Enlarge / Fitbit's now-dead Challenges feature. (credit: Sherwin Fong )

Today's the day for Google's biggest change yet to Fitbit: It's shutting down some more features. As Google announced in February , the popular fitness gamification features, Fitbit "Challenges" and "Adventures," are being shut down today. Google is also removing the "Open Group" social networking feature.

Getting motivated to work out is tough for some people, so Fitbit's software included a few ways to gamify fitness to keep people interested. Challenges were introduced in 2014 as a way to share and compare your step counts with friends, hopefully motivating both of you to get more exercise. The feature came with badges that could be earned for specific tasks and trophies for winning a battle. Adventures were announced in 2017 as location-specific challenges that highlighted local places that were good for exercise and hiking, like national parks and landmarks. You could tackle these areas solo at your own pace or participate in multiplayer "Adventure Races" where you could track your hiking speed or progress against other Fitbit users. This seems like something that would only get better with Google Maps integration. Oh, well.

Adventures, Challenges, and all player-earned trophies and badges are going away today. The Fitbit community on Reddit has been furious over the feature removals, with the most popular post of the past year being a call to cancel your Fitbit Premium subscription over the changes. On Twitter, Fitbit tried celebrating the company's birthday yesterday, but nearly all the replies were about the feature shutdown and what other services people should switch to. Several users have confirmed today that the features are dead.

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  Huawei's Watch Buds. It's a watch and earbud case combo. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Huawei is still clinging to life despite constant trade war bombardment from the US government, and its latest project suggests that maybe all the stress is starting to get to the company. Huawei's newest product, the Huawei "Watch Buds," is now getting an international release. Like it says on the tin, this is a smartwatch that is also... earbuds? Imagine sticking a smartwatch display onto the lid of a wireless earbuds case and then strapping that whole contraption to your wrist. The smartwatch display sits on a hinge that lifts up, revealing two big chasms inside the watch body that hold and charge your earbuds. Your earbuds are always at the ready, I guess.

How many ways is this a bad idea? Smartwatches are primarily limited by their size, so anything that makes a smartwatch bigger is probably not a great design choice. Having a smartwatch open up to be a container for something else, like a 1990s wrist fanny pack , is certainly an interesting way to spend your limited space budget. You generally want your space-limited smartwatch to contain 100 percent smartwatch parts, but this one is about 50 percent smartwatch parts and 50 percent earbuds parts. The watch body is officially "47 mm×47.5 mm×14.99 mm"—a massive size that's more volume than even an Apple Watch Ultra (49 mm×44 mm×14.4 mm), which is already too big for some people.

Generally, the space-limited size of smartwatches means battery capacity is pretty tough to come by. Huawei is giving you a 410 mAh battery to both run the watch and charge the earbuds while they're in your earbuds/smartwatch case. The Apple Watch Ultra, which, again, has a smaller body, has a 542 mAh battery , and that's just for smartwatch duties. This device also has GPS, a 24/7 heart rate monitor, and sleep tracking. The one saving grace for the battery life is that it doesn't run Android—instead it uses Huawei's "Harmony OS." The name "Harmony OS" means almost nothing in terms of a software stock. On phones, "Harmony OS" means it's an Android fork , but on watches, "Harmony OS" is a completely different OS based on Huawei's LiteOS. Huawei claims you'll get three days of battery life for "the entire device," while a more normal LiteOS watch from the company gets a claimed "14 days" of "typical usage."

Enlarge / Pebble's e-ink smartwatches, like the Pebble 2 HR pictured here, can now work on 64-bit Android phones like the Pixel 7, following a surprising official app update from Google. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

When Pebble, an early, quirky, crowdfunded smartwatch, was acquired in a fire sale by Fitbit in December 2016 , the company noted that while existing watches would work for the time being, "functionality or service quality may be reduced in the future." You'd maybe get some bug fixes, but no software updates or features would arrive for the pioneering e-ink wearables.

Nearly six years later, a new Pebble app for Android has been released by the Rebble Alliance, a group that has kept Pebble viable for its users since Fitbit shut down Pebble's servers in mid-2018. Pebble version 4.4.3 makes the app 64-bit so it can work on the mostly 64-bit Pixel 7 and similar Android phones into the future. It also restores a caller ID function that was hampered on recent Android versions.

