I haven’t looked too closely at what’s out there in the world of smart watches/bands but a fella at the Microsoft Store demo’d the Band 2 for me and it looked nice. The big Apple watches just look too gaudy to me.
Anyways, I’m looking to solve a simple problem and am hoping one of these might be the solution. I carry my iPhone 6 in my front pocket. Problem is I can’t hear the thing ring when I get a call/text when I’m at the store, fair, bar, theme park, etc.
Even on vibrate my pants or shorts are too loose for me to notice.
Do any of these wrist worn devices connect to your phone via blue tooth then vibrate on your wrist when you get a call/text/e-mail? Bonus points if you can read texts on it?
Don’t know about those ones but the Pebble watch certainly will.
The Apple watch does this.
The Fitbit fitness band does this as well.
Something I’ve noticed is that it takes quite a while for the Fitbit to announce the incoming call - when it does, the phone itself has already been ringing for a few seconds. By the time you get the notification on the band, you only have a couple of rings to answer before it goes to voicemail.
I assume this is because it takes a while to establish the Bluetooth connection to pass the notification of the call to the Fitbit. This might just be a quirk of my particular combination of devices (Fitbit Charge HR and Sony Xperia Z3) - but something to be aware of. If I had to scrabble for the phone in my pocket, I think calls would have rung off by the time I got to them if I was relying on the Fitbit.
The Apple Watch not only rings/vibrates, but you can answer/make calls with it. You can read texts, and you can respond to them by either clicking on a few included canned responses, or dictating a message.
I rarely have my iPhone near me when I’m at home, but I never miss a call/text now as the phone and watch are both connected to the same wi-fi network.
I usually hate those RTFM or “google it” replies to forum questions, but sheesh. Spend half a second finding out for yourself.
What pidgeon92 said.
The Apple Watch does not have a single killer app that justifies its use, but it is the combination of all of the stuff that it does that seals the deal.
I work at home, so I am almost always in my basement office, in a phone dead-zone. The phone is upstairs on a nightstand, where it gets a good signal. I get all my texts, emails, and phone calls on my wrist anywhere in my house.
While I agree with iljitsch about the factual questions here, this is IMHO, so there is definite value in hearing opinions of Dopers who have solved the problem, and more importantly, does the marketing-hyped feature actually work.
All Pebble watches do this, even including the now only $69 original. You can’t actually speak into the watch and carry on a conversation, but I’d feel stupid playing Dick Tracy like that…
You are burdened with too much self-awareness. I certainly look stupid playing Dick Tracy like that, and worse, I arguably am stupid playing Dick Tracy like that. But I feel like [del]Dick Tracy[/del]Captain Kirk, so fuck all you Luddites! 
I think every product that calls itself a smartwatch does this. I’ve owned a Pebble, a couple of Android Gear watches and currently use a Garmin Fenix-3. They all have this capability.
I was looking at the Pebble Time Round and it seemed like a nice basic low profile design. The reviews were good and I thought this was the one.
Then I saw it in person and it’s just too large. It’s over 1.5" in diameter.
So now I’m looking at the Microsoft Band 2. While it’s more of a fitness band than a smart watch it’ll still fit my needs and it looks niver IMHO.
Have you thought about just trying a different, louder ringtone?
Alternately, you could use a bluetooth earpiece. They look dorky, but you’d be the only one to hear the ring/ping.