Google says it can’t fix Pixel Watches, please just buy a new one | With no official repair program and no parts, broken Pixel Watches are just e-waste.

On the other hand, a Garmin Fenix can be easily opened with an inexpensive tool and replacement parts are easily found online.
- Garmin watches look amazing. I just wish they had more smartwatch capabilities. I'd love complications on the watch face, and I feel like I should be able to start the assistant with a hotword.
  I'm not sure if the Google Watch can do the latter.
  
  On the other side of things. I'm super happy that garmin watches don't have more smartwatch capabilities. Their laser focus on sports wearable is what keeps them massively competitive there and keeps me on weeks of battery life instead of hours of battery life
  
  There's plenty of watch faces with cool shit on them in the store, same as with Google
  And having had watches that do respond to "hey Google" they were super iffy and inconsistent. Buttons are easier to avoid frustration, which the Garmin has.
  As far as "smartwatch capabilities" I haven't missed anything from my Wear watch. I certainly don't miss charging it every day or having it die by 5pm because I actually used it
  I'm charging my Garmin this morning. Haven't charged it since Sunday.. a week ago Sunday
  
  What kind of smart watch doesn't have complications? Does it at least have sleep tracking?
- Their customer support is also aces too. I've got a Fenix 6s and the battery is going out on it, and they're replacing it for free. No questions or fuss. Just a shipping label.
  For as expensive as they are, I've been extremely happy with them. When this replacement dies in another 3+ years I'll definitely be getting another Garmin.
- yeah but then you look like a pisspants triathlete

Same with the Google Nest Hub.
It cost me around $600 and has a known splash-screen issue which I just woke up to one morning.
No fix available when it happens. Nothing I did caused it. I just had to bin it.
It’s either planned obsolescence or just shitty design.
- It's probably a bit of both. They save money with a worse design and they make more money on more sales.
- Probably both tbh
  Let’s mint a new razor: assume both malice and incompetence
  
  Casmael's Razor. Has a nice ring to it!
  
  Greed and incompetence is more accurate
- Companies should have fines for at least as much as the revenue they generated with those devices. Designed obsolescence is something that needs to be *abandoned, even if it hurts really bad financially.
  
  Even simpler: If you sell it, and it breaks or becomes useless, you're expected to take it back and dispose of it responsibly. Electronics retailers can charge a deposit, just like the supermarket does for beer and Coke.
  Just imagine if things worked that way —
  Find the broken husk of an iPod Shuffle on the beach? Take it to an Apple Store; they give you five bucks.
  Find a roadkill Dell laptop on the side of the road? (I did earlier this summer.) Take it to any big-box store that sells Dell laptops; they give you five bucks.
  Pixel Watch turned into e-waste? Mail it to Google; they give you five bucks. (Probably on your Google Pay account, yeah, but that's better than nothing.)
- Nest Hub for $600? Which one is that expensive?

Their support is infamously hard to contact, they discontinue projects very often, and now this. Google makes some very interesting products, but there would have to be a huge shift at the company, which won't happen, for me to buy them.
- Google is first and foremost an ad company. Everything else they do is only to improve the worth of their ad business.
- My pixel had issues with the screen (p7p) contacted google, within a couple of days I had an advance replacement device in my hands and a return label for the faulty device.
  My watch is giving me issues currently so I'm planning on hitting up support about that too, as it's not within what I expected from the watch (won't connect via bt after a month or so, requiring a factory reset).
  In AUS we have great consumer protections, if my watch continues on the way it is currently I'll be returning it for a full refund.
  
  I love being in Maine and quietly mentioning our Implied Warranty and willingness to contact the Secretary of State about a faulty product. I've had success multiple times and only needed to write the Secretary office once.
- Unfortunately that huge shift would require a complete change in Google's corporate culture and that's not gonna happen.
  I had my own experience with their customer support after purchasing 2 Pixel 6's. They were utter garbage. Both had the cellular connectivity problem and the fingerprint sensors were completely useless. Those sensors failed 100% of the time in brightly lit stores. There's no way in hell that Google was unaware of those problems, and they were in fact well documented (but not resolved) after six months and one major software "fix".
  Lucky for me a request for help on Reddit resulted in multiple people saying they despised their Pixels and to return the damn things before it was too late.
  
