I've stopped wearing my WearOS watch and it now serves as a smart clock for notifications on my desk[1] and fitbit or any other heart rate monitor(even Apple watch) hurts me[2]. So even inexpensive smart watches with open-source firmware (detailed below) where heart rate monitor can be disabled would serve my needs going forward.
Shout out to couple of smartwatch projects, which falls inline with the ethos of the author and anyone who agrees with it.
AsteroidOS[1] - open-source linux based smartwatch firmware. Nice UI/UX, Wayland, good number of hardware support including MTK6580 chipset based inexpensive watches. In my tests about a year back, although the watch with AsteroidOS itself was usable, the sync with the android app was unreliable and could be due to android itself or manufacturer's kill-policy.
PineTime[2] - $24.99, completely accessible, several RTOSes being built, Apps in Rust,Python etc.
I have one. It's really nice to develop on and has lots of sensors/features. Dislikes: it's big, very big, and ugly, doesn't have an hardware step counter and the step detection algorithm embedded in Espruino doesn't work at all, the heart rate detection is OKish if you are still, but not very reliable either, battery doesn't last very long probably because of Espruino not being very careful at saving power. It's a fun device, but not great for more serious use.
I hope that the community will improve the software issues and that they will come up with a nicer hardware. Espruino on PineTime would be perfect.
The watch is made in China, but the software is made by them.
The page says there's a pedometer but if you look at the datasheet of the accelerometer there isn't [1]. So it's computed in software (it's inside Espruino) but it's really basic. I have proposed Gordon, the author, an open source algorithm which I developed with some students (Oxford step counter), and he seems interested, but it takes some time to integrate and calibrate so, AFAIK, it's not there yet.
About the size, I don't really mind, it's quirky, but it definitely doesn't follow the latest trends in terms of fashion...
Shout out to couple of smartwatch projects, which falls inline with the ethos of the author and anyone who agrees with it.
AsteroidOS[1] - open-source linux based smartwatch firmware. Nice UI/UX, Wayland, good number of hardware support including MTK6580 chipset based inexpensive watches. In my tests about a year back, although the watch with AsteroidOS itself was usable, the sync with the android app was unreliable and could be due to android itself or manufacturer's kill-policy.
PineTime[2] - $24.99, completely accessible, several RTOSes being built, Apps in Rust,Python etc.
[1]https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1281998220118249472
[2]https://abishekmuthian.com/my-experience-with-fitbit-charge-...
[3]https://asteroidos.org/
[4]https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/