Smartphones generally either come with a stopwatch app or have the ability to download a free one from whatever app store they use. I have a Motorola Droid X and rummaging through its apps I see that I have a freeware “Stopwatch and Timer” app that I apparently downloaded from the Android Marketplace (where there are about a zillion of them). That “Stopwatch and Timer” app displays its times in tenths-of-a-second.
Likewise, the HTC Incredible’s clock widget has multiple options; the default is the flipcard one you see on all the demo shots, but it has plenty of analog choices that all show the seconds. Oddly, digital displays don’t usually have seconds. I don’t know why.
But my iPhone tells me both the time, and when the train is actually arriving. If it’s 13:36:32, but iCommute says the 13:37 train is still 3 minutes out, I don’t need to run.
Obviously there aren’t apps for all such situations. But there really aren’t that many other situations where I desperately need to know the exact time in a hurry.
My iPhone does, both on the lockscreen and on the menubar. I don’t remember if I had to jailbreak it for either or both, but I did jailbreak, so it doesn’t really matter.
This is another good point. My iPhone automatically keeps itself very close to the correct time. When I used to wear a watch, I had to manually set it every month or so. Although I can’t remember when I ever got in trouble for being 3 seconds off because of my watch. (On the other hand, I can remember trouble from being an hour off because my watch didn’t automatically adjust for DST…)
On my iPhone, I’m using a Cydget that’s designed to look like the HTC Incredible flip clock, but has seconds. I’ve had a few HTC users come up to me to ask how I got the seconds there, only to realize I had an iPhone.
Android phones must have a way to replace the widget with custom third-party choices, right?
I wear a wristwatch both for simple functionality as well as an accessory, despite having the tendency to look at my phone for both timepiece and non-timepiece related functions
um, yes, and we don’t have to do anything like jailbreaking.
I’ve never worn a watch because I think they are ugly and bothersome (I don’t wear jewelry either), and I don’t usually carry my cell phone with me. There are clocks everywhere, I have a good sense of time, and I’m so seldom in situations like the OP described where I need to know how many minutes and seconds I have immediately. I don’t cut it close with appointments or with my commute, when I have one (right now I work on the block I live on).
I will say that most people I know who are always checking the time don’t have what I consider good reasons to be doing so. It’s a personality thing, some folks are just obsessive about the time. Down to the second? I plan to ensure that nothing in my life comes down to making it where I need to go within seconds, that’s stressful.
Using a phone for one of its other functions while somebody is speaking to you isn’t as offensive as checking the time while somebody is speaking to you?
If anything, I’d think it was the other way round–checking the time is pretty quick, but other functions take longer and probably represent a greater attention departure from the talk at hand.
I carry my smartphone with me nearly everywhere, but I still wear a watch for exactly the reason the OP discusses. The ease and quickness with which I can glance down at my watch versus digging my phone out of my pocket and hitting the button make wearing the “redundant” device well worth it to me.
I don’t generally live a high-powered, every-second-accounted-for life, but sometimes ya just wanna know what time it is.
My watch broke several months ago, and I decided to try the watchless lifestyle. 
I found that didn’t like it, and within a couple of weeks bought a new cheap watch.
Yeah, I know. But I know the Android community hasn’t pushed customization as far as the jailbroken-iPhone community (or at least hadn’t as of the last time I checked into it, which is nearly a year ago). And I figure people who buy Android+Sense instead of stock Android might be even less into customization. So, it’s plausible that there would be no third-party clock widgets. Which is why I asked.
PS, This is way off topic, but the huge number of skins and widgets and so on for the jailbroken iPhone is more curse than blessing. Besides the fact that most of them are either ugly or less functional than what they replace, they make Cydia’s recent packages/updates nearly useless. I wish there were separate sources for skinning/etc., apps that show up on the home screen, and extensions/console programs/everything else.
I believe having a high quality precision timepiece is something most adult men should have.
But if you make it just a tiny bit harder, you’ll find that you really don’t want to know nearly as often as you thought you did.
I made the change back in the mid-90s. I’d been wearing a watch since I was a kid, but when my latest Casio calculator/temperature/etc. watch died, I realized that I was already carrying a pager, a cellphone, and a Palm that could all show me the time, and I decided not to get a watch. It took a few months to get used to it, but once I did, I was glad I had.
Then I just needed to get those other 3 (or more, at times) devices down into one, which didn’t really happen until the Treo almost a decade later.
My battery died and I miss my watch. More because it had an electronic compass, altimeter, a couple of alarms, count down timer and a stopwatch. All of these functions I use a lot. The smart phone can do most of these (not the altimeter that I know of), but not as efficiently. That said, I haven’t fixed the battery for over a month.
But a regular watch, especially a vanity watch, is laughably easy to replace with my phone.
Think of it as a return to the pocketwatch. With a phone added.
Me too.
I have one. It also makes phone calls and surfs the web.
Agreed. I have a couple of fairly nice watches.
I just do not wear them every day. I have no need to wear them every day. I would rather they not be banged up every day.
This. Until what like 150 years ago, everyone who had a watch had to pull it out of their pocket to look at it. Or some people wore little ones pinned to their shoulders, right? So the smartphone is like a pocketwatch for now, only a lot more useful. And no chain.
I’ve never worn a watch. And I pretty much never carry my cell phone.
why? Other than “everyone should do what I do,” of course. I mean, should we also go back to being required to wear shirt and tie to work, no matter our jobs? What about hats? should we have to wear hats too?