I unapologetically love this thing. It's of course very silly, and I'm sure commenters here are going to talk about all the ways that it isn't practical or that it's a niche idea, but I love whimsical silly niche hardware ideas that make it into actual hardware. I love that they put in all of the effort to figure out a mechanical linkage between the clickwheel and the digital crown!
I don't think all hardware needs to be take-over-the-world hundred-million-unit ideas; I think sometimes it's fine for hardware to be whimsical niche things like this Apple Watch case or Andrew McCalip's doomscroller doo-dad [1]!
Funnily enough the inspiration may have come from Apple themselves, before the Watch was announced they covertly tested it in cases made to resemble an iPod knock-off.
> It's of course very silly, and I'm sure commenters here are going to talk about all the ways that it isn't practical or that it's a niche idea, but I love whimsical silly niche hardware ideas that make it into actual hardware
It's crazy how I miss my 2nd gen iPod Nano, even though I wouldn't really have any use for it today. It was really a stupendously satisfying specialised device whose use is completely obviated today by general purpose smartphones.
I don't think this is silly in the slightest. There are lots of folks like me who deliberately want to break our phone addictions, which is why things like www.thelightphone.com exist.
My problem with the Light Phone (owner of version II) is that it's too limited. I don't want to be distracted by notifications or social media or doom scrolling on the browser, but I do need things that are essentially task-oriented tools: Uber/Lyft, Weather apps, Maps, Authenticator Code apps (and, now, using my phone as a passkey), etc.
I'm not an iOS user, but this makes be almost wish I were, because it's exactly what I'd want. It's too small to make me want to scroll YouTube randomly, but has all the tools that I don't want to forego. I think this is a fantastic product if it works as advertised.
> but I do need things that are essentially task-oriented tools: Uber/Lyft, Weather apps, Maps, Authenticator Code apps
> because it's exactly what I'd want.
I’m not sure it is.
Most of the things you list aren’t that functional on Watch, in my experience. It’s ok-ish to pull up on Watch after you’ve set it up on your phone, but without a phone, Watch is much more limited, IME.
You can definitely use Watch for a number of things without an iPhone — Weather is one you list that is mostly functional, Timer, and Calculator.
But beyond these basic by-design limited functionality apps, Watch doesn’t do a great job as the main driver of most apps — just more as a companion to the iPhone apps.
They recently announced a v3 of the light phone that might actually be useful - I also have a light phone II sitting in a drawer somewhere.
It ditches e-ink in favor of an OLED + matte glass that looks amazing. Having 60hz refresh rate means we can get nice responsive apps while keeping the minimalist UI. Hopefully they will make it easier to develop and run custom apps on this one.
I feel like once you set third-party apps like Uber, bike rental or banking apps as requirements, the only possible solution is sadly a mostly standard cut-down Android phone. The third parties won't support any bespoke OS, so you're stuck with iOS or Android, and moreover they won't support exotic configurations like a tiny display.
Thankfully on Android it's easy enough to remove/disable any distractions, and there are phones like the ones from Unihertz that are just different enough to be worth trying.
There are other options in the Android space. Very very few, sadly, but they exist: check out the Qin phones like the F21 Pro: it's Android on a 2007's Nokia form factor!
Beg to differ -- this is quite valuable as a new kind of paging device that you want to keep around instead of your higher end iPhone's battery constantly draining, and more importantly, for people who'd like to keep radiation at a distance.
(Yeah, no, I'm not saying you should keep away from radiation, just that some people do prefer to and it's therefore a market segment.)
Does it at least do anything well? An iPod replacement would be fun, but the best thing about an iPod was the wired headphones.
This would only work with my AirPods, which almost never work without fiddling with something either in the UI or by taking them in and out of their case.
They could theoretically add a headphone port to this and a bluetooth to headphone adapter. I don't think the chips for that take up much space at all.
I still own multiple nanos with the watch bands and the kids love playing with them as a ”more kid-safe Apple Watch”. Even after all these years they’re still immaculate and work great. More than can be said by lots of other more recent technology.
Oh man I loved my iPod nano! I had the square one, and used to fill it with music and podcasts through a cable. I wish I had known there were cases to turn it into a watch
We did? I don’t recall an accessory like that for the nano. Seems it would have been too tall (wide?) to function as a watch. Happy to be proven wrong though.
I absolutely love this, but I hate websites like this so much, especially on mobile. I’m haphazardly scrolling hitting breakpoints trying to get to content that either lags well behind my gestures to animate a device spinning around, or zips past everything I wanted to actually read. If you want to show a video, please just show a video.
It's funny, you can basically play back the first animation in dev tools by just scrolling through all the media requests. Each frame of the animation is a separate PNG.