  Do you mean Pixel 7 by chance? I've heard problems with it's sensor. I have the 6 and haven't noticed anything. Just curious mostly.
- They immediately lost my business with no public followup on 911 dialer bugs on Pixels. Plus there is ALWAYS a huge hardware problem on flagship Pixels, every single generation. Went iPhone SE and really why would I ever move back?
  
  I've had a lot of pixels in my family and the only one that had major issues was the Pixel 4.
  I think you may be buying into overblown anecdotal nonsense.
- I’m pretty sure almost everything they make these days simply exists to obtain data from users first and foremost. They don’t want long term support or products that stick around forever; they want to add more and more vectors to build those profiles and record behaviors.

Expecting companies to be good citizens is crazy. Expecting consumers to be informed consumers is crazy. Our gov't needs to pass regulations about repairability for just about any consumer product. But expecting voters to be informed voters also seems crazy.
- And expecting our government to have the knowledge to regulate is crazy. I agree with you but our current government doesn’t have the slightest clue what technology is.
  
  It seems to run on some form of electricity!

Google support for literally anything is non existent. Same could be said about Meta.
I am slowly shifting away from Google. Gmail and Google Photos is going to be the hardest. :/
- For those thinking of moving away from Gmail... I strongly recommend buying your own domain name so you actually own your address and can switch e-mail services whenever you want without needing a new e-mail address. Hell, I'd recommend this even if you're planning on staying with Gmail for a while.
  Honestly, aside from having to point people at your new e-mail address... Gmail is not particularly hard to move away from, especially if you already use an external mail client. I don't really miss it, anyway. The only pain point I experience is that if somebody sends you a Google Doc / Sheet you need a Google account to edit it, but that's not a huge concern for me personally.
  I'm self hosting my personal e-mail right now, and it's pretty great if you know how to do that stuff. Super cheap to host, and I can have as many aliases and send as many e-mails as I want. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's very doable if you already host your own stuff. Otherwise there's a bunch of e-mail services like Proton (kind of expensive, and a little annoying in that it's not just IMAP), Tutanota (dunno much about it), Fastmail, etc... But it's also worth mentioning that if you have a domain / VPS already your VPS provider and your registrar may both provide e-mail services that you can use... And if you just want to get out of Google and you have an iCloud+ account already (which is very possible if you have an iPhone and wanted more iCloud storage, but otherwise it's $0.99/mo) you can also use iCloud+ for e-mail with a custom domain.
  
  How do you deal with your custom domain emails being flagged as spam? I did all the requirements (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and there still are some (e.g. old-fart gov or finantial institutions) that need a gmail address to communicate with.
- You could look at trying immich. I haven't set it up yet, but it seems to be the solution to me moving away from Google photos. https://github.com/immich-app/immich
  You can find more info on these
  https://matrix.to/#/#selfhosted:selfhosted.chat
  https://forum.r-selfhosted.com/
  https://discord.gg/UrZKzYZfcS
  
  I did set it up. Survive multiple upgrade in place just fine.
  I can say it beats all my apps until now. The best part to me is delete from app request to delete from my Android as well. So unlike most, it works ironically like iPhone. And I prefer that
  
  Yup, I am aware about it. It's just dislaimers that look a bit scary (not production ready), even tho multiple users reported using it without any issues.
- Proton if you want email, privacy and cloud storage.
  Edit I use murena and it comes with cloid storage and online only office suite
  
  Already thinking about proton:)
  
  I pay(my inner pirate is screaming) for proton's subscription and so far it's absolutely worth the cost. The only issue being, I have yet to make it work on my Orange pi. Other than that it's all smiles.
- I've had acceptable support for the pixel phone. I forget what went wrong, but I had a problem with one of my pixels, needed repair and they replaced it when it was just shy of two years old.
  It sucked, because I had to send it to Hong Kong from Australia, and they then promptly sent me a replacement. But I was 5 days without a phone.
  With Apple support, they have local presence and I've had same-day repair.
  I have no intention of shifting away from Google. Their cloud service is great. I pay for it and my only complaint is there are stricter privacy policies on gsuite accounts that mean some Google services are incompatible. Which is a very clear endorsement of the old adage 'if you aren't paying for the service, you're the product'.
  
