Why do all these smartwatches keep getting better and better

Samsung Smartwatches and Apple watches are becoming increasingly popular and their development is happening at lightning speed. The sale of these so-called ‘wearables’ is also not behind. People dare to walk on the street faster and faster with a smartwatch on their wrist. What should you look out for if you want to purchase one? You can read it in this buying guide. 

The smartwatch works best when connected to a smartphone

A smartwatch reaches its full potential when it is connected to your smartphone. The great usefulness of a smartwatch is that you don’t have to take your phone out of your pocket every time, to see what time it is, or to see if you have received any messages. A smartwatch also works without a smartphone, but you will soon miss a lot of notifications, such as call calls, text messages and more importantly: WhatsApp and Facebook messages.

If you are working with Android Wear for the first time, it may be a bit of a search, because the navigation works via ‘swiping’. From top to bottom and from left to right. This way you can easily archive, delete or request more information by swiping to a certain side. How this works, however, is what you get in the way.

The notifications that you receive are very clear and recognizable. Certainly the notifications that you get from the Google Services are well put together. This way you can easily respond (via voice or not) to messages from Hangout and you can easily note appointments (via voice) via Google Keep.

Watch OS

If you have an iPhone, it is best to buy an Apple Watch. Actually for the same reason. The operating systems iOS and Watch OS, which runs on the Apple Watch, connect seamlessly.

The Apple Watch is a typical smart watch on which all kinds of messages appear. Your watch will vibrate when a phone call, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, sms, or Instagram notification comes in. You can easily adjust which notifications should and should not come via an app on your iPhone.

Furthermore, you can quickly read a lot of information through the use of ‘glances’, a kind of widgets that you can scroll through. Think of the weather, the AEX settings, your heart rate (I will come back to this later), how far you have walked and the latest news. In addition to those glances, you also have a lot of apps on your Apple Watch, which you must also have installed on your iPhone. This way you can scroll through Instagram, read your Twitter and Nu.nl, without necessarily having to grab your iPhone.

Pay attention! Because an Apple Watch is not compatible with an Android phone and a smartwatch that runs on Android Wear does not work with an Apple smartphone.