Google Is ‘Thinking Through’ How to Make the Pixel Watch Repairable
Google Is ‘Thinking Through’ How to Make the Pixel Watch Repairable
The current version of Google’s smartwatch isn’t repairable, but for the first time the company is figuring out how to fix that.
So they have concepts of a plan?
The plan is to have a plan.
We'll have a timeline for the plan to make the plan by next quarter
Nope. I quit their Google bullshit ages ago. Moto 360 was a brutal betrayal.
Get a withings scanwatch or something that is "dumb" enough to be an excellent and nice looking watch, hugely long battery life, and has all the health features that matter.
It looks sharply professional, I charge it once a month, and the updates for it don't constantly make it run worse to push features in a different part of their product line..
Btw there are things called "screws" and they can look cool on a more traditionally male watch or you can put it on the back plate androgynous or female watch. You dont need glue for waterproofing, thats just anti-repair propaganda. Look at every mechanical watch, gshock, garmin, etc they all have screws and 100,200 or even more meters of water resistance. If the battery, screen, back assembly and maybe the buttons are repairable thats already good for a smartwatch.
Make parts available. Right to repair isn't wholly about designing products a certain way, but not allowing apple to monopolize certain parts.
And schematics!
And my axe ! .... I meant firmwares.
Just talk to the iFixit people, they probably already have extensive notes
Actually, how hard can it be? My old cheap ass Casio can have its battery replaced and waterproof already.
Sure, smartwatches have more bells and whistles but not as complicated as a mechanical watch, right?
Not as complicated, but the parts are bigger. Few would want an even bigger smart watch just to get repairability.
It is. Making anything easier to disassemble requires connectors which are a huge tradeoff in terms of space Vs features. Screws take a whole lot of space especially in something you want as thin as possible such as a watch.
Nowadays the direction is embedding of passive and even active components directly into the PCB layers and an increase of the number of layers. That means that if any of them fails there's nothing to be done, or at least not without equipments that cost way too much to be worthwhile to anyone.
In a few years, microelectronic systems will be mostly just one big custom die with the processing units and all accompanying mosfet, inductors, capacitors and resistors directly etched into a 25 layers PCB with barely any surface mounted components. Even lithium batteries can been embedded and most likely will.
If you want something totally serviceable you will have to sacrifice on size.
Sure, but people probably don't expect ram slots on a smart watch. Just a replaceable screen, housing, mobo, dials, and battery would do a lot.
$200 bucks more on the price should do it!
Seems like something you would think about while, you know, designign a product? And not after its release?
Meanwhile, in the engineering dungeon