Steam deck is first generation and great, tbh
If we’re being honest, the entire smartwatch market is complete garbage. Handhelds have at least been successfully around for a while. Valve just managed to get a good PC competitor running, which arguably probably also helped the more unknown ones.
It was right place, right time, lightning in a bottle kind of thing.
Over time Valve built the tools to make the Deck as good as it is, but it took years of background development on things you wouldn’t think about. Stuff like having experimented with SteamOS on Steam Boxes prior to using it for the deck. Having built the Steam controller as an acceptable interface. The only thing they didn’t have prior experience with was the AMD APU structure, but ultimately because of the open source nature of the drivers, they were able to get into it very quickly.
The apple one being able to make a call independent of the phone is useful. Its essentially a very small and limited smartphone.
I had an older Galaxy Watch that works better than the Pixel watch gen 1.
The gen 1 is worse in basically every way because it demands being locked at all times, making half of the reason I use the goddamn thing (to check notifications without using the phone) utterly useless.
At least on the Samsung, even if half of the shit didn’t work, I could at least see my notifications. The Pixel Watch prompts me to check the phone more often than a watch ever should. Watches should be reducing the amount of time fiddling with the phone, not prompt you to fucking use it more.
If nobody buys the first generation then there is no second generation…
But I might be coping. I’m a first generation owner. I don’t see any reason why the second gen is better though (for my kind of usage).
Incremental and yearly updates are often plain better in small ways though, so yeah. Easy to say in retrospective that “the previous is worse” 😅
It’s not even in retrospect, it’s in comparison to older models. I bought this device assuming WearOS would have better integration with the Android ecosystem. A Pixel Watch for a Pixel Phone with Pixel Buds.
For the record, I generally fucking hate Samsung’s bullshit OSes like Tizen or whatever. I don’t like their OneUI tricks overlayed on top of stock Android. I do, however, like the Galaxy Watch as it is more functional than the Pixel Watch is, and is several generations older.
The main issue with the Pixel Watch is that is has a lot of stuff that should be available on the watch itself but prompts you to continue on the phone. The literal point of a smart watch is to reduce your dependency on the phone in terms of having to grab it to deal with notifications. I can’t fucking see my notifications because the watch demands to be locked at all times even if it’s on my fucking wrist so I can’t conveniently check any notifications without doing the unlock pattern which is a huge pain in the dick.
common sense should’ve done that for you