  I've heard this story: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-csam-account-blocked
  Imagine your primary email is no longer accessible. Your memories (images/video) is no longer accessible that dates back to 2014.
  I am scared it might happen to me, so I am strongly considering moving away from Google products.
  Yes, writing this from my pixel. Luckily, I can flash alternative OS to my Pixel, so I don't really mind having Pixel, but Google services? Nooo....
- I moved from Gmail. I'll link to my previous comment to save trying it out again...
  https://lemm.ee/comment/3347046
  If I ever move away from Protonmail it will take about 5 mins for all my 300 websites to start sending emails to the new mailbox.
- LoL....so you gotta pay for a service? That's just crazy!?!
  S/
- For Gmail, I switched to fastmail. For google photos, I switched for immich.
  The services that I still use from them are google maps, YouTube and SSO. They are all services that I wouldn't mind them shutting down. It's just that I find them much better than any alternatives.
  
  How is immitch for you? I've been considering this for quite awhile.
  
  For SSO, are you talking about Google Authenticator? I was able to switch to Aegis, which is just an open source alternative, but does the same thing, except you are not forced to back up to Google.
- try with apple
  
  I was considering this on and off, but never really attempted to do this.
  Biggest dealbreaker was lack of USB-C cable, but here are few other issues:
  No easy & free way to sideload apps.
  No ability to install 3rd party OS.
  No proper files management.
  Clipboard and files sharing is still a joke. It works, but is uncomfortable as fuck.
  Lack of cusotmization almost for every aspect of a phone.
  Inability to self-repair. Apple made it harder on purpose.
  Overpriced smartphones & gadgets.
  Can't simply upload & download files from my PC (both Windows & Linux).
  Shitty media format support.
  Apple wallet does not support discount cards.
  Buying an Apple device means I would literally support anti-consumer company with shitty behavior towards its users.

Definitely falls under the “evil” company vibe.

My solution is to steer clear of Google products. They excel at producing disposable… everything.
- I will continue to go to them when I’m buying Android phones because 3rd party manufacturers still suck at getting OS updates onto their phones. Even the best manufacturers have delays of weeks / months.
  
  Same, but I will not buy direct from them because of the their absolute shit customer service.
  
  Ya, that and taking pictures of moving objects. I tried Samsung but the camera couldn't do kid photos unless I was outside on the brightest of days.
  
  The only way I was able to get continued OS support and updates was by going the way of installing custom ROMs, which is absolutely not ideal. It’s also the only reason my backup Nexus 5 is still kicking.
- Apparently the replacement parts for their phones are significantly cheaper than almost every other manufacturer. (I have just been hearing this so I don't know for sure if it's true, correct me if I'm wrong.)
  Overall their phones seem to just be to a high standard. 5 years of support and other components that make them the choice for GrapheneOS (Privacy/Security focused rom that has greatly contributed to upstream Android)
- Tbf isn't that every tech product? There's absolutely no reason apple needs to release 7 different models of phone every year when they really don't make any large changes. Do one every two years.
  Absolutely bonkers
- Their phones are up there in software support at least. Only true contender at this point is Samsung.
  
  Samsung phones are so full of bloatware, I'll never buy them again.

Cool i'll just buy a watch that can be repaired then

I think I will stick to my dumb watches, thanks. Mechanical or quartz.
- I always see the software working people go nutty for the new hardware and dohickies.
  Meanwhile a lot of people I knew who worked on hardware live in the woods "off grid".
  
