Una GPS smart watch – Repairable, USB-C charging, developer-friendly
unawatch.com74 points by pimterry 6 hours ago
74 points by pimterry 6 hours ago
> "UNA is currently a non-submersible device due to its innovative modular design. So, swimming is not something we offer as an activity, nor do we advise it. UNA is IPX5 rated, which means it is splash & showerproof to a high degree."
If I had a dollar for every time some project that was ipx5 rated failed after getting caught in the rain one too many times...I'd have enough to buy another Garmin Fenix.
Yeah that's a non-starter, I don't ever wanna worry about that in a watch. And putting "designed for lifetime" next to it is just hilarious, where are you gonna trek with no water, from bathroom to kitchen ?
I just finished swimming, tracked by a Garmin Forerunner 910x which I bought back in 2015 and I have been constantly using since. Wrist band replaced once each side. Battery lifetime still amazing, even with longer bike rides and GPS. Data can be analyzed locally. Uptime since I bought it: almost 100%.
Amazing peace of Hardware.
Also their algorithms are cool. If the watch tells me to rest more than 24 hours, I know, I will be tired the next day.
The two features that I miss are built in heartrate monitor and temperature sensor. I payed around 500€ back then. Over the years I use this watch, the price became very reasonable.
i have a fenix solar, i charge it once a month.
it has an insane number of features
I like this a lot. USB-C is obviously not ideal for a super durable plug but with the right cap (sounds like they use a rubber insert?) it could be great. Especially since it would allow direct data access.
What might be cool for a version 2:
1. Custom hardshell "door" to cover the USB-C port. Something that cannot fall off the watch. The port itself could be well sealed like a phone and then have this additional layer of physical protection.
2. Wireless charging of some type (or even add pogo pin as well). Would be nice to top up charge without having to expose the USB-C and probably increase the plug life. Does this require a glass back? Because obviously that would not be ideal in a watch.
3. Better waterproofing. I dont personally use my Garmin for swimming often but would be nice to not have to worry about it.
Anybody know about the battery life in real world use?
For me the value of Garmin (Forerunner) is their proprietary algorithm for calculating Stress Level from HRV. It is the basis for the Body Battery measure. I find it useful to see how food and activity affects my stress levels.
I guess it would be possible to reverse engineer a similar stress level calculation. Perhaps AI-powered?
I'm not sure the body battery/stress measures are that great. Garmin is infamous for having an awful sleep algo and it still has a lot of trouble detecting naps. It doesn't bode well for being able to get stress data. I think it's good for generally determining high stress vs low stress and when you've overdone exercise recently but probably not much more.
Body battery is amazing. I had long COVID/ME/CFS, and looking at the body battery when waking up was an outstanding predictor of how my day was going to be. When I hit 5% body battery, I was really feeling horrible.
It's just a collation of sleep-end RHR/HRV. It's completely trivial and many manufacturers do this correctly; both are extremely reliable predictors of recovery metrics.
Garmin has absolutely shitty sleep tracking but it doesn't matter; any wearable more or less nowadays can get static heart rate correct, leading to more or less accurate recovery metrics.
"Collect every paper you can find on RHR/HRV/etc. recovery metrics. Develop an algorithm for predicting recovery score per day based on the research" as a prompt to a Codex or Claude agent can probably get you 98-100% of the way there.
If the algorithm is proprietary, how do you know it is calculating something meaningful?
HRV from optical is garbage-in garbage-out
and post-2020 Garmin has totally lost their way with development/algorithms
Yes, and the sleep tracking that adds or subtracts. While not super accurate, it's good enough for me.
> Can I swim with UNA?
> UNA is currently a non-submersible device due to its innovative modular design. So, swimming is not something we offer as an activity, nor do we advise it. UNA is IPX5 rated, which means it is splash & showerproof to a high degree.
Damn. But hopefully they improve on that. I would absolutely be considering one if this wasn't the case
that's the thing about these "open" devices, there's always one "would absolutely be considering" use case that they never meet. makes it real easy to not buy one ;)
Some good points were already brought up in the comments (IP5X, USB C charging), but I have the feeling that it's also just not a good fitness tracker/smartwatch.
I see a single unboxing of the watch from three weeks ago on Youtube and zero reviews on YT or websites. Just posts based on their PR release that it's available now. (Though some clearly already shipped.)
