I got the watch back in May, the battery issues haven't been for me, happy with that, but it has a mind of it's own, changes power states for no reason and my main issue is, even though all the advertising says it's compatible with iOS and will notify text messages on the watch, I've never been able to get it to work, and there is nothing out there to say how. Citizen, does it work, or not? I get my phone calls, but not my text messages. If I could get my text messages, I would really like the watch, but as it is, I'm going to have to replace it as that's a not unreasonable requirement. Can some one please confirm if is does, and if so how?
Citizen Response
I have a Gen 1 Touch. Love it. It's better than my Pixel watch and Galaxy watch. Easy to use, responsive, easy to read.
I bought it when it was released and was very disappointed. However, they've fixed the issues and it is fully functional and even supports Google Assistant. Battery life is comparable to many Wear OS offerings and will last me about 10-12 hours with my normal heavy usage with about an hour of GPS usage and tilt to wake. Very happy with the watch and impresses that Citizen worked hard to improve the usability.
Citizen - CZ Smart 45mm Unisex Stainless Steel Sport Smartwatch with Silicone Strap Received this in May of 2023 Before I go into my review I would like to post a suggestion: If you are planning on using the CZ Smart YouQ integration with the Citizen Connected app on your Android phone I suggest that you just set up these apps using your Android ID and password otherwise you will have difficulty with the two apps integrating easily. I was kind of surprised that the watch is non water resistant which puts it out of the sports watch area in my opinion. To the degree that it is recommended that you don’t wear the watch when you are washing your hands. There isn’t a quick start quide and you have to learn on the fly by using the apps and taking a guess. There is a small tutorial on the watch to show you swipes and the buttons. It took a week before the sleep app got most of my sleeping routine down instead of taking the middle of the night trip to the bathroom as meaning I was up for the night. It even mostly could tack on my afternoon power nape with a miss on one out of three times. The other YouQ features are spotty at best. Some features look as if they have future integration in mind though I don’t know how the app would track REM sleep. Other than ‘went to bed’ and ‘wake up’ the sleep tracking on the YouQ has been blank even though the same information for light sleep, wake and deep sleep show up correctly on the Citizen Connected app. The heart rate and O2 level look pretty good but sometimes the sensor can be finicky on where it needs to be to get it to read this. I could not get the sensors in the goldilocks zone other than wearing the watch on the underside of my wrist. I tried on both wrists and made sure to change the orientation on the watch but the only way it would work was on the underside of my wrists. The silicon wrist strap was kind of stiff and only made for a decent fit with the watch in this position anyway. I’m not sure what the apps use for steps used but they are extremely inaccurate. My wife who has another brand of smart watch found that it might be attributed to swinging motion. It seems to be pretty accurate if she uses it as an ankle monitor when we go out for our walk. The strap is too short for me to try it in this mode, but it is a possibility. I would have thought it would use the GPS capabilities of my phone to assist in some of the steps traveled but that is a lot more accurate than the results I have seen. I have to be conscious of this position on my wrist so that I don’t damage the face of the watch during certain activities. The alert check is interesting but more of a game to beat the dot to the blinking point and this is on your phone not on the watch. All in all the YouQ app at this stage is more of a gimmick than a viable source of information. I would not buy the watch for these Hyped NASA and IBM Watson features. I may prove better with some updates but at this time it is more of a novelty at this stage. The regular smart watch features seems decent with good integration between the smart watch and the phone. This is typical of the WearOS software. And allows for integration with a lot of other devices. With alerts and phone integration along with Alexa integration if you choose. Some of these features can affect the battery life. I believe I use the watch in a relatively normal manner and experience the need to charge the watch once in the middle of the day and once prior to bed so it doesn’t go into shutdown mode while I sleep. It generally takes about 30 minutes for a full recharge. One thing that it likes to do is reset the always on-screen setting – switching it to ON whenever it thinks I have woken up for the day. The center stem on the watch can act as a quick scroll if that works for how you want to go through instead of swiping N and S. The Bezel is all for show and it is a shame they didn’t make it movable to allow for tracking minutes like a normal bezel time keeper. The faces can be changed and I noticed the first updated added a couple of new faces so I would think over time their may be some more. It is amusing the the watch face on the box cover isn’t one that is available. I don’t mind since I like the digital faces with more information. The watch is good looking and I will be interested in seeing how long the stainless steel holds up to acidic sweat – I often blacken and eat through a lot of stainless steel watches and it is why I usually only have titanium based cases. It would be nice if they had a future model with a titanium case. I have several Citizen standard watches and hope they update this watch in the future. Some of those updates could be handled with software /firmware updates. So, this watch has been removed from sale after reviewers complaints of serious performance and battery issues... and yet there has been no updates. My watch is back in the box as unusable.