I have an Apple Watch ultra. It's bulky but it is made to last so ok. But the health stuff I don't use. My use case is: leave my bulky brick iPhone at home but still enjoy digital life - payments, messaging, apps and music on the go. It works great - but I have to ignore the bulk that I don't use.<p>How come nobody makes a watch that has LTE, payments, App Store integration - not only Apple - without the health tracking - which would result in a nice slim, normal watch that does not bruise my wrist if it's too lose or my arm if it's too tight :)) you know like a normal watch experience?<p>Is there no market for such a thing ?
Get yourself a PineTime[0] and avoid Apple's vendor lock-in:<p>[0] <a href="https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/</a>
The health stuff doesn’t add much compared to the LTE and base hardware you need anyways. It is cheaper for Apple to just make one board with everything then to separate the health stuff, which is mostly software on top of cheap sensors.<p>It works like that for everyone else also. The health stuff is easy to add and conveniently usable on your wrist, so it gets put in by default.
What I want is a cheap, slim watch that will support data storage and payments.<p>Strapping data to my arm is an effective part of a backup strategy that I have already solved by 3D printing an addition to the strap to hold a micro-SD card. The data is as safe as I am.<p>The payments part is a little harder.<p>Connecting to my phone is just a gee-whiz marketing gimmick with little real, practical value to me.
it's sad that people have just accepted that phones are now bulky bricks that you don't want to carry around and are looking for alternatives, now that it's clear manufacturers are
not going to supply an actual good phone.