Mobile Phones for Children

Yesterday my 5-year-old granddaughter got a smartwatch with a phone built into it. She can only use it to communicate with a very small number of people. Naturally my wife and I are on that list and we have each received no less than 5 phone calls in the past 12 hours. While some might be bothered by so many calls, my wife and I love it as we enjoy speaking with any of our grand kids.

My son got the watch for his daughter to help locate her while playing with friends. she is very socially active and her parents often have a hard time finding her when it is time to come home for dinner. That is the primary reason she has the device and I agree with his thinking.

My slightly older grandson also has a similar smartwatch and he behaved the same when he got it. He wore it constantly and sent me voice messages all the time. Then he discovered he needs to charge the device and it often had a dead battery. Eventually I stopped getting messages from him and he stopped wearing the device. It became an unreliable way for me to contact him. Now that his sister has a smartwatch, they have been competing with each other to contact my wife and me. My hope is that with two of them having devices, we will have a great way to contact our grand kids.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and mobile phones became ubiquitous, I set 15 as the age for my kids before they got their first mobile phone. I wanted them to have practice using one before they started driving. That way if something happened in the car, a child could reach Mom or Dad. Now mobile phones have evolved to contain a lot more functionality including cameras, location data via GPS, and a number useful applications. It makes more sense to lower the age I originally set but still am not sure what that age should be. Fortunately I don't have any young children as my oldest is almost 30 and has kids of his own. Ultimately I don't think there is a specific age that works for everyone as I prefer to look at maturity. Not all 5-year olds are created equal and some will do well with a smartwatch while others won't. I'm interested in your thoughts so feel free to leave a comment. Others may appreciate your advice as well.

Not All Smartwatches Are Created Equal

My wife and I are training to climb Mt. Rainier this summer and that means we are exercising daily. I am using my smartwatch to help with my training and the more I use it, the more I like it. There are specific features I didn't know about but have now discovered and really facilitate my training. At Christmas I got my wife a smartwatch and we are discovering that not all smartwatches are created equal. Once you become accustomed to certain features, it is tough to go without them.

My smartwatch is the Suunto Baro 9 and came with a rather expensive price tag. Fortunately I could use my significant discount and I didn't have to pay the list price. I let my wife pick out her smartwatch but probably should have helped her more than I did. She decided on the Garmin Lily 2. As a sailor, I am a huge fan of Garmin products. Their GPS devices are second to none in accuracy. Unfortunately the Lily 2 smartwatch does not have a built-in GPS and relies on the Bluetooth pairing with your smartphone to get position information. While it sounds good in practice, it doesn't work very well. My wife is constantly not getting correct exercise information and is frustrated to the point she wants a new watch for Mother's Day.

This has me looking at the features of all the different smartwatches available. I know a lot of people swear by their Apple smartwatch but they lack a lot of the features that are necessary for an exercise aid, primarily battery life. They are also really expensive for what you get. Naturally I started listing out the features my wife wants in a smartwatch:

• Built-in GPS
• Built-in altimeter (not the same thing as a GPS)
• Heart-rate Monitor
• Heart-rate shown while exercising (a Garmin software update turned this off on the Lily 2 and my wife spent a lot of time with Garmin customer support turning it back on)
• Don't cost as much as a new smartphone
  
• Small watch face

The small watch face is what drew me to the Lily 2 and pretty much eliminates most of the smartwatches on the market. When you are buying a watch specifically for exercise, I think manufactures assume you won't mind the extra weight on your wrist and make watches very large. I love mine but it still won't fit under any of my long-sleeved-dress shirts.

I've searched a number of sites that claim to have reviewed all available smartwatches only to find some of the reviews are out-of-date. There is also the problem of trying to cater to everyone. If you live in Kansas, you don't need an altimeter. When you are climbing mountains, it is a critical piece of your gear. I don't know how many times I have found a watch that should work only to have my wife remind me that it doesn't include the altimeter.

Ultimately I think we have decided on the Garmin Venu 3s. The "s" means small as it has a smaller watch face than the regular Venu 3. Fortunately there is a sale for Mother's day and it is $50 less than usual. It is still an expensive watch at $400, especially since I can't return her old one I got at Christmas.

 

A $49 Smartwatch Just Doesn't Cut It

Last Friday I received a nice surprise before leaving to do some hiking in Zion National Park. My replacement smartwatch arrived from Suunto even though I was told not to expect it until Monday. It showed up and I had time to charge the battery before the drive down to Cedar City, Utah. That means I left my cheap temporary replacement at home. I haven't used it since I took it off.

I will admit that I did get used to one or two features of my $49 smartwatch. First it is very thin compared to the Suunto. Of course it doesn't have a GPS and that does take up space. It also is noticeably brighter but that comes at a battery cost. It also had a tendency to light up the room in the middle of the night when I went to check the time.

The thing I missed the most on my Suunto is all of the various sport modes. We hiked around Zion on Saturday and it recorded our path. I can then go back and look at where we walked on my Smartphone app. It also recorded average and maximum heart rate. I never figured out how to do that on the temporary watch. Yesterday and today, I hiked and skied Alta. There is a ski touring setting that records all of the stats one could possible want, including time going up, time skiing down, vertical feet climbed, heart rate information, and a lot of other data that can help determine if you are getting stronger or not. I really missed not having all of that information. It may sound useless until you start to use it and then you find you can't live without it.

