"insulin resistance trends" - whaaaaat? how would they do THAT? That would be huge for so many people, including diabetics, obese people or women with PCOS (PCOS alone affects more than 10% of women of reproductive age)

Is that measurement accurate? Like, a person starts taking Metformin -> and a few days later the watch detects a drop in insulin resistance?

That is pretty interesting. I am keen to know in the end whether better models or better sensors win this game.

I’m willing to bet AI made that website and nobody bothered to verify.

I tested out Pixel 3 (or 4 .. i don't remember at this point). The 30 hours is when you have all the functionality enabled all the time. Like the always on display, always on notifications etc ...

I used to auto set the watch into DnD / battery saving mode at night, and used the "raise hand to turn on the display" functionality.. I used to get 3-4 days of continuous use.

Charging used to be like "put the watch into charger after waking up. It'll be ready by the time you get ready for office".

I did miss the 30 day battery life of my Amazfit bip and 2 week battery life of Pebble before that.. but charging once a week wasn't all that bad...

But again, I mostly used my Pixel watch as a fitness tracker. Didn't really care for most of the apps - except maps.

I've been using a Withings Steel HR for 10 years now, the battery still easily last a month, activity tracking is good and has some basic notification support. I can't imagine having another thing to charge daily.

garmin watches are unbeatable for battery life - my Pixel 5 - would last close to a month. now it's close to 2 weeks since it's pretty old now :(.

but Garmin software sucks. my next watch will be an Apple Watch.

The charger on the 4 both sucks and blows. Countless times I’ve taken it off the charger to find 0%.

The nice strap they showed in the adverts broke instantly when I took it out of the box. Two pins sheared right off the in the middle of the band.

WearOS Apps are trash.

I wish I had gone garmin. ;(

I'm enjoying 20 days of battery life on my Pebble Time 2

If it charges fast enough this shouldn't matter. You just charge it while you take a shower and as long as it charges enough for the day it fine.

If all you're looking for is a step counter in your watch, check out Casio ABL100WE. The battery lasts for two years (CR2016).

> I don't want to charge my watch every day

Apple Watch SE 2 has a life of barely 8 hours :-)

Daily charging for normal use isn't so much an issue once it becomes a habit, but battery life during extremely long (24+ hour) activities is pretty much a make-or-break feature for me.

I've done some 50ks and while truthfully I may never do an ultra that requires that much battery life, choosing a device that can't almost feels like admitting defeat. It's kind of stupid but I know I'm not alone in that thought process.

My Apple Watch broke, I replaced it with a Casio with an Ollee Watch board. It doesn’t have the fancy features but it’s so nice to not have to ever think about the battery life! I wish the firmware was open source, there is a few features I would like to tweak a bit

The Garmin Tactix with solar is good.

My WiThings ScanWatch lasts a full month. But it's not a phone-on-my-wrist, it looks more like an analog watch and just has some sensors in it.

I still have the Pixel Watch 2 and it's much the same, battery barely lasts a day, if even that. I didn't know this going in. I had purchased the Pixel 8 I think it was and saw the watch was heavily discounted if I bundled it in so I did. Will never buy another one. I'm a heavily sleeper and need multiple alarms sometimes to wake up and would often use my watch alarm to supplement my phone. So it became a nightly routine of making sure I didn't forget to charge my watch before bed, lest it dies in the middle of the night.

I have the pixel watch 4 and I also hate charging stuff. But I put some double sided tape under the charging cradle and I just put it there at night which I think is good because then I always know where it is as well. So im used to it now. Plus you can buy an extra for travel ex. So im happy with it so far.

Same my 4 year old Huawei watch still goes 2-3 weeks. It seems to be the devices with simpler OS's that last longer and the wearOS and apple equivalent struggle to do more than a day or two.

Especially when Garmin and some other watches last a week or more.

It's less of a big deal than I thought it'd be.

I switched from a Garmin to an Apple Watch - which has less battery life - for some development work I had to do and it turned out I barely noticed.

Charge phone, charge watch, charge headphones just became a nightly checklist.

Keep in mind Google owns Fitbit and Fitbit has watches with 7 day battery life.

Pixel is for techies, Fitbit is their health tracking product.

Yeah I've been using Gadgetbridge[1]-compatible Amazfit watches and they last at least a week and have most functions I want from a smartwatch. For more complicated stuff I just use my phone.

[1]: https://gadgetbridge.org/

> 30 hours of battery life is a deal breaker.

Also quite funny considering they are highlighting the sleep features of the watch quite a bit:

"When it's time to recharge, Pixel Watch 5 and Google Health Coach elevate sleep tracking with 15% more accurate sleep stage detection, bedtime automations that automatically pause audiobooks when you drift off, and a dedicated bedtime watch face. When morning comes, Smart Wake ensures you wake up feeling refreshed. By monitoring your heart rate and movement during the 30 minutes leading up to your alarm, Smart Wake identifies optimal moments of lighter sleep to gently wake you before your set alarm time."

Sounds neat, but uh, how are you supposed to use any of that and also use the watch as a watch with a 30 hour battery life?

My Garmin Instinct 3 Solar watch (which has a display) has a battery life measured in _weeks_.

It really does feel like such a waste. If I switch to Android I might as well toss my Apple Watch out and vice versa. Along with the fact they basically require the phone to do nearly anything.

The round just looks better and far fewer people actively use the interface on the watch other than looking at the time or marking a workout. I think the squircle watches like Apple's look odd.

Google is an ad company. They don't actually want to lose any of the phone screen time on something with lower revenue real estate.

I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-...

> From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right"

So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?

DC Rainmaker has done his own test: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/08/google-pixel-watch-5-gps...

> Only $250 for the LTE version for Google Fi subscribers

Where are you seeing that? I only see $499 with up to $125 off for trade-in.

It would be neat to see the power budget breakdown. I suspect power draw is primarily the oled display, with the "more difficult" health sensors being second.

This was my thought as well. That round watch gif that shows rectangular widgets is painful to look at.

I love the rotating dial UI round Samsung watches used to have.