Qualcomm Toq Smart Watch
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,842 words · ~9 min read
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to open up my review of The qualcom Talk Smartwatch guys please the pronunciation
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is talk like tick tock not to at least
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until they release a Bob Marley Edition the number of people who have said that
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to
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me The Cooler Master glacer 240l CPU
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Cooler delivers the convenience of an all-in-one and the performance of a
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custom water cooler click now to learn more all right so front and center on
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the talk is the 1 55 in mirol display
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with a responsive accurate glass touchcreen that was much more difficult
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to scratch than the plastic one on my Pebble the main selling points of
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Mirasol are its power efficiency its visibility in direct sunlight and the
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fact that it's color rather than monochrome all in all it is an
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exceptional technology and I'm very excited to see Next Generation e-readers
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and other smart devices that use it I do think qualcomm's marketing materials
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have oversold it a bit though they're working on refining it but for now the
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colors while present are not nearly as
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vibrant as the promotional videos would have you believe now when it comes to
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Performance Qualcomm isn't really talking about the hardware inside but
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booting it up is fast navigation is Snappy so I guess I don't really care
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what processor is inside or how much RAM it has more important to me is power
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efficiency and I got similar battery life on my talk as I did on my Pebble
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with its black and white display so you can color me impressed there pun
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intended my only issue with the battery life is that I really don't know how it
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would compare if the backlight behaved
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the way that I want it to among the glaring emissions in qualcomm's
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companion Android app is any kind of meaningful backlight Behavior adjustment
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you can set the double tap speed um and
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the timeout time but brightness control is missing as is accelerometer based
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activation like the Pebbles wrist flick and there's also no option to have the
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backlight illuminate automatically when a notification is received instead if
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it's dark out I actually have to manually turn on the backlight it might
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seem like a minor complaint but if you consider how prominently the always on
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nature of the display so you can glance at your wrist and see what's on it at
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any time featured in qualcomm's marketing it's obvious that they
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understand the importance of not needing to touch it or do some contrived gesture
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in order to read it so hopefully that'll be added soon so let's talk everyday use
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the included wireless charging dock see unfolds like that is a big plus it uses
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y power Le which boasts support for multiple devices at the same time and
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with a larger charging field compared to Chi the clock flips 90° making it easy
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to read on your bedside table and honestly the only thing missing here is
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again a backlight thing is the option to keep the backlight on when it's charging
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so it can completely replace the clock on my nightstand the fact that it's
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waterproof is also great I actually didn't know that yet when I was giving
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the baby a bath one night and I realized I was wearing it so Panic moment there
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but to my relief it is indeed waterproof
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it's also definitely a head turner I get a lot of people asking me about it which
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is fun for techn files with the pebble people are like what the heck is that
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whereas with this people are like oh that's cool what is that and I mean as
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much as that might have something to do with my Pebble being bright orange either way you know I got to give credit
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where credit is due people liked it they asked about it and it's fun the vibrate
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is both easy to feel and not unnecessarily loud um as I said before
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it's very responsive which leads us to the main menu uh each icon on the main
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screen represents an applet which is their name for an app there aren't
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really many available but what is there works pretty well there's weather uh
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stock checking message log call history and of course music control which I use
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a lot navigation is super intuitive just
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swipe from the sides when you want to go back or forward and I really liked being
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able to go back into my notification history much more easily than with my
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Pebble where things just kind of seemed to disappear there is one thing I
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noticed that must be a bug though
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individual emails show up and you can click on them and read the email when
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you have multiple emails that arrive at sort of at around the same time you are
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stuck with just a preview of both of them and you can't click further to read
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the actual emails that is absolutely brutal I should be able to just tap to
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see the whole thing not be stuck at the screen staring at a couple of different
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subject lines the only complaint I really have physically then is that for
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me it's just not very comfortable the clasp which contains the battery is
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bulky enough to be uncomfortable when I'm typing and the wrist strap sizing
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just didn't quite work well for me on the fourth hole it was floppy and all
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over the place over the bones in my wrist but on the third hole it's a bit
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tight and it also actually sits a little crooked on my wrist this would be less
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of a concern if it was possible to readjust sizing through trial and error
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but qualcomm's completely insane approach to sizing requires the user to
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actually physically cut the non
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replaceable strap to size so you got to
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get it right the first time or it's going to be too small and I don't know
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what you would do with it I mean I understand why the strap can't be
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replaced there are actually buttons built into it above and below the watch
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face that control the backlight and the main menu but honestly I don't really
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like this implementation anyway the touch points are not clearly marked and
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they're both small enough that I often miss them when casually reaching for
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them while being big enough that I often hit them accidentally when I'm adjusting
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the watch on my wrist or using the touchcreen but I could accept the
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non-replaceable strap buttons If Qualcomm would at least let me configure
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their functionality the backlight could easily be handled by the onboard
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accelerometer with motion control like the pebble or even a sharp tap anywhere
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on the device and menu could be handled by I don't know swiping in from a side
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or the top or a a long user configurable
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tap and hold or even left the way it is then I could bind those buttons to
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something else or nothing at all just give me the option overall though it's a
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really cool device and I genuinely want it to seed but the bad news is that the
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software really needs some work which would be fine except that I'm just not
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sure that I feel like they're focused on the right things right now 4 days before
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filming this they added a half-hearted activity monitor to it presumably
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because that's trendy right now but there are still other outstanding issues
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that range from profoundly problematic like the fact that I can only preview my
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emails rather than read them um all the way down to small things that are just
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amusing like the way it puts an apostrophe and and a small o rather than
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a zero in for the time on some of the watch faces and I'm just kind of sitting
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there I'm going like quc come it's 2:00 but it's not 205 it made me feel like an
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Irishman was reading the time to me whenever I was looking at my watch but
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there is good news it could be worse at least the vast majority of my complaints
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can be fixed through software updates they can as long as they go in the right
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direction it's just that I feel like it's going to be hard to sell a a fixed
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device when every revieww of it is based on the flawed earlier software revision
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for qualcomm's own sake and for the sake of their early adopters I wish they had
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refined this stuff first or at least been more competitive on the price at
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$350 it's $100 more than a Pebble Steel
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with its more mature app ecosystem um but it does at least offer a color
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display so there's that it's more than a Galaxy gear which has abysmal battery
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life this one doesn't I easily Got 5 days out of it but the gear does offer a
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wider range of functionality with its camera speaker microphone Etc and
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consider this at $350 these aren't really similar
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products but I can't ignore that we're getting pretty close to just buying some
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other luxury electronic toy like a PlayStation 4 or a 32 gig Nexus 5 I mean
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this is a NextGen gaming system we're talking about or a full-fledged
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smartphone with a 1080p display premium processor from Qualcomm no less wireless
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charging the whole 9 yards overall I like the talk and I think it has
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potential but in its current state if I've got a finite amount of money to
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spend talk will have a hard time winning it from me guys thanks for watching my
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Talk review like and share the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked
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