One nice thing about my temporary watch is that it does have an off button. I have charged the battery and will put it back in its case. Then I can use it should my Suunto have to go back to the service department in a year or two. I do hope it is longer than that though.

A Temporary Smartwatch

Last week my wife found a very inexpensive smartwatch at Amazon and ordered it for me. I think she got tired of listening to me complain about me not having my Suunto 9 Baro. I'd provide a link to the watch but at $49.99, I'm not sure it will be around very long. There are pages of equally inexpensive smartwatches and they probably all come from the same factory in China. The watch showed up on Saturday and I have worn it everyday since then.

I figured the moment I got a replacement watch, my primary watch would be repaired and returned. Nope, it is still at the Suunto Service Center waiting for them to replace the battery. At this point it has been 6 weeks and I wonder if I will ever see it again. I hope so. I love that watch. Just be forewarned that if you have a Suunto watch that needs service, it may take longer than the advertised 14 business days.

The first thing I noticed about my daily habits with the temporary replacement watch is that I am paying attention to my daily step count again. When I didn't have something telling me how far I walked every day, I stopped worrying about it. Now I am fighting daily to make sure I hit my goal of 10,000 steps per day. That is a lot of walking and I took it for granted before. A month off and I have gotten lazy. If you have the slightest concern about your personal fitness, I highly recommend having a smartwatch.

The other thing I noticed about the new watch is that I don't trust the manufacturer nor do I trust its software. I had to install a new app on my smartphone and it naturally wanted all sorts of access to information on my phone. I didn't give it any. I especially didn't allow it to read my location service. That sort of defeats part of the smartwatch experience as it can't track distance walked or where I am. As I really am only concerned about my step count, I can live without actual distance. The last thing I want is data from my smartphone being used for nefarious purposes. I guess that is one of the reasons my Suunto cost so much more is that it had its own GPS receiver. I never had to turn on location services for my smartphone.

One more thing about my temporary smartwatch is that I didn't think I would worry about checking my sleep data. I actually am. Lately I feel like I have been getting the right amount of sleep and so I checked it on my watch. I confirmed that I am.

I am not going to replace my Suunto 9 with this inexpensive smartwatch. The more costly watch has enough features to justify the cost and I eagerly anticipate its return. While I wait, this temporary one works well and helps my fitness level. In other words, it is doing its job.

Where Am I?

It is nice to finally have summer here in the Bay Area. I rode my bike to work yesterday and then again today. With the high prices of gasoline, the bike is a huge money saver.

I was about a mile into my journey this morning when I came across a guy sitting on the ground with his really nice racing bike next to him. As I passed, I noticed there was a lot of blood on the pavement. It didn't take too long for my brain to register that the guy had been in an accident and probably needed some help. I stopped and turned around. When I rode up to the guy, I noticed that he had a huge gash in his chin and was on his cell phone trying to get one of his buddies to come pick him up.

The accident victim seemed glad that I came back to help and had me talk to his friend. While I knew where I was, I didn't know the names of any of the cross streets in the area. I pulled out my iPhone and pressed the "Where Am I" button in the map application. Then I zoomed in to read off the nearest cross streets. As we were on a bicycle path, we had to walk down a small path to get to the nearest road. We waited a couple of minutes for the friend to arrive.

Lately I have thinking that I don't need all of the features of the iPhone and could probably get by with something much simpler. However, today I was glad I had it and the simple "Where Am I" feature came in really handy.

Geocaching

Tonight I am headed on a Scout camping trip without my boys. This evening is a District camp out that my troop elected to miss. Next week we will be doing our annual trip to Southern Utah and visiting Goblin Valley State Park instead. Since I am part of the District leadership, I will be going tonight to help make sure everything runs smoothly.

The theme of this year's district camp out is Geocaching. We will be setting up something similar to a map and compass course. The difference is that the Scouts will be using global positioning service (GPS) devices to locate hidden prizes. The idea is to provide a list of coordinates and then let the Scouts go wild. It should be a lot of fun.

If you think this sounds like a great activity, there are close to a million different geocaches all over the world. The best place to start is at Geocaching.com. You can sign up for a free account and then get a listing of geocaches in your area. When you find one, the idea is to sign the log, take one of the souvenir's, and then add a souvenir of your own to the cache.

When we were putting together this activity there was the question about enough people owning GPS devices. Fortunately most mobile phones are now made with the GPS chip built into the device. My iPhone uses the GPS to help provide directions. You can also download several application from the AppStore that turn it into a fully featured GPS. Similar programs exist for many of the other all-in-one phones.

Knowing how to use a GPS is an important skill to have. Once I tried to find a safe harbor for my sailboat during a massive snowstorm using my GPS. Unfortunately I didn't have much experience with the device. The snow was coming down so hard, it was impossible to see the bow of the sailboat. It was pure luck that I found the entrance and didn't run aground. Since then I have made it a point to learn how to use my GPS and games like Geocaching are one way to do that. Now if I can just remember where I put my winter sleeping bag, I'll be ready for tonight.