Misfit Phase proves hybrid smartwatches could replace basic activity trackers

Valentina Palladino

Misfit hasn’t changed much since joining the Fossil family. Its Phase hybrid smartwatch came out late last year and represents the most collaboration with Fossil the company has had. Around the same time as the Phase’s launch, Fossil announced that most of its brands will come out with “hybrid” smartwatches, or fashionable timepieces that have some connected features.

The Phase is Misfit’s hybrid. It combines smart features like activity tracking with a design that fits in with the rest of its device family and that will (hopefully) appeal to Misfit fans. Starting at $175, the Phase hopes to prove that the right mix of crucial smart features and minimalist style is worth the same amount of money as a device that focuses on only one of those aspects.

Design: More watch than smartwatch

Misfit has always masked its wearables with stylish shells, but the Phase is its first attempt to make a true smartwatch. As far as design goes, the company succeeded: the 41mm case has an analog face with thin dashes instead of numbers or Roman numerals for each hour. There are just two buttons on its right side, and the two parts of its band can be easily detached using their button-like closures.

The case is just the right size to complement nearly any wrist—it’s not too big or too small. Finishes come in gold, silver, and rose gold, while the faces can be black, white, navy, or brown. Bands come in leather or sport. The case is slightly thick for my liking, but it’s not so bulky or heavy that it’s actively distracting.

At noon is the Misfit logo, and at six o’clock is a small, circular, color-coded indicator. Aside from the watch’s vibration motor, this color window is the main way you receive smartphone notifications. You can customize it to change color when a certain contact calls or texts you or when you receive messages via any compatible third-party apps (like WhatsApp). The only other notification indicator is the minute watch hand, which you can set to turn to a specific time when a contact calls or texts you.

While it takes a few times to get used to, the watchface is a discreet way of delivering alerts to your wrist. Not only will you know when the most important people in your life contact you, but you also won’t broadcast that information to strangers since they won’t know what a pink circle means or why your watch’s minute hand suddenly moved to nine o’clock. But, unlike devices like Garmin’s Vivosmart HR, you can’t see what that message says. You’ll have to open your smartphone to read and reply.

Like most of Misfit’s devices, the Phase is water resistant up to 50 meters, and swimming is one of its trackable activities. Go with the sport band if you plan on swimming a lot since dunking leather in a pool isn’t the best idea. The Phase also has a great battery life—it’ll last up to six months before its CR2430 coin cell battery has to be replaced. There’s no charging involved at all, no matter how much you use it.

Misfit’s Phase hybrid smartwatch
It has a 41mm case and a color window at 6 o’clock that changes color depending on smartphone alerts.
Two side buttons let you see your activity goal percentage and control smartphone music, camera shutter, smart home devices, and more.
Inside is a coin cell battery that last up to 6 months before it needs replacing.
The two sides of the band detach easily with button nobs.

Features: The basics and nothing more

The Phase tries to balance style with basic activity tracking. It monitors steps, distance, calories, and sleep, and it’s HealthKit compatible, so you can share that information with Apple’s system. Its step calculations were fairly accurate, and while I take sleep assessment with a grain of salt, at least the Phase more-or-less got the amount of time I slept each night right. I would have set its vibrating alarm, but it has to be scheduled manually every day or set to repeat. I would have preferred the option of setting it every week day since I don’t like to wake up at 6:30am on the weekends if I don’t have to.

Since the Phase isn’t necessarily meant to compete with Fitbit’s Charge 2, Garmin’s Vivoactive HR, or even the Apple Watch, it doesn’t have a built-in heart rate monitor or GPS. It just uses its accelerometer to track steps and activity movement. Its automatic tracking, though, is accurate. I went on the elliptical at my gym for 30 minutes and, after syncing the Phase’s data to the Misfit app, that block of time was already recorded as “moderate activity” in my daily log. When I completed a tough run the next day, the app dissected my time running as about 17 minutes of vigorous activity and 13 minutes of moderate activity (I run/walk most of the time).

However, the Phase has only seven activity designations if you decide to name your exercise: running, tennis, soccer, basketball, cycling, swimming, and default (or miscellaneous). Even the most basic Fitbit devices have more exercise categories, so I wish the Phase had more of a variety, too.

The watch’s top button has two set functions: pressing it once will make the hands of the watch show the percentage of your activity goal you’ve completed for the day. Pressing it again will show the time you’ve set your wake-up alarm for. If you didn’t set a wake-up alarm, pressing the button after revealing your goal percentage will just make the hands move back to the current time.

The bottom button is what Misfit calls the Smart Button. You can set it to control a number of different things, including your smartphone’s music playback, selfie camera snapshots, smart home products, and more. The most useful function for me was setting a press of the bottom button to start tracking an activity. A close second was the custom function, which lets you combine a few commands from other settings with the four button commands. For example, you can set a single press to pause or play your smartphone music while a double-press activates the shutter on your front-facing camera when the camera app is open.

