admittedly, all the mechanical watch issues I've read tend to be pertaining to the automatic variety.

[bpesquet]

Yes, it's manual. I have no experience with automatic ones.

Admittedly, it is a rather pricey model (Omega Speedmaster). I bought it second hand for 1500 € a few years ago. Unfortunately, prices have since skyrocketed for many emblematic watches like this one.