I guess it looks nice when cached, but i am just scrolling empty page and when I stop, after a second I get random picture. An epitome of atrocious design
Bike shedding is bike shedding because the color we paint the bike shed at the nuclear power plant doesn't matter. If people can't use your scroll-jacked website to even learn about your product, that matters.
I strongly disagree. It doesn't render correctly on FireFox on my Mac. And while those animated pages might look cool, they are very bad on giving you information. The product looks really cool, but as a Apple Watch owner I would really like to know what exactly it does and how.
It does exactly what your watch does now. It merely provides a way to interact with the watch in a similar way to the original iPod. Many people have their own personal reasons why they might enjoy this.
strong disagree. as i scrolled, the animation blinked as it loaded the image sequence and felt very staccato and not smooth at all. at least what apple does works
I was going to rant how unusable this page is (it is) when I realized that it's just another form of content.
The web was created for providing documents, like research papers. Then it evolved into applications, like Google Maps. This kind of website is different from others: it's a movie.
Just like a movie it is expected you start at the middle and go through every single part in order until the end. You are not expected to start at the middle. You are not expected to search inside of it. You are supposed to consume it entirely from beginning to end.
I like movies because they entertain me; this website is trying to go the entertainment way and I highly dislike it. I want to understand what the thing does, how it can be used: I'm looking for information, not a pleasant time.
I love the concept! I think TinyPod is an outcry over the sizes of the smartphones today. The smallest most recent iPhone you could buy was iPhone 13 mini and it was discontinued. Don't know about other brands, but from what I am seeing nothing fits the pocket anymore. There must but a niche for those who don't read or watch movies on their hand-held devices, and if the apps are well designed a smaller screen is just fine.
Not even the pocket, all modern flagship phones are so large that I can't use them well with one hand. I'll stick with the mini till the day it does and just hope there's a better something out there by that time.
I'm hoping that Apple releases a new mini on a 3 year cadence. Maybe there wasn't enough demand to continue the line every year, but they'll bring it back occasionally?
> if the apps are well designed a smaller screen is just fine.
This was the problem I ran into. They're not.
I held onto the iPhone SE for quite a while. Everything became progressively more cramped as the years went by. Some app UI controls were cut off. All sorts of web stuff was laid out funny.
While everything did _work_, I get too annoyed at knowing that I'm having a sub-par UX every time I see it.
I have a pro max and even with this size some websites are cramped and badly designed. I can’t imagine with a mini version… such a shame because it’s really nice to have a small phone at all time
My hope was that the mini would be a success and they'd eventually had a Pro Mini line, but sadly the mini form-factor hasn't sold well. I would buy a Pro Mini in a heartbeat.
I really like this product, but I have been on this journey, and will repost a comment i made to a recent thread about replacing your phone with an apple watch.
—
on: One year of using an Apple Watch Ultra as a phone ...
I have done this as well, but with series 4. Some notes:
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems: 1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics. 2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar.
That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
I think the biggest issue for many is using it in a car? As far as I know, the watch will not pair like a phone does for calls using the typical bluetooth standards that work just fine across all conventional cellphones.
Not being able to field calls in the car would make this an instant deal breaker before I even tried. If I have to bring a phone along to ensure car support, I'm stuck bringing a full-size cellphone with me most days anyway.
Losing Apple CarPlay (potentially no navigation app at all in your car) will also be massive detractor for a lot of folks. If you don't own a car, it's probably a ton more feasible with how the watch functions today though.
I haven't used my watch as a replacement phone, but my experience is quite different of the tech to yours.
Connecting AirPods is pretty straight forward. I don't recognise the pain. I also don't think it's always necessary, yes, not every call can be on speakerphone, but you can pick up, explain you're switching to headphones if necessary, it's fine.
I have AirPod Pros. The mic quality is great, even when on a busy street. Noise cancelling and adaptive audio is great.
I do not need my phone to be in the charger for call forwarding. I have the cellular version, and my watch buzzes on every call, no matter what state my phone is in. This might be a setting, I've never changed anything, but I absolutely do not have the experience you have.
Messages are fine if you realise the keyboard works as a swipe keyboard with auto-correct. You can also voice dictate, and the accuracy is decent, but then I'm British, so maybe it's trained on a data set that is more like my voice than many.
If your watch is getting hot, there might be a fault. I've had an Apple Watch since the Series 2, and I've never had it get hot unless it's in direct sunlight, and then it's like any other metal case watch.
Apple Watch requiring an iPhone is a major limitation, but I also don't mind it too much, as I'm always going to have an iPhone for those apps that I wouldn't want on my watch, but around me from time to time - banking, games, video players, and so on. I don't see my watch as a full replacement for my phone, but as a means to leave my phone home when it's too cumbersome - going out for a run, for example - or as a backup if my phone battery dies. Having it as Apple Pay and being able to use the transit card thing on TfL barriers in London makes it a slam dunk easy thing to use.
