In 2018, Kim and I travelled to Malaysia around Christmas and New Years. We both purchased a Fossil hybrid watch. The huge advantage in our view was that those watches combined the looks/style of an analogue watch with having some basic tracking and notification options you find in smartwatches.

For me, it’s important to have notifications for calls. I rarely get calls, and they are almost always urgent: it’ll either be Kim to get immediate attention, or a delivery person at our door.

About a year ago, the developers changed one key setting: they no longer made the distinction between calls and messages. In the review I wrote, I tried to illustrate the problem: I get maximum 3 calls per day, I get minimum 3 messages per hour. The whole notification experience has gone from exactly what I was looking for in a watch to my watch being somewhere in storage.

This was my second hybrid Fossil watch, and I had replaced the band quite a few times as well. I was not intent on moving to a different watch at all, but this small UX change pushed me out the door.

I have since switched entirely to my Garmin running watch. I think the Forerunner 55 is great for my runs, but it’s not a nice-looking wearable unless your full identity is “sporty”. So, earlier today, I charged my Collider HR again to see if the UX change I hated is still there. It is, so I’m again removing the app from my phone, and putting the watch in a box. Maybe in a year, I’ll try again.