PineTime is kind of amazing.

[gamerminstrel]

This might be kind of a rant, I just wanted to share.

So, I have been in the market for a fitness/smartwatch for a long time. A couple weeks ago, I gave up on waiting on the pinetime and bought a cheap one with good reviews on amazon, the Amazfit band5 or something like that.

Once it arrived, I turned it on and it wouldn't do anything. Opening the instructions, I discovered this thing is essentially a brick until you do the following:
-Bluetooth pair it with your iPhone or Android device.
-Install the Zepp app on this device
-Make a profile there so Zepp knows your name/age/birthday/weight/height and way more than I was comfortable giving.
-check for updates.

Only after all that was I able to use the darn thing. I felt kind of violated just trying to set this thing up. It works nice, battery life is amazing, but I don't trust it.

After using this data miner for about three days, The Pinetime was announced as ready for purchase! I immediately sat down at my PC and bought it, and it just arrived yesterday.To compare initial setup to the Amazfit band 5, I had to do the following for the Pinetime:

-research and find instructions to update firmware
-install GadgetBridge from the F-Droid app store
-pair Pinetime with my android phone
-go to the Infinitime github page and download the latest *DFU.zip file onto my phone
-just trying to open the zip folder from a file manager, Gadgetbridge knew what to do with it.
-try and fail to upload the firmware file to the pinetime about 6 times (connection drops for everything, including my phone screen going to sleep)
-profit.

Initial setup was way harder, and the user interface is not as pretty but I don't feel dirty trying to use it.

I now have a smartwatch that doesn't obviously mine my data for a 3rd party, and it actually does more. when paired to my phone, the previous watch would only work with big names (Spotify) for music streaming. This thing doesn't care what app I use for music, it worked just fine. Time will tell for accuracy of things like the pedometer though. had a busy weekend, but I intend to do some comparisons over the next few days.

[Avamander]

> try and fail to upload the firmware file to the pinetime about 6 times (connection drops for everything, including my phone screen going to sleep)

Thankfully the situation is better on newer InfiniTime.

Good review though, hope to see a review of using it in "production" as well.

[hectorzg]

I just got my pinetime too. So far is looking great! To update it I used Siglo following the instructions in the wiki, the update just failed once so maybe I got lucky.

I'm using Gadgetbrige to pair it to my phone but I can't clear the notifications in the pinetime, anyone know how to clear notifications in the pinetime? I read that if you clear them in your phone they should also clear in the watch but it doesn't seem to work.

[gamerminstrel]

Now that I've had a bit more time, I've compared my two smart watches now a bit more in-depth

PT = Pinetime (running Infinitime 1.0)


AF = Amazfit Band 5

In terms of features:

Telling time- 


PT- Once paired up with my phone, had no issues

AF- Same, but was a complete brick until I installed their app and gave them my data.


Pedometer- 


PT- Works just fine.

AF- Works just fine. I walked 2.5 miles wearing both and got the same score within 30 steps on both devices.


Heart Rate Monitor-


PT- This either needs some work or I really need to visit the hospital. Reads my heart rate all over the place but consistently above 150 BPM. Thats about what most trackers read when I'm gasping for air after a run.


AF- This seems to work much better, my idle heart rate is closer to 80-90.


Media Playback controls-


PT- Once the pinetime has been on for a while, it will disconnect from my phone and Gadgetbridge will have a really hard reconnecting until I reboot the watch. When connected, it works fine.


AF- I cannot use it, as it only works with apps I don't use.


ON PINETIME BUT NOT AMAZFIT BAND 5-


Stopwatch-

    Nothing special, but it works just fine.

Navigation-

    Does not work with Google Maps, not that that is a bad thing. the Infinitime docs do not say what does work with navigation tho, so that's rough.

GAMES-

    I did not ask for these but they're cute and I love them.

ON AMAZFIT BUT NOT PINETIME

# A lot of this is neat, but creepy that you cannot disable it. These are certainly not all welcome features.

Calories Burned-

    Neat, but I don't know how to test its accuracy

Keeps a record of your physical activity over time

    I like this more than I thought I would. Their app shows me charts and graphs of my physical activity over time

Tracks sleeping patterns

    This gets way too analytical for me. This watch/app has the audacity to tell me to stop staying up so late, haha

Analyzes Stress levels-

    This is a made up metric based on heart rate variability over time.

Alarm Clock

    nothing fancy, but seems like a standard thing to have.

Event Reminders

    nothing fancy, but seems like a standard thing to have.

Find Device (Find the smartwatch if you misplace it)

    Haven't needed to test this, but something like this seems pretty handy

Bunch of different Watch Faces

    This is where things get fun. If Infinitime could get a companion app that lets me install custom watch faces, that'd be amazing.

Set exercise goals

    This is a good fitness thing, it lets you set goals like "walk 5000 steps per day", etc.

Weather-

    I also didn't realize how handy this would be.

general better integration for Android notifications-

    This watch can get notifications for incoming phone calls, texts, etc. I personally haven't used this but I like the idea. Wouldn't mind seeing this kind of integration on Pinetime (Hopefully with Pinephone)

In comparison, I got the Pinetime for $25(+20ish for shipping), and the Amazfit Band 5 for $35(Free shipping Amazon). I'm betting the Amazfit is sold so cheap for its feature set because it's subsidized by Amazon Alexa and whoever else it sells my data to.