In short: it's still an extension of your phone, not a replacement. If you want it as a replacement, you might be waiting a while, and if you don't want to use speakerphone or figure out AirPods with it, that could be a frustrating experience.
Real happy to hear this. As i said, it was series 4 and the first airpods pro and here in europe (where we sometimes lag a bit behind in features), so maybe things are different now.
Re forwarded calls: maybe i misremember, maybe it was my local carrier or maybe apple has changed things but i’m glad things have changed. Can you recieve sms too? I couldn’t and this reply corroborates my experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40994017
Also, if you take your watch for a run with music playing on your aipods, does your watch stop the playback once you’re back in phone range? Mine does and i hate it.
I think music and podcasts are synced through iphone too, right? If you leave your phone turned off, will watch sync everything correctly?
In other words, constant sync and connection issues was what made me ditch my watch as any sort of replacement phone.
I've tried this several times too and still do phone less days quite often thanks to the watch, but my big obstacle has been the lack of Uber/Lyft which I use instead of having a car. They used to have those apps on the watch but unfortunately they don't.
If I could use Uber/Lyft on the watch I would mostly leave my phone on the charger.
You can set up your watch using a phone, and then turn the phone off and the watch still works. What doesn't work is SMS messages from non-apple users, because they are forwarded from the phone.
I set up my daughter's Apple Watch SE which we got her because phones are depression machines for teen girls (according to the Biden controlled MSM anyway) and I just set it up using my backup phone. I then backed up her setup, restored my setup, and when I need to update her watch or do something else administrative I just restore her backup to the phone, do what I need, then restore my backup to the phone, ready to fill in at a moment's notice if my phone needs to be repaired or gets lost or whatever.
I also take calls on my airpods connected to my watch pretty frequently because I exercise without my phone. I've never really had a problem with it.
I bought an Apple Watch to get away from the “screen” but of all evils, Apple don’t let their watches pair to my car, not even for hands free coms. If only they would allow for regular stereo bluetooth and handsfree I would ditch my iPhone.
Perhaps that is what they fear?
Having tried hard to only wear LTE watch instead of phone, I can confirm that yes, that is what Apple fears. They could easily turn AW into an iPhone replacement with a few fixes, but they won't.
I'd jump at this (or even just a straight Apple watch) to replace my phone if it didn't require an iPhone in order to use it (I currently use Android; seems a bit silly to buy an iPhone purely to enable a watch). Hoping they consider this use case eventually, and it's worth remembering that early ipods required a mac to use, and early iphones required a computer to set them up.
In my case, my wife has an iPhone, so I was able to setup an Apple Watch as my primary phone, while I do not have any phone other than my watch. So if you're on a family plan, maybe that's an option
Readit News
I don't think all hardware needs to be take-over-the-world hundred-million-unit ideas; I think sometimes it's fine for hardware to be whimsical niche things like this Apple Watch case or Andrew McCalip's doomscroller doo-dad [1]!
[1] https://doomscroller.xyz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmgFk5hT6d8
It's crazy how I miss my 2nd gen iPod Nano, even though I wouldn't really have any use for it today. It was really a stupendously satisfying specialised device whose use is completely obviated today by general purpose smartphones.
But then again I wear watches...
My problem with the Light Phone (owner of version II) is that it's too limited. I don't want to be distracted by notifications or social media or doom scrolling on the browser, but I do need things that are essentially task-oriented tools: Uber/Lyft, Weather apps, Maps, Authenticator Code apps (and, now, using my phone as a passkey), etc.
I'm not an iOS user, but this makes be almost wish I were, because it's exactly what I'd want. It's too small to make me want to scroll YouTube randomly, but has all the tools that I don't want to forego. I think this is a fantastic product if it works as advertised.
> because it's exactly what I'd want.
I’m not sure it is.
Most of the things you list aren’t that functional on Watch, in my experience. It’s ok-ish to pull up on Watch after you’ve set it up on your phone, but without a phone, Watch is much more limited, IME.
You can definitely use Watch for a number of things without an iPhone — Weather is one you list that is mostly functional, Timer, and Calculator.
But beyond these basic by-design limited functionality apps, Watch doesn’t do a great job as the main driver of most apps — just more as a companion to the iPhone apps.
It ditches e-ink in favor of an OLED + matte glass that looks amazing. Having 60hz refresh rate means we can get nice responsive apps while keeping the minimalist UI. Hopefully they will make it easier to develop and run custom apps on this one.
Thankfully on Android it's easy enough to remove/disable any distractions, and there are phones like the ones from Unihertz that are just different enough to be worth trying.
I'm not really into the apple ecosystem, but I kinda like this as well. Smart watches don't really appeal to me, but something like this does.
Beg to differ -- this is quite valuable as a new kind of paging device that you want to keep around instead of your higher end iPhone's battery constantly draining, and more importantly, for people who'd like to keep radiation at a distance.
