Which FOSS smartwarch would you recommend?

Nice to haves:

Phone
GPS
Possibility for FOSS tracking fx using something like PhoneTrack and Nextcloud

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21 comments

I was going to suggest the Pinetime, but it is far from close to what you're asking. Have you looked at the Bangle.js 2 watch? It has GPS at least.
- Would be really interested to hear any real life reviews from users of the Bangle.js 2. It looks great given its features and price point but would be interested to know if there is a catch somewhere.
- Have checked PineTime, and seriously considered it. But as you said, and I remember, it fell short on features. Will check Bangle.js!
  
  I have a Bangle.js 2 and there are two things I don't like. One is the display which has too low contrast and the second is that the hardware itself feels not very valuable because it is very light and plastic.
- It looks like Pinetime lets you customize the watch face with Rust, but is it touchscreen? Am I right in seeing that it only runs the update logic once every minute?
  
  The rust part is kinda not true... You can only really use wasp os and infinitime, and neither of them support rust watchfaces. And yes, it is in fact touchscreen.
  
  The Pinetime is touchscreen.
  What do you mean by "only runs the update logic once a minute"? What update logic are you talking about?
  
  https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/watchface
  Section 1, step 2 states "update: To update the Watch Face with the current date and time. This is called every minute by the PineTime Firmware to refresh our Watch Face."
  Good to know that it's touch screen. I would love if I could push a button on this watch and run a POST request to my server. Do you happen to know of that's possible?
  
  It might be possible to do that, but the Pinetime can only use Bluetooth, so you'd need to write something for both the Pinetime and the device is connected to.
  
  Yeah, I was imagining that it was connected to my phone, but I'm not sure how to setup my phone such that it responds to messages like that - I've never tried sending my phone bluetooth messages and I don't know if that would be possible (to go watch to phone via BT and phone to self-hosted server via mobile network). Can I have an app always listening for messages over BT? Hopefully I don't need a PiZero W in my pocket: watch to Pi via BT as a relay, Pi to phone via Wifi hotspot, and phone to self-hosted server via mobile network. Sounds like a lot of work, lol. I'll think about applications for it. They'd have to be pretty awesome.
  
  There are applications that can talk to the Pinetime, maybe you can modify one of them to understand a custom Bluetooth message?
- Just adding a link: https://banglejs.com/
  
  Looks nice!
  You can install new apps from the web or develop your own using JavaScript. All you need is a Web Browser (Chrome, Edge or Opera) and you can upload apps or write code to run on your watch wirelessly!
  However, I find it strange that they only advertise proprietary browsers and no open-source alternatives.

21 comments