We were mostly talking about tablets because thats, something that were both actually kind of interested in buying since the gap between thin light, portable laptops and high end tablets has pretty much been bridged at this point like if you look at models like the iPad Pro and The tab S8 and you pair those with the keyboard case. It could be an amazing, Thin, Client laptop so thats, some tech that I might get soon but theres a whole sector of tech that we were talking about that were both kind of skeptical of for some time now, and that is the wearable devices. So Apple watches are probably the most popular kind of wearable devices and, of course, Samsung. They also have a watch as well, and so does Google now that they acquired Fitbit and theres some other Brands as well, some lesser known ones, but these are the mainstream wearable device, Brands and Ive even heard of people taking these and modding them like putting gold Or jewel encrusted cases on those smart watches, so that you can count your steps and show off your wealth at the same time, because thats, what watches are used for these days? Who wants a watch to just do something boring like tell the time now, like? I said I dont have any wearable smart devices, but the issue for me is not that I dont want to buy something that I dont have a need for, because I actually do think that these smart watches are useful, especially for Fitness progress tracking, because I think That the step counters, for example, those are much more accurate than counting steps with your phone, but a lot of these watches also have heart rate monitors.

Basically, you monitor it via your pulse and tracking. Your pulse is a way more, accurate way to figure out the calories that you are burning compared to just tracking your steps, especially if most of your exercise is coming from lifting weights, because, if you think about it, when you do a heavy set of squats, for Example, your heart rate is going to go up quite a bit youre doing a lot of work and that activity is going to burn a lot of calories. But a step counter is really only going to count when youre walking the weight out and then walking it back in and even then its not accounting for the fact that theres hundreds of pounds on your shoulders and so traditional step counters theyre, not the best way To really track calories that are being burned or the amount of work that youre doing and also those traditional step counters can weigh over estimate your steps. If say, youre, skateboarding down a hill, you might be moving right. The accelerometer is detecting movement, but youre, basically just standing still not burning a whole lot of calories. Another great thing that these wearable devices do is track your sleep, which is the third most important thing for Fitness behind diet and exercise, because whether you want to burn fat or gain muscle, making sure that you get enough. Sleep is essential to do that and honestly, even if you arent into fitness its good just just for General health reasons to know what your average heart rate is or what it is under stress when youre doing some work without having to go to the doctor or To be able to see a rough idea of how many calories youre burning and that youre getting a good nights sleep.

So when you add up all the health benefits, I think that you could even argue that these wearable devices are more useful than smartphones, especially since they make smart watches with built in LTE. Now that can do at least all the productive stuff, like texting, email phone calls and digital payments without needing to have a phone on you. But the problem with most of these watches, just like most consumer technology, is that they are absolutely proprietary and in a lot of cases with these devices they also spy on you. We know at this point that these big tech companies make a lot of their money from harvesting consumer data and then using that for targeted advertising. So youve got to think that if theres a watch that is tracking your steps, tracking, the notifications and text messages that youre getting to your phone and its even tracking your heartbeat. While you sleep, this is one of the only devices thats literally going to track data from you, 24 7, that these companies are going to milk, that for its information, so Apple watches with proprietary watch OS. They are out for me, so that leaves the world of Ware OS, at least as far as the mainstream smart watches go now, where OS is mostly open, source, its actually based on Android and the wear OS ecosystem is pretty much the same as the Android ecosystem. In the sense that all of these manufacturers are using the same OS, but then they are adding a bunch of proprietary bloatware that tracks you on top of it.

So you can theoretically remove this extra blow, just like you can on Android phones. If you unlock the bootloader and then install a custom rom or if you root it, you may be able to disable the specific spy components, proprietary stuff that they added in. But this can be a bit of a challenge on smart watches, because how do you actually go about connecting a cable to these watches in order to send that data in those commands to them sure these watches have charging cables, but you cant always communicate with the Watches over that cable to flash a custom rom to the device in some cases you have to take the watch apart and then connect those wires to the contacts that are on the board of the watch and, of course, taking the watch apart like this could damage It void your warranty absolutely and make it no longer waterproof if it isnt sealed back up properly and even for watches, like the tick watch Pro or the fossil Gen 6, where you can send ADB, Commands and unlock commands or commands to unlock the bootloader over the Same USB, cable thats used to charge it this whole process of installing a custom, rom and unlocking the bootload or re locking. The bootloader is still too technical for most people, its at least as difficult as well. Installing a custom ROM on your phone, which is already too difficult for most end users to do, although, since these smart watches, are cheaper and typically dont hold a lot of important data on them, at least not as much as peoples smartphones do then it might be Easier for people to, I guess, work up the courage to try and install a custom, rom thats not going to have all the spyware in it onto their watch and if they break their watch, then its not as big a deal as breaking their phone.

So these are probably not the best option for smart watches because they dont have same defaults, or at least they dont have nice defaults, where theyre not going to spy on the end user. But luckily there are some options like the pine time from Pine 64. that are truly open source with open firmware, and we know that theyre not going to be harvesting customer data, and these watches are also a whole lot cheaper than a lot of these smart watches. That run, wear Os or watch OS, which is Apples OS, but its a similar situation with these watches to what we see with the pine phone versus Android phones. So you get more freedom, but fewer features, theres no LTE option for these watches. Yet so you really do have to use them with your phone for all of the features to work. There is a step counter and a heart rate monitor in the pine time, but Ive heard that its not that great compared to the mainstream, watches and theres. No sleep tracking capability right now and theres, another project that I just became aware of today, the Z DS watch. So this is an open source Zephyr based smart watch. This is a smart watch that somebody built from scratch both hardware and the software. I believe they 3D printed the case, but theyre planning on redoing it soon with the CNC machine, so that it looks a little bit nicer built from scratch.

It has an accelerometer for the step counter its got a pulse tracker, its got a vibration motor pop up notifications for when you get text, messages or emails, Etc. And of course it tells you the time. So these are just a couple of the more Open Source watch options out there. Smart Watch options, which ones do you think, is going to be best for you, an Android watch with a custom rom a pine time or just building your very own watch with custom hardware and custom software. Personally, if I were to go the like custom from scratch route, I think that I would just ditch the whole idea of a watch and go for a Pip Boy, something with a screen the size of like an iPod 4, and I think that that would be Pretty cool and I think, with a bigger screen and just a bigger overall device, you could fit better Hardware in there, probably a bigger battery and ultimately get more features out of it. But let me know which of those watch options you think would be best for you like and share to hack. The algorithm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFGczcbVwc