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I screwed up! & small review
- Thread starter lparsons21
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I used to wear contacts and use reading glasses but switching to varifocals has changed my life - I can finally glance down at the watch or iPhone and actually see what's on the screen
As much as I loved the S0, It didn’t hurt to pass it my little sister after receiving the S3. Main reason SPEED! Secondly, battery life on S0 is just OK! Least of all, I didn’t jump on the S2 and thought hey, why not when there are some considerable improvements from my original series.
Got an email from Swing by Swing Golf GPS folks and they indicated nothing in the works for improving the Apple Watch app. Also tried two other Golf GPS apps today and all suffer from the same issues. Slow to update location and overall operation is slow, and all require the phone to be running their phone app and the phone being within range. That just is not satisfactory at all.
So I ordered a Garmin Approach S20 Golf GPS watch. Not as versatile as the Watch 3, but gets superb reviews for golf. No color on the golfing stuff, but that isn't critical IMO. @$200 it is fairly priced IMO.
Don't yet know what I'll do about the Watch 3. The lifeline services that are available are really nice and at least one of the fall detection devices is reasonably priced @$7/month. But do they work properly on the LTE version of the Watch with no phone around and is it worth the $10/month to the carrier to have the blasted thing work on its own?
I'm leaning heavily to returning the Watch 3 and wait for apps to catch up with the better performance and work with the LTE as a standalone.
So I ordered a Garmin Approach S20 Golf GPS watch. Not as versatile as the Watch 3, but gets superb reviews for golf. No color on the golfing stuff, but that isn't critical IMO. @$200 it is fairly priced IMO.
Don't yet know what I'll do about the Watch 3. The lifeline services that are available are really nice and at least one of the fall detection devices is reasonably priced @$7/month. But do they work properly on the LTE version of the Watch with no phone around and is it worth the $10/month to the carrier to have the blasted thing work on its own?
I'm leaning heavily to returning the Watch 3 and wait for apps to catch up with the better performance and work with the LTE as a standalone.
I have tried other golf GPS devices - even the ones built in to a buggy - and I don't trust any of them. They can esily be off by 10 yards, which is a whole club on an approach shot, and don't give you distance to where the flag actually is. Instead, I got a laser range finder and get exact, point-to-point distances. Unfortunately, now I have one less thing on which to blame my crappy golf...
LOL!! Fully understand the 'crappy golf' sentiment! The group of old farts I play with have 'special' rule to help with that!! Range finders don't work well for me as my hands shake a bit much. And 10yds off? Not a problem, I'm usually at least that much off with my shots anyway!!
Lifeline services - fall detection app - Currently the one I'm looking at requires the phone to be within range and the watch acts as a 'remote' to it. So having an LTE watch becomes even less needed. Here's the one I'm considering if I keep the watch :
https://www.fallsafetyapp.com/blog/apple-watch-fall-detection
Lifeline services - fall detection app - Currently the one I'm looking at requires the phone to be within range and the watch acts as a 'remote' to it. So having an LTE watch becomes even less needed. Here's the one I'm considering if I keep the watch :
https://www.fallsafetyapp.com/blog/apple-watch-fall-detection
You should hire a developer and tell him what you want. Then when he’s done sell the app on the App Store and recoup all your money and then some. J/K
I suppose not many developers golf. It sounds like an untapped market.
i suspect that at least some of the golf gps apps will eventually do something to take advantage of the LTE version of the watch. I wonder if they had enough lead time with it as I suspect that would be a fairly big undertaking. Seems the Watch 3 has all the sensors and radios needed inside it to make it doable.
But screen size will limit some things that could be done. Golfshot does a simplistic drawing of each hole which is more than Swing by Swing and Golf Logix do. Of course the presentation on the phone is much more detailed and offers more things you can do, but that's to be expected.
My Garmin Golf GPS watch should be here this afternoon and I'm looking forward to seeing how they accomplish all of it within the watch.
But screen size will limit some things that could be done. Golfshot does a simplistic drawing of each hole which is more than Swing by Swing and Golf Logix do. Of course the presentation on the phone is much more detailed and offers more things you can do, but that's to be expected.
My Garmin Golf GPS watch should be here this afternoon and I'm looking forward to seeing how they accomplish all of it within the watch.
Heard a lot of nasty stuff about the software on the Garmins but yeah let us know.
Golfshot could work great without any data at all if you just had the ability to sync some of your favourite courses on the device like on the iPhone (I’ve used my iPhone for golfing a lot of times traveling where I synced the courses before leaving the hotel)
Just from observation it seems that all or most of the golf gps apps for the watch are actually using data shared from the phone via bluetooth. Golfshot indicated that I could use the GPS inside the watch by turning off bluetooth. I didn't actually try that today. That has the potential of quicker updating of distances as you move. Golfshot was the quickest to update distances on the Watch 3, but still lagged quite a bit.
Got the Garmin Approach S20 yesterday, and tried a different golf app on the Watch/iPhone.
The Garmin works quite well and keeps up just fine, but it is VERY fiddly which makes it less than handy on the course. IOW, takes too much time to switch to the various screens. But all of it works fine otherwise.
The new to me app I tried today is TrackMyGolf. It is the only Golf GPS app for the Watch that does all that it offers for the Watch, completely on the Watch. Keeping score, distances to the front/center/back of the green and automatic swing tracking are some of the good features. The GPS seems very accurate and keeps up with you as you move better than any of the other golf GPS apps I've seen so far. It also mates up to the iPhone version which is more fully featured.
The only real downside I found is that to use it on the Watch you have to subscribe to the 'Pro' features. $4.99/month or $18.99(?) per year is about the same as most of the other Golf GPS apps for their 'Pro' features. They do have a 7-day free trial of their Pro features so you can test it out. Well worth trying IMO.
The Garmin works quite well and keeps up just fine, but it is VERY fiddly which makes it less than handy on the course. IOW, takes too much time to switch to the various screens. But all of it works fine otherwise.
The new to me app I tried today is TrackMyGolf. It is the only Golf GPS app for the Watch that does all that it offers for the Watch, completely on the Watch. Keeping score, distances to the front/center/back of the green and automatic swing tracking are some of the good features. The GPS seems very accurate and keeps up with you as you move better than any of the other golf GPS apps I've seen so far. It also mates up to the iPhone version which is more fully featured.
The only real downside I found is that to use it on the Watch you have to subscribe to the 'Pro' features. $4.99/month or $18.99(?) per year is about the same as most of the other Golf GPS apps for their 'Pro' features. They do have a 7-day free trial of their Pro features so you can test it out. Well worth trying IMO.
I started this thread as a screwup by ordering the gps Watch vice the LTE version. But what I’ve found out is that for the things I really want to use the watch for, the gps version is more than good enough. That’s because of the golf gps apps and the fall detection needing the phone to get full functionality
So I’ve saved $70 upfront and the monthly fee from the carriers.
So I’ve saved $70 upfront and the monthly fee from the carriers.
While I get your point, I'm a watch guy and really don't want an alu version... The steel feels a lot more like a real watch to me... Might skip S3 because of the lack of LTE/Steel sales in Denmark all together but we'll see
If you use Siri, the difference is night and day. The whole UI is much more fluid, which affects also things like notifications or changing the watchface.
I left S0 for an S2 because I was too impatient with how slow S0 felt to the touch (pun intended
). Now S3 brings the user experience to a new level again, especially with Siri. I can easily imagine how big of a jump it must be, going from S0 to S3 directly.Plus - the massively faster CPU goes back to sleep much earlier on S3, so the battery time should be significantly better on S3 over S0, presuming identical use profiles.