Trying out bangle.js in the wild

That's great, thanks for the write-up!

It is a shame about Bangle.js's heart rate monitoring, but the sensor isn't great and doesn't like motion at all. With a bit of work we can probably do better with it though, even if that's done by ignoring heart rate readings when we know the watch is moving too much.

I guess Bangle.js will always get compared to single-purpose smartwatches/bands so I imagine people that 'just' want a simple activity monitor will be better off going elsewhere.

However I really hope it'll be helpful/useful if you want that little bit extra... Maybe logging/displaying some extra information that normal watches don't, navigating, communicating with others, or a bunch of other stuff.

In my craziest dream, I'd love to write a navigation screen to guide you along some GPX track

There's already a 'Route viewer' app on https://banglejs.com/apps/ which does this. It could do with some work but you definitely can use it for navigation :)