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Hi all,
Got a Bangle.js 2 for Christmas, from the Espruino shop I believe. My first smartwatch was an Amazfit Cor (with Gadgetbridge) and I'm really looking forward the experience.
First, the good:
- Simple and neat packaging, paper based doc is fine for a start, good build materials, simple strap installation, also appreciate the film installed on the middle pins
- Very fast delivery
- Wonderful experience w.r.t. apps and firmware installed via browser
- Some solid docs, e.g. the page that describes which service consumes how much battery
- The whole experience that I can actually customise mine and set up actions as I see fit
- The whole experience that my data stays on my devices and (to my understanding) there's little chance that the device would be cracked (if I turn off BT I guess). It's so sweet to have devices with good privacy by design.
Second, the not-so-good... where my question is (with no bad intent), are these normal, or is it my device and I should seek a replacement?
- Device appeared to be DoA. Didn't turn on, didn't appear to be charging, having spent hours on 3 different chargers. After that, it turned on :o
- Charger isn't attaching very well. I haven't found videos with which I could compare with others'. And since pins are level on the charger, I'm uneasy about charging on a metal surface, thinking it can detach and short circuit (I understand there's short circuit protection but I don't want to rely on it tbh)
- The bottom surface has a good fair bit of scratches on the transparent plastic surface in the middle, right when unpacking. Is that normal for a new device? The main device looks to be... used. :o Now many of my devices I buy used but for wearables and headphones etc. I'd go new.
- Battery behaves... weird. Seems to discharge a bit faster than expected (I've read the battery usage doc page), and at times battery level increases slightly when device isn't being used actively. The device hasn't been outside yet so wasn't exposed to extreme temperatures. Is there a way to find out the wear level of the battery? A cursory look at the API didn't yield anything.
- Backlight turns on every now and then when device is idle and is just on the bedside (without a notification arriving). I've turned on the options that turn it on e.g. when I'd look at it, but again, it's turning on when I'm not wearing it and it's not moving.
I'm not certain if my device is new and is in good condition :s so inputs would be welcome.
Third, just as sidenote, user feedback:
- I had a couple of roadbumps as a newbie and I don't recall these documented, so these may be considered for improving docs if appropriate:
** Gadgetbridge for Bangle seems to be a fork which specifically needs to be selected and downloading and configuring the original Gadgetbridge yields an error message toast that isn't clear either, from that I thought I'd need to install some sort of a Gadgetbridge plugin, but had to reinstall ultimately.
** Installing Gadgetbridge on GrapheneOS is tricky, if installed via the default F-Droid app it won't support sending notifications unless it's reinstalled from a different client, and the experience is baffling as the permission can't be granted but it's not clear why and definitely surprising that it depends on the installer client - Observations:
** The Bangle.js Gadgetbridge icon on Android looks very different compared to other icons
** If there's a Bangle.js 2+ or later model, please change the charger to be less prone to short circuiting. I hope there's something off the shelf that has a solution similar to the Amazfit Cor, simple but pretty safe.
** It'd be great to have a firmware(?) feature to turn on the backlight when a notification arrives.
** It'd be great to have some docs for "hardening". I guess if I turn off some options in BT I'm okay even if the underlying BT firmware has a vulnerability, but is it so? It'd be great to understand this better.
** Freshly set up Gadgetbridge doesn't seem to show sleep stats, every now and then displays a toast about syntax error(?) in JSON but it's not clear where can I look at this error. I haven't got to duckduckgo'ing this yet.
- Simple and neat packaging, paper based doc is fine for a start, good build materials, simple strap installation, also appreciate the film installed on the middle pins
Thank you all for your responses.
** Also, in Power Manager I don't understand what's "Force monotonic battery percentage" -- would it simply mask the phenomenon?
General feel: huuuuge potential, pretty much perfect physical layout, mature hardware, potential for growth in product development + software, very good docs that need a bit of tuning here and there; currently more like an open platform on people can hack than a product people can reliably use and hack. A similar mind blowing experience when I first saw Android 1.0. I feel the next big step could be stabilising software (incl. the ecosystem!) and adding a bit of structure into product development. What I could imagine for next milestone is either a Bangle JS 2+ or a Bangle JS 3 -- both with stabilising software and getting the product development more structured (building UVP from strengths like privacy and openness etc.etc.etc., standard stuff)., and the difference being same (or slightly improved) hardware or a more significant touch on hardware features.
P.S. Great work so far folks and I'm very excited about the next phase(s)!