this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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Linux Phones
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Community about running GNU/Linux on phones. Projects like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, Mobian etc. Either on former Android phones or hardware like the PinePhone.
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It is difficult to have a smart watch though. Think about it: you have a small chip with a wifi stack, bluetooth, even a camera slot, it consumes ~5mA when awake even when down clocked, but can at least save power by consuming ~1microA when asleep but it can never use its sleep states because it's primary function is to display and update the time at all times.
All because of a little boy, who won't let me sleep!
You're describing a ton of features that a smart watch does not need. It doesn't need wifi or a camera, for example.
The thing is, there's TONS of off-brand smart watches that can do constant heart rate monitoring, notifications, sleep tracking, and those more basic smart features very well. The problem is that they require proprietary apps and a cloud account you have no control over.
I agree, I was just demonstrating that you could have a tiny chip packed full of features as well as optimized sleep states to really save on power, and it still runs out of power on the same scale as a smartphone, due to the sole reason that it's not actually allowed to go to sleep and still function as a watch.
Most get around this by not displaying the time unless you shake the watch awake (which I find hilarious), or running at extremely low clock-rates in which case the latency in user-interaction suffers.
Agreed. SQFMI's Watchy powered by the fantastic ESP32 seemed promising, but despite having a full bluetooth/wifi stack is very limited in other features.