  So true. The more I work with all these services and social networks the fewer of them I have. More to the point, I have bunch of devices around my home which are IoT and similar but almost none have access to internet, printer included. Funny thing is, my friends keep asking why am I slowly removing my presence from all of tech even though I am on forefront of it... but when I go and explain how each search can be exploited and abused they laugh and say naaah that will never happen or "I don't have anything to hide"... and it keeps happening and privacy keeps leaking.
  
  (Almost) my entire house is smart, but nothing talks to the cloud anymore.
  So nobody can get that data except me. Some exceptions are that I dont have or want smart locks, that just seems to insecure and unreliable.
  
  Though in IT, I do have a (limited) smart home but also old tech like a 40s Western Electric phone, a few 1920s-40s typewriters, a few vintage woodworking tools, myriad vintage and new fountain pens (I use them to take notes... you know, on paper gasp). I have and wear lots of budget watches (err, but, one at a time) ... from the 1890s - present, mechanical and quartz.
  The nicest oldest ones are a 1895 Elgin hunter pocket watch (ladies size 6) and a 1930s Hamilton open face size 10. I often wear vintage wristwatches: Bulova, Elgin, Waltham, Timex, and Seiko. I have more modern ones including Fortis, Orient, Casio, Bulova, and more.
- My G Shock is super reliable and will never need a battery. No way I'm swapping it out for some fragile piece of junk screen that mostly displays a clock that dies every few days.
  
  Yup, some great g-shocks out there. I have dw5600. Awesome watch. Some day I will get the 5610.
  
  This is peak "smart" watch for me: Syny-Ericsson MBW-100
  Having something similar with modern technology the battery life would be much longer, I don't need a wrist phone.
- I wear a Shark Leash every day. I lost my Apple Watch and haven’t missed it at all.

i bought a P-Watch due to the circular aesthetic, have been wearing mine since release. it's "OK" but last week i fell on my bicycle and scratched up the watch face pretty badly, so QUITE annoying that there is no repair program.
doesn't matter though, switching to a classic Cassio watch soon anyways. "Smart Watches" aren't that helpful for me, ultimately i don't understand the appeal. it's just PHONE ON WRIST, seems like another way to "PLUG INTO THE MATRIX"
- I don't wear mine anymore really, but the use case for it for me was to see notifications quickly and easily without taking my attention away from whoever I am with. You can quickly just glance at your watch to see if the text/phone call/email is important or not and then just twist your wrist to dismiss.
  
  I used to think I had to decide if I wanted to reply to a notification immediately.
  Besides my smart doorbell notification and actual phone calls everything else can wait an hour until I finish what I'm doing. And for those two exceptions they have special vibration patterns in my pocket.
  Don't be that guy who has to reply to notifications immediately
- I wear my smart watch exclusively at work because when I'm on or around heavy machinery, I need to know if that little alert was something important or not. Otherwise I'd be checking my phone every five minutes. But I don't have to stop or slow down to check my wrist.
- Never understood the appeal of Dick Tracey's phone watch, still don't understand them now that the are real.

So they should be labelled "disposable" and priced accordingly.
- Oooooh, that's a neat idea in light of the current EU legislation concerning the Right to Repair: Introduce a mandatory, highly visible, and standardized seal that all electronic devices have to display on the front of their box:
  Repairable
  or
  Disposable
  
  Then tax the shit out of disposable products please as we already waste way too much
  
  I would also suggest mandatory price caps on disposable products, to incentivize the elimination of production of such devices.
- Seems to me that €2,50 is a fair price for a throwaway watch.
  
  Even then it feels like disposable cup kinda bad

Yeah fuck all of that.

Ever since the eu repair bill came out, my goal is to not buy electronics until i can get electronics that comply with that law.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google makes a big deal out of its partnership with iFixit and the availability of replacement parts for its products, but one Google product that doesn't seem fixable is the Pixel Watch.
After spotting some posts from Pixel Watch users seeking a remedy after cracking the glass and coming up with no clear answers, The Verge got Google to confirm that, even 11 months after launch, there is no repair plan right now.
Google can't fix your watch.
The whole top half of the watch is one big glass hemisphere, so it's not difficult to bang one of the glass corners into something and shatter the watch.
This might all seem like it's against the spirit of Google's big repairability announcement in 2022, but that blog post says the program is for Pixel phones, not any of the other stuff Google sells.
With the Pixel Watch 2 coming out soon, we'll be sure to ask Google if there are any repair plans this time.
The original article contains 216 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 24%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- The amount of E-Waste our society generates is truly abhorrent. It will take hundreds of thousands of hours and countless amounts of money for future generations to fix this.