Thus, it's unfortunately very likely that the product is also not good at its main purpose, tracking activities, workouts and health. If it would only even come somewhat close to the performance of all the competitor smartwatches/trackers, they'd be louder about that part.
Is there any good watch outside doing GPS for position and time, minus all the body survzeilance things?
>"non-submersible" - this right away excludes it from even considering for me.
Any "open ecosystem" product needs to be a competitive product out of the box, otherwise it's just a development toy. Developers aren't going to enhance your product to fill in all the gaps unless there are customers, and preferably paying ones.
If it has a flashlight and is beyond waterproof, I would maybe consider it.
My Garmin Epix watch is practically bullet proof. I've dove with it in open ocean. I've jet skied with it. I rock climb with it. It's surived 108miles of Unbound (the race) in mud, sun, sweat. I've water rafted with it. I've swam in crappy lakes, streams and jumped off cliffs. Hottubs? also no problem.
Zero chance a iWatch would ever survive these conditions.
Oh and despite all of this, the screen has not scratched, not even a little. Plus it has 5-10 days of battery life... and did I mention I always have a flashlight on me?
Zero chance a iWatch would ever survive these conditions.
Mine survives such things just fine.
My Garmin Epix watch is practically bullet proof.
And your Epix cost about twice as much as the Una watch does.
> the screen has not scratched
I believe this the least!
Same. Both have plenty of scratches here.
I also don't see why an Apple Watch wouldn't survive all those mentioned things. Pretty sure I did all those things with an Apple Watch on, except for the specific 108 mile gravel race. But I don't see why it would fail that.
And both might absolutely scratch while climbing, and if you're unlucky and hit it in the wrong spot, also crack.
That said, if I were an athlete in any of those categories and did it all the time, I'd still absolutely choose a Garmin.
the sapphire screens are incredibly resilient. mine looks brand new and is several years old. tested against plenty of bouldering
They are, they still scratch though (just google e.g. Fenix 7 Sapphire scratches). It's also not on all models. I guess part of it is also just layers on top of it scratching and not the sapphire itself.
But, Apple Watch Ultras and also Titanium models since Series 6? ship with Sapphire crystal too.
i have one too with a sapphire screen (fenix 7). the watch is beaten up but the screen looks brand new. really phenomenal watches.
I've wasted so much money on vendor charging cables in the past 10 years while traveling or moving that I would probably buy this just for the USB-C port, assuming it is actually splash proof.
I wonder what HR sensor they use. Samsung apparently has an average error of 7% which is pretty bad, so I wonder if this would be worse. [0]
[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/i-ran-30-miles-testing-5-sm...
I really want to like this watch. Price is certainly right, and it does all of the things I'd want out of a Garmin or Apple Watch Ultra. But what problem does this solve for me? In the Apple Watch use case, a replaceable battery would be nice. But in contrast to Garmin, I've never replaced a Garmin because the battery wouldn't hold charge anymore. I've never broken a screen (if one has a habit of that, Garmin and Apple make watches with raised bezels). I just hold on to the Garmin for six or seven years, by which time it's so beat to hell that it's time for a new watch anyway. But I'm wondering if the subtle message isn't aimed at Apple and not Garmin.
USB-C charging would be awesome, instead of Garmin's proprietary plug and a cable that's made from spider silk. I'd prefer, though, wireless charging like Apple. Never once have I pulled an Apple Watch off a charger and said, "WTF? Why didn't it charge?" Garmin, OTOH...
I'm no triathlete, but the "no swimming" kinda puts a damper on my enthusiasm as well.
I wish them well, I love the idea even if I probably won't buy one.
The charging situation with Garmin is terrible, enough that when Venu quits charging I might go for the Apple Watch or anything that takes a charge...
And it's always been terrible, as long as I've been using Garmin watches (their bike computers seem to charge fine, mainly because they use whatever the standard USB plug is at the time). I remember the 410 had some suckass plug that didn't work well. I think it was the 610 with that gawd awful clip. And the 9xx series continues to use that delicate snowflake plug that has to plug in juuuuust right, maybe wiggle the cable a little, otherwise no 5 hour Sunday run for you.
Whereas I throw my Apple Watch in the general vicinity of the magnetic charger, it locks into place, and charges just fine, 100% of the time. Fine, don't use induction like Apple, use two exposed, flush pins and a magnet like my Coros armband HR monitor, because that works 100% of the time, too.
USB-C would suck. Part of the purpose of that proprietary plug is that it's very water resistant and very durable. Imagine getting mud or coarse sand in your USB plug and not being able to charge anymore.
