The Alcatel OneTouch Go Watch promises an interesting mix of features at a very affordable price for a smartwatch. Even though it was announced internationally about a year back, the watch can be seen around in Qatar now for a discounted price of QR300.
Though technically a smartwatch, the Go Watch runs a proprietary Alcatel OS and is thus limited to the built-in features. You will not see Android or iOS apps expanding the feature set. For that matter, there is also no word on OTA updates for the watch. The feature set, therefore, is fixed.
The exterior of the watch is a mixed bag – the design is chunky and reminiscent of a Casio G-Shock. It also comes with shock, dust and waterproofing (IP67, which means you can’t take it swimming) to match the rugged looks. The materials though give away the price of the watch. There is nothing wrong with them per se, except that plastic used feels cheap. Even the strap felt rigid in the beginning, though it has become more pliable over time with use. A good thing is that the straps and the shell are changeable, and you get white-coloured extras in the box.
The functionality of Go Watch is a mixed bag. You need to download Alcatel’s OneTouch Move app to connect the watch to your phone. The two are linked together via Bluetooth, but this does not prevent other devices from being connected to your phone, nor does the connection of other Bluetooth devices disrupt the connection between Go Watch and the phone. The connection restores automatically if dropped, and all the data syncing is done in the background. All this works as it should.
The watch supports push notifications – it vibrates to alert you of an incoming message, giving you a preview of the message (there is no way to read long messages in entirety). You also get notified of incoming calls, though you can only reject them using the phone, as it does not have a built-in speaker or microphone. Live notifications work reasonably well.
That said, the watch’s integration with Google Maps can only be described as “broken”. You do get turn-by-turn notifications, but as it happens they are completely useless. The notifications do not update you on what direction to take as you approach a roundabout or a signal, rendering it useless in its entirety. What’s worse is that you cannot turn this feature off. So the watch vibrates continuously, but tells you nothing. The only solution I found to this problem was to switch the watch to silent when using Google Maps – the notifications kept coming, but they did not distract me.
The watch also promises a host of other features: live weather update, step counter and activity monitor, a heart rate sensor, exercise mode, stop watch, remote music control, remote camera control, and a compass.
Some of these features work as advertised, others do not do so well. Load up the compass app and it prompts you to start moving the watch around in the shape of a horizontal 8 to orient it. During a month-long of use, I got it to work just once.
Music controls are also glitchy. You can get the watch to play or pause a song on your phone with some concerted efforts, and also skip or rewind a track, but that’s about it. One would expect this to be an easy feature to implement, but the horribly slow interface makes it all but unusable. The song information on the screen is also frequently wrong, with it being unable to tell which of the many music apps is currently in use.
The camera control app, thankfully works much better, even if it is very basic. One tap will open the camera app (the phone needs to be unlocked first), defaulting to the last camera you used (front or back). The second tap takes a picture. You do not get a preview of the shot on the watch, or access to any camera settings. Think of it as remote to activate the camera, good for when you need to take group photographs.
The stopwatch is basic but functional. You do not get any lap functionality, however. The weather app was troublesome in the beginning, unable to get location from the phone. But it has worked flawlessly once it got the location, also giving the weather forecast for the next few days.
This leaves us with the apps centred around activities. I found the watch to underestimate the number of steps. The other numbers, such as calories burnt and distance walked, are based on the number of steps it records and will thus also be underestimated.
The Go Watch also comes with sleep monitoring. I found it to significantly underestimate the sleep figures. It would frequently record 5-6 hours, even when I got a good eight hours of sleep. This also led me to believe that its estimation of light and deep sleep would also be way off from the actual numbers.
One feature that works really well, however, is the heart rate monitor. The exercise app is limited, letting you choose between just walking or running. Once you choose an activity, it starts monitoring your heart rate. In my usage, I found its measured heart rate to be almost spot on. This lets you keep within your target exercise zone. Raising your hand flicks the watch screen on, giving you a real time snapshot of your heart rate. Surprisingly, the exercise app also comes with a lap functionality.
It would have been nice for the watch to sync with popular exercise apps such as Runtastic, but it doesn’t. You will have to get your heart rate data after the exercise from the OneTouch Move app and enter it manually into your preferred exercise app.
Save for the heart rate, the exercise app again seems to vary in its accuracy of your distance travelled. It appeared to me that it is pretty accurate if you take small steps, but tends to underestimate distance travelled if you take big steps. So keep that in mind.
Alcatel advertises a battery life of 2-5 days. I easily get 2 days on a single charge, and maybe even 3 days with minimal usage.
All in all, the Alcatel OneTouch Go Watch seems to be typical of a budget offering, doing well in some areas and bad in others. The interface overall is not the smoothest, but is fast enough for daily usage. Your decision to get it will ultimately depend on your needs. If you need a heart rate monitoring device on a budget for your runs or walks, with the added functionality of live notifications, this could fit the bill quite nicely. If you need a complete smartwatch experience, however, you may want to look at its significantly more expensive alternatives.
TECH
