I was a bit of a holdout for some years, but as they did for what I think is most of society, cell phones pretty much killed watches for me. Carrying a cell phone means that you’ve already got a timepiece in your pocket which you probably already carry everywhere, which automatically syncs time via the cell network (and GPS; I don’t know which actually takes precedence on current phones, actually), handles timezones automatically, handles switching to local time to wherever you are when you move from place to place, handles leap years…it’s tough for a watch to compete with that.
A digital watch has very low power requirements, can run for maybe a couple years off a button cell. That compares pretty favorably to a cell phone. But if you’re willing to deal with charging a cell phone anyway, the timekeeping function is effectively free.
A wristwatch (or, I suppose, smartwatches, if that’s the way you swing) is on one’s wrist, rather than in one’s pocket, so it’s a bit faster to check, and one can do it a bit less unobtrusively. But I just don’t check the time anywhere near enough to warrant that.
And it’s one more thing to deal with, to catch on things, and so forth.
To me, it’s similar to physical books. Yes I could read a book on my phone, and sometimes I do. But there are times and situations where I prefer the original, whether for functionality or just aesthetics.
I was a bit of a holdout for some years, but as they did for what I think is most of society, cell phones pretty much killed watches for me. Carrying a cell phone means that you’ve already got a timepiece in your pocket which you probably already carry everywhere, which automatically syncs time via the cell network (and GPS; I don’t know which actually takes precedence on current phones, actually), handles timezones automatically, handles switching to local time to wherever you are when you move from place to place, handles leap years…it’s tough for a watch to compete with that.
A digital watch has very low power requirements, can run for maybe a couple years off a button cell. That compares pretty favorably to a cell phone. But if you’re willing to deal with charging a cell phone anyway, the timekeeping function is effectively free.
A wristwatch (or, I suppose, smartwatches, if that’s the way you swing) is on one’s wrist, rather than in one’s pocket, so it’s a bit faster to check, and one can do it a bit less unobtrusively. But I just don’t check the time anywhere near enough to warrant that.
And it’s one more thing to deal with, to catch on things, and so forth.
To me, it’s similar to physical books. Yes I could read a book on my phone, and sometimes I do. But there are times and situations where I prefer the original, whether for functionality or just aesthetics.