For me, I want an open API I can pull my data from. Last I checked, you have to be a business to use Garmin's API.
Apple certainly doesn't let you.
My goal is to have a cron that runs on my homelab that pulls my health data into a DB I own, from various sources, and visualize it in Grafana.
Apple certainly doesn't let you.
There are several apps[0] off the top of my head that pull data from Apple's HealthKit. Apple even has a framework for it: HealthKit. That said, I've never written to that API myself, but it observational evidence indicates that you can pull data from Apple just fine. The app I use to pull data off Apple and ship to Strava says as much.
[0] RunGap and HealthFit
Polar has an API where you can get more or less anything out. That bit is fine - sadly you can't put things in (like virtual cycling, or any activities not recorded on the Polar).
you can use https://github.com/cyberjunky/python-garminconnect to pull your data from garmin, I've been using it daily with no issues
This is cool because we need more open competition for the app/identity locked ecosystems of sports related electronics like gps watches, bike computers, and action cams. I hate how none of the major brand ones will work without at least signing up for an account and most wont work at all without the manufacturers app.
They hardly even mention the software, but isn't that half the value of Garmin devices?
Why is it round?!? WHY?
Round watches are bad. A circle is the worst shape for watches. Good watches are not round. Roundness is an anti-feature.
Really. Just use a rounded rectangle shape. It will end up _smaller_.
I do like the idea of USB-C, the garmin's power plug is nothing but annoying. It's really just a matter of battery life and what sort of software integration it has. Although, it's hard to beat the Garmin ecosystem.
I think battery life is the most important. My Garmin Instinct 2 goes about 3.5 weeks between charging (the older non-OLED screen). It has solar, so I usually go over a month.
But a watch, something people will wear swimming, sweaty, in the rain, etc, is something that should ideally follow the wireless charging standards, and not have a plug taking up space, and being a spot for leaks...
And I just bought a Garmin Forerunner 55, too. I'm still within the return period, will have to consider this...
Specs don't make it clear if it supports BLE sensors (HR strap, power meter,... ).
One of the tiles on the buy page says "HR BAND SUPPORT Connect compatible BLE chest straps". But one single connection type doesn't compare to Garmin's list of supported ANT and BLE accessories.
I have an Amazfit Balance, and previously several Amazfit Bips. I really like being able to use my watch as a BLE heartrate monitor with iSmoothRun on iPhone. I gather that being able to do so is not typical for smartwatches.
USB-C really does not make sense for such a device. It's significantly too bulky and is hard to get water proof
Is it hard to get waterpoof, considering that every modern smart phone is both usb-c and waterproof? Important to note that this watch doesn't claim to be waterproof.
> considering that every modern smart phone is both usb-c and waterproof?
I doubt that modern smart phones are waterproof. Who would trust use their smartphone while showering or being in a bathtube (including submerging the smartphone a few centimeters into the water)?
I dive in the ocean regularly with my Kyocera DuraForce Pro. I take underwater photos and videos with it. It works just fine.
2.5MB RAM, FreeRTOS!
The title is misleading at least, to compete with garmin you need the similar offering, with swimming/waterproofing being the huge outliar here but also the ecosystem and like it or not features like the notifications.
Very valiant first effort for sure but after 6 years with a Garmin Fenix still holding 90% of its battery (and being able to replace it), I'm not their potential customer.
We removed "Garmin" from the title and used some representative language from the site.
I would say the big outlier is the battery life (for Garmin). Theres other options for waterproof stuff and a lot dont need something good enough for swimming. Of course its a huge plus.
All of that stuff is the norm in the industry. There isn't anything remarkable about it.
> but after 6 years with a Garmin Fenix still holding 90% of its battery (and being able to replace it), I'm not their potential customer.
What kind of battery life did you have when you bought it, and how long is it now?
Does Garmin still upgrade the firmware?
Garmin doesn't really upgrade the firmware after the next model release.
But you'd be a fool to believe a hardware startup would do so anyway.
Can you analyze the data your watch and body generates locally using FOSS without uploading it all to surveillance capitalists? That'd be the true alternative.
> without uploading it all to surveillance capitalists
I by now often see the term "surveillance capitalists"/"surveillance capitalism" on HN.
While it is a great thing to fight surveillance organizations, don't forget that communist countries had/have (for the latter: People's Republic of China) much worse surveillance in place.