In his iPhone 15 announcement reaction, Carl Pei revealed why he dislikes smartwatches and doesn’t use them himself. To him, he doesn’t like the idea of having even more notifications and being even more connected all the time since the ethos of Nothing and Nothing OS is to give control back to the users and make them interact with their devices more purposefully again.
However, Carl is wrong about that. Despite brands’ marketing claims, smartwatches do the opposite of what he is describing: Smartwatches don’t give you more notfications - they show you the same notifications as before. Instead, they enable you to check on the notifications with less committment, i.e. without having to take out your phone.
90% of the time, notifications are unimportant enough that you can just save them for later or ignore them altogether - but when you have already taken out your phone to view them, you are highly likely to deal with them right away. And once you have done that, you are likely to visit other apps and check up on more things while you’re at it with your phone anyway.
Viewing the notifications on the small smartwatch screen, makes you aware of how unimportant most notifications are and make you take out your phone less often. Thus, they fit perfectly with the Nothing OS mindset.
And, needless to say, creating an own smartwatch, would allow Nothing to design a smartwatch that is even more geared towards that mindset.
I know, the idea of a Nothing smartwatch is nothing new but I found it topical again since Carl’s latest statements and I did not see people get in depth on that conceptual viewpoint of what a smartwatch is in this forum here yet.
