Android wear 2.0 POLAR M600 connected to an iPhone
I'm a big fan of the bulky Polar m600 watch, due to the hybrid nature of fitness tracker and android wear smart watch, the only watch with the IPX7 rating and GPS wifi, what it does lack if NFC and a speaker, but i knew that 2.0 would be rolling out, so i picked it up back in November 2016
I got the watch pretty much as it was released, due to the Pebble time 2 order being cancelled, wasn't that bad as the FX rate meant i was better off at the time. Anyway back to the story!
For the last 2 days i decided my rom flashing needs would require my Pixel to be out of use, and i would miss valuable fitness tracking, of walking around the city in the morning.. This is where the work phone comes in! Like the witch is snow white was offering me a shiny solution in with the iPhone 7. WARNING Enemy territory ahead
I went the app store, downloaded the Android wear app and started setting it up, i do remember it took alot longer to configure the account with the iPhone than it does with android.
Below i will try and outline the restricted experience, "yes I'm setting the tone already"
Connection
Unstable, drop offs which may all be due to the closing the app, and multi-tasking being limited within IOS, or maybe it just has poor connection, either way you have to navigate into the watch and prompt with the reconnect card to make the watch reconnect! I found this happened alot and got annoying quickly.
Notifications
I found these fairly useless, i see Gmail cards for email subjects, you can at least interact with them, reply to emails and archive, which is my secondary personal account, also whatsapp doesn't allow you to reply from the watch (my most used function whilst driving, as its illegal to use phones whilst driving)
Syncing with polar flow is a disappointment, you have to navigate on the watch to another menu item which is called SYNC, (on android we don't have this, but what we do have, is a newly released feature called my heart rate, which will provide you an instant heart rate read out, not just that, but polar updates you activity tracking on each opening on the app).
From the UI on the phone, there is no battery graph to get an idea of how much is left, or what has been draining the power (apps etc), you cannot install extra watch faces from the ios app. But that's OK, we can work from the play store on the watch, it will use WIFI and your Google account, which circumvents IOS.
This is something big as you will now be able to use the Google play music app over wifi on the watch directly, allowing you to consume content from Google, even though your primary device is apple, there are other applications which i mentioned in my last post were stand alone, such as Telegram messenger. MY other polar review used with an android phone here
Functions which have slowed down.
Speech to text, and asking Google assistant to do things is slowed down alot, i have still managed to do simple timers on the watch by saying "set a timer for 15 minutes" it didn't seem that much slower for this, as the timer is on the watch, but still its not as snappy as android handles this, and i can see i have taken that for granted!
Functions which are improved?
Battery life increased, probably due to barely any functionality and a third of the notifications going on!
Data which is exported to apple health has more detail, and combined with the iPhone being in your pocked you will now have number of flights climbed which are not present in Google fit, although really you will be using the fitness tracking via the polar flow application, for example apple health extracts sleep metrics, but only start time, finish time, polar flow will show Actual sleep, and time in bed
The font here looks alot nicer than the android equivalent, but the layout is basically the same
Overall, i have found that using this watch with an iPhone wasn't a good user experience, I've been spoilt! It really comes to life with an android phone paired to it, interactions with notifications are useful and make my life easier, i found with this, i will need to respond by taking my phone out
I got the watch pretty much as it was released, due to the Pebble time 2 order being cancelled, wasn't that bad as the FX rate meant i was better off at the time. Anyway back to the story!
For the last 2 days i decided my rom flashing needs would require my Pixel to be out of use, and i would miss valuable fitness tracking, of walking around the city in the morning.. This is where the work phone comes in! Like the witch is snow white was offering me a shiny solution in with the iPhone 7. WARNING Enemy territory ahead
This is going to give me nightmares
I went the app store, downloaded the Android wear app and started setting it up, i do remember it took alot longer to configure the account with the iPhone than it does with android.
Below i will try and outline the restricted experience, "yes I'm setting the tone already"
Connection
Unstable, drop offs which may all be due to the closing the app, and multi-tasking being limited within IOS, or maybe it just has poor connection, either way you have to navigate into the watch and prompt with the reconnect card to make the watch reconnect! I found this happened alot and got annoying quickly.
Notifications
I found these fairly useless, i see Gmail cards for email subjects, you can at least interact with them, reply to emails and archive, which is my secondary personal account, also whatsapp doesn't allow you to reply from the watch (my most used function whilst driving, as its illegal to use phones whilst driving)
Syncing with polar flow is a disappointment, you have to navigate on the watch to another menu item which is called SYNC, (on android we don't have this, but what we do have, is a newly released feature called my heart rate, which will provide you an instant heart rate read out, not just that, but polar updates you activity tracking on each opening on the app).
From the UI on the phone, there is no battery graph to get an idea of how much is left, or what has been draining the power (apps etc), you cannot install extra watch faces from the ios app. But that's OK, we can work from the play store on the watch, it will use WIFI and your Google account, which circumvents IOS.
This is something big as you will now be able to use the Google play music app over wifi on the watch directly, allowing you to consume content from Google, even though your primary device is apple, there are other applications which i mentioned in my last post were stand alone, such as Telegram messenger. MY other polar review used with an android phone here
Functions which have slowed down.
Speech to text, and asking Google assistant to do things is slowed down alot, i have still managed to do simple timers on the watch by saying "set a timer for 15 minutes" it didn't seem that much slower for this, as the timer is on the watch, but still its not as snappy as android handles this, and i can see i have taken that for granted!
Functions which are improved?
Battery life increased, probably due to barely any functionality and a third of the notifications going on!
Data which is exported to apple health has more detail, and combined with the iPhone being in your pocked you will now have number of flights climbed which are not present in Google fit, although really you will be using the fitness tracking via the polar flow application, for example apple health extracts sleep metrics, but only start time, finish time, polar flow will show Actual sleep, and time in bed
The font here looks alot nicer than the android equivalent, but the layout is basically the same
Summary
Overall, i have found that using this watch with an iPhone wasn't a good user experience, I've been spoilt! It really comes to life with an android phone paired to it, interactions with notifications are useful and make my life easier, i found with this, i will need to respond by taking my phone out
Android wear 2.0 POLAR M600 connected to an iPhone
Reviewed by Unknown
on
5/11/2017 01:33:00 AM
Reviewed by Unknown
on
5/11/2017 01:33:00 AM
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