Pretty clear stuff like this is why we’re speed running to a dystopian future. Hopefully Googles profits can survive. /s

Shame on Google!
Shame on Google!
Also, look what I found...
- Interestingly, even Pine64's smart watch requires you to silly cone glue the two case halves together if you want it to be waterproof. It does give you that option, though, which is cool.

I don't mind that excuse about my Mi Band 6, because it was like £25.
I would mind that excuse when we're talking about a £339 smartwatch. So I won't buy one.
I won't buy a Fitbit either, because the wife had one and every week was a complex dance of restarting the phone and watch several times until they agreed to connect to each other.
- And they pretty much have made most of the utility locked behind an $80 subscription
  No thanks
  
  Why would a smartwatch need a subscription?? what does it even do?

I get Google bad but what watch face is that in the thumbnail of the link?
- Concentric!

Aren't all smart watches just e-waste? Always found them ridiculously redundant and wasteful. I mean my gshock is still on the same battery after 11 years and it's still precise, has a calendar, alarm clocks, timers, backlighting and went through hell and back. I used to swim and take showers without taking it off, crawling in a desert, all sorts of abuse with not even a scratch.
- I've got a Pebble and an original recipe Vivoactive. They're both workin' perfectly fine after all these years, battery lasts about 5 days because I have the GPS, schedule/alarms, and messaging enabled.
  Once the pebble battery becomes a spicy pillow, I'll replace it. I swim, shower, everything with these watches. They've both been through hell and back, and I think there's a small scuff on one of them, at most.
  
  not OP but I still don't understand instead of turning your wrist, just pulling out your phone for the same if not better features
- I wouldn’t say so. My Apple Watch shows a ridiculous amount of useful information on my watch face and I can easily find any other info I need with it. It’s also got a lot of health and fitness features which can be extremely helpful and potentially life saving. In addition to all of that, the rest of the features are helpful too. Whether some might find them to be redundant or intrusive, I and clearly many others find them to be useful. Just because you don’t find a use for it, doesn’t make it bad.

- What's a warranty worth then?

Pixel Buds are the same way. IIRC from a teardown vid, those earbuds (and I'm guessing most of their competitors' too) are designed to be quasi-disposable in this way. They're glued together, the only way to open them up destroys them, warranty support consists of replacing defective earbuds.
This business model does create an e-waste issue... More lithium ion batteries ending up in landfills, more gold extracted from components by kids in developing nations burning them and breathing the carcinogens...

It's shit like this that's the reason I haven't gotten another pixel. My pix 5a died in within a year, I sent it to a Google certified repair shop, they couldn't fix it, concluded it needed to be sent to Google.
Once it got to Google they claimed it had water damage. It took me 3 months to go through all the bullshit and get a new phone from them. I had gotten an Azus Zenfone 9 by that point.

If you are a google product adopter in 2023 then you deserved to be relieved of your money.

This doesn’t surprise me. This is exactly what i would expect from google.

I own a pixel watch, I'm on my first RMA.
If they offer an upgrade option to send in my current watch for the new version, I'll probably take it. If I get 50% off or better, then I'm in.
Hopefully their second attempt is better than the first.
- Same. I think that's smart as far as being able to trade it in. I haven't heard anything about Google Pixel Watch trade in though.
  
  I haven't either, but they've done it with phones before, so I'm currently hoping they'll extend that to the watch.
  I guess we'll find out on launch.

who needs an e-watch really
- I love my Samsung watch because I can do Strava tracking and listen to Spotify to my Bluetooth Buds while running without taking my phone. Absolute game changer honestly

"But... but... Apple USB 2 ports!"