In Part 2, I shared my beginnings with fitness tracking, starting with a belt-clipped pedometer and progressing through various Fitbit devices. It was during this time that I first encountered the possibility of designing custom watch faces. Despite my initial lack of success, technology continued to evolve, taking me on another significant turn.
Enter the Pixel Watch
Even though my watch face design attempts for the Fitbit Sense were pretty disastrous, I continued loving the Sense. So, when I upgraded my phone from the Pixel 6 Pro to the Pixel 8 Pro in October 2023, I had a tough decision to make. Google now owned Fitbit and was offering a free Pixel Watch 2 or Pixel Earbuds with a Pixel phone purchase. A free Pixel Watch 2 seemed like a great deal and part of me thought it would be a great upgrade as well, especially since it had some Fitbit features built in. However, I was worried about leaving my Fitbit Sense behind, mainly because of the battery life. The Sense could last up to six days, while the Pixel Watch 2 would only last one day. That was a huge concern. Plus, the Pixel Watch 2 didn’t have “smart wake-up,” a feature I loved on the Sense. It would gently wake me up during my light sleep cycle within a 30-minute window of my alarm, making it feel like waking up was my idea. I was surprised the Pixel Watch 2 didn’t have this feature. These two concerns made me very uncertain of how to proceed.
After much consideration, I finally made my decision and knew exactly what I wanted to do. On October 4th, 2023, I placed an order for the Pixel 8 Pro and free Pixel Earbuds. (Bet you didn’t see that coming.) The confirmation email said my order would be ready for pickup from my local Google Store on October 12th. This gave me a little over a week to thoroughly torture myself about whether I’d made the right choice.
The pre-order receipt for the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Earbuds. Oct 4, 2023.
Despite all the things I liked about my Fitbit Sense, the allure of the new device for my wrist, one with some Fitbit smarts, was tempting. Surely the Pixel Watch 2 would have some amazing features, right? I usually trust my decisions when it comes to tech and rarely return things because I do thorough research. But this time, the more I thought about this decision, the more I regretted choosing the earbuds. Five days after placing the order, I decided to cancel the entire order.
I then immediately placed a new order, this time for the Pixel 8 Pro and the free Pixel Watch 2. The delivery estimate was weeks away, much longer than the original pickup date. Or so they said. Then, a few days later, on October 11th, I received a shipping notification. My Pixel 8 Pro was on its way after all, and would arrive on October 13th – just one day after the original pickup date! Whew. The Pixel Watch 2, however, was backordered and expected over a month later.
Just like my phone’s initial delivery estimate, the date for my Pixel Watch 2 wasn’t quite right either. It arrived several weeks early, in late October. However, there was one more issue I needed to address.
When the Pixel Watch 2 arrived, I didn’t even open the package. The watch I had ordered only had a Wi-Fi connection. During the time I spent torturing myself over my decision, I realized I should instead get the model with a mobile connection as well. This would give me a backup for sending messages and making calls even if my phone died and I wasn’t near Wi-Fi. While I couldn’t resolve swapping models over the phone with Google’s customer support, a visit to my local Google Store solved the problem quickly. A helpful salesman there happily made the swap. I just paid the difference between the two models, around $50, and that was it. I was now the proud owner of a Google Pixel Watch 2 with 4G!
Once I started using my Pixel Watch 2, I absolutely loved it. Even though it was missing my favorite smart alarm feature, it had many other features going for it. I won’t list them all here since you can easily find that information online, but one huge plus for me was access to a vast library of custom watch faces. It was this watch that really inspired me to take watch face design more seriously and find a real sense of satisfaction in creating something completely new, something that was entirely my own.
I wear the Pixel Watch 2 on my wrist today and it continues to improve with each software update. Although it still doesn’t have the smart alarm feature, I still have hopes that it will eventually get added. Last year the Pixel Watch 3 was released in two sizes and while it looked appealing, I didn’t think it had enough new features to warrant and upgrade. This year the Pixel 4 Watch and Pixel 10 phones are scheduled to be released. We’ll see if it’s worth the upgrade and if there are any bundle deals planned. I’ll be keeping a close eye out on these developments later this year.
The Journey Continues…
In the next installment, I’ll be talking about the next watch face creation tool I tried. This time things went a lot better and it allowed me to create the very first watch face I made available for download. What made the experience even more exciting is that I created the watch face as a tribute to a famous 80’s band. I sent them a link to my creation, they liked it and posted the link to the watch face on their Facebook group! More about that next time.