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Citizen Suspends Sales of Its Latest Smartwatch (theverge.com) 18

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its second-gen CZ Smart watch due to a "technical issue." From a report: The Wear OS watch, which launched in May, had a feature based on tech from IBM's Watson and NASA to track a person's alertness. It appears the decision stems from negative experiences from reviewers. Michael Fisher -- better known as MrMobile on YouTube -- noted that Citizen said it would suspend sales after he had reached out to the company about the watch's many issues. That was corroborated by a Wired story, in which reviewer Julian Chokkattu also detailed several bugs, like laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time.
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Citizen Suspends Sales of Its Latest Smartwatch More

Citizen Suspends Sales of Its Latest Smartwatch

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  • Citizen still makes a few. Swatch has a few. Most of my collection is Seiko 5 models. I love that I can pick up the watch 10 years after not wearing it, shake it, set it, and rock on. Nothing against the Smartwatch fans, but I just love the "real" thing. I love turning over the case and seeing the glass backs and the little jeweled joints.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Personally, I prefer my Citizen Eco-Drive watch. It looks like a traditional watch, but under the hood, it has solar cells and shake-to-charge hardware, and it listens for atomic clock time signals to stay exactly in sync. It does what a watch is supposed to do; it just tells time. Correctly. Always(*).

      * Except when you haven't adjusted the time zone.

      • Diversity is our strength. (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        several bugs, like laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time.

        These watches aren't really Citizen watches -- they're just using the Citizen brand name. These are Fossil [fossilgroup.com] watches:

        "To be a part of something inclusive and innovative, and make an impact at the world while at work. Our people come first and we value diversity. We are not your regular kind of company..."

      • Those are sweet. All those shake-to-charge quartz models are neat, also those with solar cells. I didn't know it used atomic time signals, though. That's extra cool, for sure. I've had most of my watches for 20 years or so. I know which ones run a little fast or slow, how bad the drift is, and which ones are dead on. Most only drift 1-3 seconds a day or so, but having a "forever" watch that also uses atomic time signals is really nice.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Those are sweet. All those shake-to-charge quartz models are neat, also those with solar cells. I didn't know it used atomic time signals, though.

          Mine does. I have no idea whether that's a widespread feature or is just on certain models. It's always cool looking down at my watch and seeing the second hand tick to zero at exactly the same time as my cell phone changes to the next minute. :-D

          • I have a similar (or the same) model and that second accuracy is super useful for timing coffee runs and pee breaks in between calls. Absolutely love it. Best watch Iâ(TM)ve ever owned. Someone above commented how it does its one job flawlessly and they are absolutely right. The date always being accurate and accounting for the month (even in leap years) is very useful as well.

    • I hate to bring this up, but 10 years is a long time for a mechanical watch to go without servicing. If you start losing time on them, it's probably time to have them cleaned and lubricated. The jewels take an infinitesimal amount of oil for lubrication and when it goes off the extra friction either slows the beat or drains the power through the train.

      I love them too, BTW. If I had better hands, I'd have watchmaking as a hobby.

      • TBH, I have a couple that probably need it. They were only $100-$300 watches, but they don't make them anymore and I just personally like them. I have one that I have been lucky with. It's a Seiko and has a date complication and can also wind on the crown. It seems to only loose about 5-10 seconds a month and it's over 20 years old. It has an eggshell texture on the face and Arabic numbers in brass. I have a soft black leather band on it. It's pretty :-)
  • Who watches the watch, man?

  • Doesn't sound too smart (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday August 25, 2023 @11:37AM (#63796404) Journal
    and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time.

    If a "smart" watch can't even tell the correct time, what good is it?

  • makes me think about the company mindset (Score:3)

    by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Friday August 25, 2023 @11:48AM (#63796432)

    "... laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time..."

    these seem like stuff that would have been apparent in their internal QA/testing

    which means they would have happily released the product unless faced with bad PR *beforehand*

    what's wrong with these people? evenmole rats aren't that shortsighted

    • Rush to market. Someone needs to get fired.

    • They've lost their heritage it would seem, and are now following the standard in "Software" for the last 20 years; release as Alpha. End users can be the Beta testers.

      Sad, I had a DigiAna in the early 80's that I gave to a close friend, he's retired but still relies on it.

    • these seem like stuff that would have been apparent in their internal QA/testing

      It's typical for conditions to exist in the wild that aren't captured in internal testing. For example, maybe a borderline wifi connection from a particular router model causes the device to waste battery trying to reconnect constantly. Maybe a particular (and popular) app for the watch triggers a problem. Maybe someone wrote a watch face that updates every millisecond instead of second. Just examples. There are a thousand other possible gotchas.

      QA on a general purpose computing device is very hard. Emulati

  • But I honestly prefer Casio watches.

  • Can't even tell the correct time (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday August 25, 2023 @02:23PM (#63796826)

    That's what phones are for.

  • Every device I've ever used that's called itself "smart" is fundamentally worse at doing the putative task of the object than the "stupid" version of the item. Lightbulbs, watches, radios, cars... everything is better dumb. This is for the simple reason that making a device "smart" is never about making the device better. It's about enabling the company making the device to run a scam on incredulous VC investors and/or harvest user data to sell to data brokers. That's a valid reason why the companies would

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