Smartwatch Shopping - The End.

 My wife and kids have had smart watches for some time now.  I had some interest in looking into the damned things, then discovered the "can't reconcile" portions of these things.

I am not a foil-hat wearing lunatic.  I do not wish to share certain information with organizations who do not view my privacy as I do.  Look, I get it.  One of the benefits of these things is tracking my activity, which happens by GPS.  But I also know that deep in the user agreements that these things require you to accept whether or not you agree to them, you do end up giving up control over your data, and it becomes a product these people sell.

And I am not at all OK with that.  

I've looked into two of these devices.  Before you react in shock, I should point out the first device I purchased was on sale at $24.99.  And while I've not had much experience with the Wyze products, I thought it might be worth a shot.  Now I can say it certainly isn't worth the ammo it would cost to destroy this thing.  It is not ready for ... well, the wide world of people like me in general.  I got a Wyze band sort of device - it was the lowest end of what they had, which was in part what attracted me.  I didn't want much from the device.  I wanted to know what time it was, maybe the date, and then track a few other details about me.  

To set this Wyze device up, I should start by explaining the thing is roughly 3/4" of an inch wide, by about an inch and a half tall.  And there's a display screen that will, as I work through the setup process, require me to use the camera on my cell phone to scan the 2d barcode image it displays.  And while I had a Google Pixel phone that did pretty much everything I needed, the issue was that the camera was not capable of focusing on the image and scanning it enough to read it in the two seconds the image displayed before it disappeared.  

I spent about an hour one evening trying to scan the image with my phone.  And I must have done it close to 75 times - at least, there are 80 images on my phone I ended up deleting because not a single one of them presented the image in a fashion that the downloadable app could understand and use.

So that thing is sitting on the table here next to me, slow blinking in it's charger, because I haven't worked up the guts to toss it in the trash yet.  Give it a few years, and then I'll smash it with a hammer before throwing it out.  Why?  I have no idea what sort of information it has accumulated, and I don't want to find out down the road that it's led someone to do some awful things to my information.

My wife, however, has been a devoted user of her Fitbit.  Her first exposure to it was about ten or so years ago when our joint employer of the time (her part time, along with both kids, and my full time), Target, offered employees the opportunity to receive a free fitbit device.  Sure, it's a nice thing, if you want one.  I had no interest in the device.  I know I do not move enough, I know I'm doing the best I can, and I do not need some nagging device to tell me I slept poorly the night before - my brain and eyes can competently communicate that forthcoming disaster to me far more quickly than some smart device can.  And let's face it, if I woke feeling well-rested and ready to go, and my smart device instead reports that the six hours of sleep I'd just received was inadequate, well, I don't need that.  If I'm feeling good, why let some little bit of kit ruin that?

So I avoided the damned things.  My wife, on the other hand, was able to use the data from her device to communicate to her doctors about a month and a half ago that her heart rate had gone out of it's normal pattern in such a way that they were able to use it to diagnose almost exactly when her atrial fibrillation event actually started.  And that, I thought, might be useful.

As her doctors want her to do something to track her EKG, she was looking into purchasing a medical device which was fairly reasonable (it was going to run us under $50).  Then she found a coupon and an offer to upgrade to a new Fitbit which did the same thing, and she could get a new watch for about $80.  Well, that made sense, so she upgraded.  And I thought it might be a wonderful opportunity for me to explore the fitbit world.  So I considered it.  But then the brakes slammed back on.

In attempting to set up a fitbit account, the fitbit demanded access to my location.  None of my apps have access to my location on my phone, I keep the GPS turned off, along with the Wifi, the Bluetooth, and the Internet connectivity.  I do that in part because it does tend to extend the battery life in my phones, and in part because I very rarely need it.  Many of the games I play on my phone use the internet access to download advertising I do not wish to see.  Keeping network access off reduces the irritating advertising.

I also learned to keep the access off because that same employer who was offering free fitbits installed sensors throughout their stores to track the phone.  Certainly I was encouraged to use the company's app and do my shopping on it, but when your employer says "hey, please help us keep track of what you're doing in our stores" look, I'm already busting my ass to get things done, many days I would come into work, plonk my phone down onto the charger I brought into work so it would be fully charged if I needed to go anywhere, and it sat in the back room charging while I was working.  So would my employer use it to fire me because three minutes after I punched in, I did not move until I took my first break, then my meal, then ended my day?  Or they would know, if I'd enabled network access - But I didn't want to learn the hard way.  I needed the job fairly desperately.  And would rather find out that I'd offended some small marketing dweeb by not downloading the app - one of several million people who didn't.  Not my problem.  It wasn't a requirement to do my job.  And if it had become such, I would have found the rather small reason that, as it was not clearly defined as to why the company required access to a device they did not pay for, had no legal reason to access, and had absolutely no legal right to use at my expense, I'm sure an attorney would have had a field day with that lawsuit.  

Fortunately it did not come to that.  But tonight, after getting a new watch band - about $10 - for my wife's "previous" Fitbit - a Versa - I started doing the setup.  And when it demanded access to my location, and did not proceed without it, well, sorry, Fitbit, you lose.  I don't need what little insight you may provide at the cost of my privacy and data.  If you need access to my location, I don't need you.  I can get along just fine with my Casio circa 1982 digital watch, which will tell me the time, the date, and I can tell if I can still see it I'm still alive.  Beyond that?  I don't need it.  Sorry.