Custom combinations can also connect to a few third-party apps, like IFTTT, so you can control compatible smart home products using the watch’s button. While there are only so many combinations you can make, it does give you the power to make the Phase work more for your lifestyle. If you never take your headphones off, you can set the button to fully control your music so you don’t need to fumble with your smartphone. But if you want a mix of music and camera control, you can customize those actions as such.

Misfit app: Making it your watch

Misfit’s mobile app for Android and iOS hasn’t changed too much since we reviewed the $99 Ray activity tracking bracelet. The homepage shows your activity score, which is just a number goal translated from the total steps you’ve taken and the total amount of activity you’ve completed. I’m not the biggest fan of these point systems—I’d rather see my total step count and distance calculations and judge my daily activity goal off that. Thankfully, the app places those numbers along with calories burned right below the score bubble.

Misfit app homepage
Another view of step and sleep data
Activity log on the homepage, as well as the activity categories page
Phase device settings
Smart button settings
Profile page

You can also tap on the moon icon to switch to sleep view. There you’ll see the total number of hours you slept the night before, along with a graphical breakdown of awake, light, and restful sleep time. The Phase, like most trackers that monitor sleep, only calculates snoozing time by how much you move during the night, so you won’t be able to tell if you got a good night’s sleep. However, the Phase was quite accurate in estimating how long I slept each night, and it automatically entering sleep mode when it detected that I had fallen asleep.

Scrolling down on the homepage reveals the daily activity breakdown. This is where your auto-tracked activities appear and where you can give them an exercise category if you wish. You can also adjust the duration of each activity, just in case Misfit got the timing wrong. I rarely had to do this, and, when I did, the Phase was only off by a few minutes. At the top of each breakdown, the app tells you how much more activity you’d have to complete to reach your goal, giving you options like 20 minutes of running or 30 minutes of walking. Quantifying the remainder of the daily activity goal could give some users the extra push they need to get another walk in at the end of the day just to reach that final score.

Most of the Phase’s magic happens in the device settings. This is where you can customize everything about your watch. This is where you can turn on the vibrating Alarm feature, change app notifications, and turn on on Misfit Move, which is the inactive alert feature that will buzz the Phase when you’ve been sitting too long (and wave the watchhands crazily, too, which is cute).

The app notifications lets you customize the color window’s output and the watch hand’s indicator, depending on who’s contact you or what app is delivering an alert. Call and text alerts are already there, but you can add WhatsApp, Skype, WeChat, FaceBook Messenger, Viber, Line, and Gmail to the notification list. While I would have liked to see other social media apps included like Twitter or Snapchat, this is a solid group of apps to start with. Besides, adding too many notifications to a non-display watch means you’d have to remember a ton of color/watch hand combinations.

You can also set Misfit’s Link feature in the device settings, which controls the Smart Button’s function. As mentioned before, you can assign a number of actions to the Smart Button including ringing your phone, music controls, activity logging, and more. Misfit makes assigning functions easy as well; icons show you how to assign functions to single-, double-, triple-, and long-presses of the Smart Button. Some presses have preset actions—for example, if you choose the music control function, a single press plays and pauses the current track, a double-press skips to the next song, a triple-press goes back, and a long-press increases the volume. When you choose the custom function, you can set those four press actions to nearly anything you want. In that case, you could have a mix of music, camera, and smart home control, without being confined to one category of functions.

The second wave of basic trackers

Misfit struck the right balance of smart and style with the Phase. At this point, so many activity trackers cover the basics well that, for a device to stand out, it needs good design, special features, and/or great battery life. While the Phase is a little thick, you can’t say it doesn’t look like a traditional watch. For many who considered the company’s Ray but didn’t want to wear two things on their wrist, the Phase is the next best option: it combines the smarts of the Ray with the design of a timepiece.

The Phase’s Smart Button and personalized notifications are perks as well. The button transforms the watch from just an attractive activity tracker into a life remote that you can set based on your needs. With smartphone notifications, having something is better than nothing, even if it requires some memorization. Misfit did a good job of incorporating both of these features while making them customizable and without compromising the design of the watch. Also, access to all those features plus daily activity and sleep tracking without needing to charge the device regularly is impressive.

But the Phase’s balance won’t be for everyone, though the company is certainly hoping it will be for most people. The Phase simply won’t give you the advanced exercise tracking features that you get in a Fitbit Charge HR or any of Garmin’s or Polar’s devices. It’s not that type of device, and Misfit is going after the people who prefer basic trackers instead of devices with too many bells and whistles. Anyone who does more than the few trackable activities listed in the Misfit app will have to look elsewhere for a better-equipped tracker.

My only other issue with the Phase is the price. It starts at $175, and a few models with fancy finishes cost $195. I would have preferred a starting price of $150. However, these are typical prices for accessible fashion watches (like those made by Misfit’s parent company, Fossil). This price is reasonable if you like those kinds of timepieces, but you can get basic activity trackers for much less—Misfit even makes a few of them. Expect more companies in the future to make basic activity trackers that blend connected features and fashion (and they’ll all cost more than the regular wristband trackers). Overall, Misfit’s Phase is a good choice for anyone who wants just one device that can track movement while still being your everyday, stylish watch.