Most notably, the app is "signed using the official Pebble keys," with Google Fit integration maintained. Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion , making it the steward of Pebble's remaining IP and software pieces. Katharine Berry, a key Rebble coder and leader , works on Wear OS at Google and was one of the first to tweet news of the new update , "four years after 4.4.2." That was the last Play Store update to the Pebble app, one that freed up many of the app's functions to be replaced by independent servers. That's exactly where Rebble picked up, providing web services to Pebble watches, including (for paying subscribers) voice dictation.

Enlarge / The Pixel Watch. It's a perfect, round little pebble. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

It's hard to overstate how important the Apple Watch has become. It's the halo device for the entire Apple ecosystem, with something like a 30 percent attach rate on new US iPhone sales. There's nothing like the Apple Watch for Android phones, making it the reason to switch ecosystems from Android to iOS. If you're already on iOS, it's one of the primary reasons to stay. The Apple Watch is Apple's biggest lock-in weapon, and Google has spent the last few years doing absolutely nothing to fight it.

Google may have gotten to this market first with Android Wear in 2014 , but its hardware progress came to a screeching halt in 2015 and hasn't moved much since. This was partly due to the company's reliance on Qualcomm SoCs, which have been released with the same basic chip design (under different model numbers) for six straight years . In addition, Wear OS hasn't had the greatest development effort, with major releases only occurring in 2014 , 2017 , and 2018 . 2018 was also around the time that Google quietly quit Wear OS app development.

It's the usual situation: An Apple product has a focused, vertically integrated, laser-straight line of development, while the comparable Google product has to deal with a constantly shifting group of half-interested hardware partners, Google's internal attention deficit disorder, and at least one major rebrand . The Apple Watch ran away with the market while Google's efforts floundered, with the company capturing around 3 percent of the wearable market for several years.

Enlarge / The Galaxy Watch 5 has a notably flat-front screen, so it's good Samsung has upgraded the display to sapphire crystal. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung announced the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro on Wednesday, giving its round, semi-rotating Wear OS watches new looks, a tougher screen material, and—for reasons the company can only vaguely explain—an infrared temperature sensor.

Neither the $280 Watch 5, available in 40 or 44 mm sizes, nor the 44 mm $450 Watch 5 Pro has a physically rotating bezel, a distinguishing Galaxy Watch feature that was limited in the last generation to the higher-end Watch 4 "Classic" (which is still available). Instead, both models have capacitive touch bezels, so you can run your finger around the edge to scroll.

Both Galaxy Watch 5 models look just like the official 3D rendering leaks scooped up by Evan Blass at 91Mobiles . Their displays have been upgraded to sapphire crystal, which should help bolster the Watch 5's flat-front display. Samsung says this material is "60 percent harder" than prior watch displays.

While smartwatches have always been able to relay notifications, the ability to make emergency calls was a big step forward in making them standalone devices.

Generally, Emergency SOS features have two functions. The first is to call local emergency responders if you find yourself in a bind. For instance, if you take a nasty spill and can’t make it to the phone, your watch can call 911. The second is to relay your location to a select group of trusted contacts. For folks who want to leave their phone at home, these features can ensure that your loved ones will be able to find you if you’re injured or need help.

You don’t necessarily need a cellular watch to make use of Emergency SOS. However, a cellular watch is the best option if you want Emergency SOS to be available at all times. Otherwise, you’ll need to have your phone nearby or your watch will need some sort of internet connectivity via Wi-Fi.

Most cellular services worldwide do have free emergency numbers, which can be used even your account is depleted, or without even having a valid SIM card. Looking at the details for South Africa, for example, an Apple Watch can call emergency services without the phone IF it was set up once to work with a cellular service. A watch is by far the most convenient way to very quickly trigger an emergency call, but I'm just not sure what works with a non-cellular watch in WiFi range of the phone, to actual emergency services. Mine does at least appear to trigger normal phone calls through the phone, so I'd expect it should still work.

The big takeaway, though, is you do need to configure and set up your watch (and you should do the same for your phone) for SOS calls, as many watches and phones will triggers alerts for falls, vehicle accidents, etc on your behalf.

See https://www.theverge.com/23123590/smartwatch-emergency-sos-how-to-apple-samsung-google-garmin

#technology #SOS #emergency #smartwatch