Watch Faces, Yet Again

[canalrun]

I have owned a half-dozen Smart watches and bands including the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Xiaomi Mi Band 7.

The Charge 5 beats them in some areas, but falls short in others.

As others have mentioned I would like to see more watch faces designed for simplicity and functionality rather than impressive graphics. I would love to see a watch face, like I had on the Mi Band, that had an icon to show the battery charge state and an icon that showed a small version of the clock telling if an alarm was on.

For example, take the current "Ripple" watch face. Get rid of those purple ripples, move the time to the right, use the column remaining at the left to show a smaller version of the orange or grayed clock icon and beneath it an icon for the charge state. Leave the top and bottom fields untouched.

It would be great to have support for Charge 5 watch faces as part of the development SDK.

It would be nice to be able to reorder the apps shown when you swipe left/right or up/down.

When you swipe up the charge state icon is ridiculously small. Only less than half of the available screen width is used and more height could be used. Switching to 2-letter abbreviations for the day and month would allow the day/date to be on one line instead of two.

[Edmond]

How do you like the mi band 7

[canalrun]

I like the Mi Band 7 a lot. It's very similar to the Charge 5.

The display is somewhat larger, but it's more tall and narrow so it's debatable whether there is more actual screen real estate or not.

There is a greater selection of watch faces for the Mi. My main use for bands is sleep tracking and the alarm app (also HR and steps). The Mi Band had a watch face that showed if an alarm was on or not and also the battery charge.

The battery in the Mi lasted about 7 days for me. I've only had the Charge 5 for a few days, but it looks like I'm on a trajectory for 5 days.

The sleep tracking in the Mi did not work too well for me. It usually ended way before I actually woke up. The sleep tracking is why I gave the Charge 5 a try. The Charge 5 seems to be little better and it also allows you to edit the sleep start and end times and apply them to the data collected. I'm still playing with this, but it looks interesting.

I'm far less interested in the fitness aspects of the bands, so I really can't comment too much on that. The software between the two seems to be a toss-up. The Mi may have a few more software functions, but the Charge has a little more detail in each function and has the online Fitbit.com.

I think the Mi is about half the price.

[Edmond]

Hows the spo2 function on mi? can you edit the sleep time on mi if it stopped earlier.

yes the clock faces of mi is much better. And seems mi can link data with apple health which i love very much

the price of mi at my country is around 1/5 of charge 5 and thats why i want to give it a try

[canalrun]

The values reported for SPO2 on the Mi might be a little low. For example, for me, it usually showed the low 90s and once in a while the mid-80s, but I know I'm usually 97 or better. I didn't really take the time to make sure the watch was positioned properly on my wrist. You may get better numbers if you're a little more careful.

You could manually take an SPO2 reading on the Mi.

The Mi has other software goodies like re-ordering the app shortcuts when you scroll.

I don't think the Mi had a "sleep mode" so my watch would sometimes buzz if I got a Notification in the middle of the night.

I did not see a way to edit sleep times using the Mi software. I am happy that I stumbled upon that on the Charge 5. If I ever go back to the Mi, the first thing I will do is look more closely for a way to edit sleep times.

[Edmond]

If you do manual spo2 check is it accurate?

that sleeping time editing sounds like a big issue, other than that mi sounds like a much better replacement for me. 

[canalrun]

The numbers from the Mi seems to be a little low compared to the numbers received from a finger-clip-on device. For example the Mi will report low to mid 90s while a dedicated clip-on device reports high 90s. This would be in a manual measurement.

But I've only done less than five measurements and I was not careful about how the band was worn on the wrist.

I don't know if there was sleep time editing on the Mi - don't think so.

Today the Charge 5 reported two different sessions of sleep, 4 AM – 7 AM and 9 AM – 12:30 PM. I was less successful editing that into a single sleep session of 4 AM – 12:30 PM, but I will keep playing.

[canalrun]

I went back to the Mi Band 7 to give it another try.

The software is a little nicer, the vibration seems a hair stronger, there are more functions, and the clock faces are nicer.

I looked more closely at editing the sleep times. I does have it at the bottom of the sleep details page (show Day data) of the Zepp Life Android app. I will have to try with fresh data.

I did a manual SpO2 and it again seemed a little low. I did a manual heart rate and that seemed accurate.