(Yeah, no, I'm not saying you should keep away from radiation, just that some people do prefer to and it's therefore a market segment.)
This would only work with my AirPods, which almost never work without fiddling with something either in the UI or by taking them in and out of their case.
https://www.macworld.com/article/667363/ipod-nano-6g-with-st...
Deleted Comment
The scrolling worked fine for me for what it's worth, and is obviously a knockoff of apple product pages. Satirical even I'd say.
Are pages like this typically "storyboarded", then designed in framer (or another tool) and from there the code is generated, or how does it work?
People do amazing things with pure CSS, but this seems beyond what is sensible without some sort of tool to make the job a bit easier.
The web was created for providing documents, like research papers. Then it evolved into applications, like Google Maps. This kind of website is different from others: it's a movie.
Just like a movie it is expected you start at the middle and go through every single part in order until the end. You are not expected to start at the middle. You are not expected to search inside of it. You are supposed to consume it entirely from beginning to end.
I like movies because they entertain me; this website is trying to go the entertainment way and I highly dislike it. I want to understand what the thing does, how it can be used: I'm looking for information, not a pleasant time.
This was the problem I ran into. They're not.
I held onto the iPhone SE for quite a while. Everything became progressively more cramped as the years went by. Some app UI controls were cut off. All sorts of web stuff was laid out funny.
While everything did _work_, I get too annoyed at knowing that I'm having a sub-par UX every time I see it.
on: One year of using an Apple Watch Ultra as a phone ...
I have done this as well, but with series 4. Some notes:
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems: 1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics. 2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar. That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39982713#39988624
Not being able to field calls in the car would make this an instant deal breaker before I even tried. If I have to bring a phone along to ensure car support, I'm stuck bringing a full-size cellphone with me most days anyway.
Losing Apple CarPlay (potentially no navigation app at all in your car) will also be massive detractor for a lot of folks. If you don't own a car, it's probably a ton more feasible with how the watch functions today though.
Connecting AirPods is pretty straight forward. I don't recognise the pain. I also don't think it's always necessary, yes, not every call can be on speakerphone, but you can pick up, explain you're switching to headphones if necessary, it's fine.
I have AirPod Pros. The mic quality is great, even when on a busy street. Noise cancelling and adaptive audio is great.
I do not need my phone to be in the charger for call forwarding. I have the cellular version, and my watch buzzes on every call, no matter what state my phone is in. This might be a setting, I've never changed anything, but I absolutely do not have the experience you have.
Messages are fine if you realise the keyboard works as a swipe keyboard with auto-correct. You can also voice dictate, and the accuracy is decent, but then I'm British, so maybe it's trained on a data set that is more like my voice than many.
If your watch is getting hot, there might be a fault. I've had an Apple Watch since the Series 2, and I've never had it get hot unless it's in direct sunlight, and then it's like any other metal case watch.
Apple Watch requiring an iPhone is a major limitation, but I also don't mind it too much, as I'm always going to have an iPhone for those apps that I wouldn't want on my watch, but around me from time to time - banking, games, video players, and so on. I don't see my watch as a full replacement for my phone, but as a means to leave my phone home when it's too cumbersome - going out for a run, for example - or as a backup if my phone battery dies. Having it as Apple Pay and being able to use the transit card thing on TfL barriers in London makes it a slam dunk easy thing to use.
In short: it's still an extension of your phone, not a replacement. If you want it as a replacement, you might be waiting a while, and if you don't want to use speakerphone or figure out AirPods with it, that could be a frustrating experience.
Re forwarded calls: maybe i misremember, maybe it was my local carrier or maybe apple has changed things but i’m glad things have changed. Can you recieve sms too? I couldn’t and this reply corroborates my experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40994017
Also, if you take your watch for a run with music playing on your aipods, does your watch stop the playback once you’re back in phone range? Mine does and i hate it.
I think music and podcasts are synced through iphone too, right? If you leave your phone turned off, will watch sync everything correctly?
In other words, constant sync and connection issues was what made me ditch my watch as any sort of replacement phone.
If I could use Uber/Lyft on the watch I would mostly leave my phone on the charger.
Deleted Comment
I set up my daughter's Apple Watch SE which we got her because phones are depression machines for teen girls (according to the Biden controlled MSM anyway) and I just set it up using my backup phone. I then backed up her setup, restored my setup, and when I need to update her watch or do something else administrative I just restore her backup to the phone, do what I need, then restore my backup to the phone, ready to fill in at a moment's notice if my phone needs to be repaired or gets lost or whatever.
I also take calls on my airpods connected to my watch pretty frequently because I exercise without my phone. I've never really had a problem with it.
Unfortunately the buttons are purely for aesthetics.
Also, would've been better if it folded up like a clamshell phone from the early 2000s.