Friday, February 2, 2018

Product review: ANCwear Smart Watch Phone



Visually this is not an attractive watch - it has a plastic band and plastic back, but it has a beautiful screen that is crisp and easy to read and that responds well to touch. It is fairly large: 1 1/2" x 1 7/8" and 1/4" thick.

The biggest problem with the watch is that its QR code takes you to Chinese web sight to download the app for connecting your phone to the watch. Don't do that. I am a software engineer with a lot of experience in web security - this is not safe. Only download apps from safe app stores such as GooglePlay, Amazon store, iTunes.

I found an app in GooglePlay "BT notifications" that makes some (but not all) functions work.

BT notifications app
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"BT notifications" allow you to forward calls from the phone to the watch as well place calls from the watch. It sounds pretty good - fairy loud and clear. There are three apps in GooglePlay with the same name all from Chinese companies, I picked the one with the highest rating. To start using the app locate the camera in the phone's Bluetooth connections. The watch appears as NX9. When you connect the watch prompts to confirm the connection. Then the watch prompts you if you want to sync time and when you say yes it does. This apps works well. It has access to your contact list via Bluetooth. It does not download it locally unless you use an option to save a contact to the watch's memory. If you don't save the contacts to the watch and uninstall "BT notifications" there is no personal information left on the watch (good security feature when it will come time to discard the watch).

I wanted an application that does more than notification and tried Fundo Wear app, that works with many smart watches as it uses a standard communication protocol.

Fundo Wear app
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Fundo Wear is used to sync data between the phone and the watch. This app does not work fully with the watch. It can connect, I can control the phone's camera, set time, but the step information does not appear on the phone.

Operation with out the apps
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Even without fully functional syning app the watch is usable. The watch shows time. Pedometer shows the step count, sedentary reminder alerts you if you sit for too long, calculator works well with a touch screen, you also have a calendar and a voice memo recorder.

The pedometer appears to be reasonably accurate. It has an issue that it uses metric units (it shows the distance in meters) and I have not found any way to change the units. However, I mostly care about the step count so this is not a huge problem for me. I am missing seeing the data on my smart phone, but not enough to sacrifice security of my entire network by downloading untrusted app that might work better.

There is one more feature that I really like. This watch can be recharged using a regular micro USB connector. This is much better than a propriety connector I have seen in other smart watches.

Overall, this is watch has a number of flaws and a couple of nice features.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆




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