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Do please let me say this before anything else: I could not design or build a smartwatch, I simply could not. Therefore, I have limitless admiration for anyone, for any company, that does this -- or I did, before this week. After one week with a Ulefone GW01 Smart Watch Pedometer Remote Camera Bluetooth Information Pushing Smartwatch, I'm afraid I found some limits to my admiration -- possibly starting with the length of its name.

To be fair, I am going to criticize this watch, yet you could criticize me right back. I accepted the challenge, perhaps only to free myself of an armlock, and I set out to wear this for a week, but I failed. This is even more unfair of me: I did not replace my Apple Watch with this Ulefone one, I wore them both. One on each wrist. I am unfair, and I failed, but at least I failed looking like an idiot.

Two watches, both alike in dignity, on my wrists is where we lay our scene. The reason I failed, though, was that I forgot to bring the Ulefone battery charger with me on a trip, and while I might wear two smartwatches if necessary, I'm unlikely to wear one that isn't working. Except, I did used to wear the one in the middle of these three:

It's just a watch with no hands, no digital readout, solely the word Now on it. I wore that for a year or more, and until the Apple Watch came out, it was the most accurate watch I'd ever had. Then, too, for some reason, my Apple Watch didn't charge last night -- I think I knocked it off the stand just enough -- so it died early afternoon. Yet I carried on wearing it all day.

So if this week were about comparing, you'd have to conclude that both watches have batteries that run out, and that maybe I'm an Apple fan with an odd taste in chronometers. Let me add to the mix that the Ulefone lasted something in the order of three days before needing a charge. A gigantic, just gigantic part of this, though, is that I used it less, and less, and less. Yet I won't even try to deny it: the Ulefone Smartwatch has better battery life than the Apple Watch.

Only...

Saying the Ulefone Smartwatch has a longer battery life is like saying you don't have to put gas in your bicycle. It's true, but let's discuss it on the freeway.

Non-Apple watches have certain issues going in -- chiefly that no other manufacturer will ever be able to bind their watch as closely into iOS as Apple can -- but they also naturally have some expected advantages. Some perceived benefits. There are things Apple doesn't do well, and competitors have plenty to zero in on. One of those, for instance, is longer battery life -- but I found that to be a truth that is of zero benefit to me.

Then there's the fact that I think the Apple Watch is a bit chunky. Also, I think that it's irritating how often I tap on the wrong app on the Apple Watch, so there's definitely something needed there on either how the apps work, or how my finger does. I vote for surgery on the apps. Plus, there is the one thing that actually made me look forward to trying out the Ulefone: it's round, and Apple Watch is square.

Now, I no longer think Apple Watch is chunky, because this Ulefone one is substantially thicker and bigger. Weirdly, it looks like it's so much bigger that it's going to be very heavy, but it's made of such light, insubstantial, plasticky -- well, plastic, that it feels terrible. You've got to hand it to Ulefone, though: the face is round.

Apple is mad. Watches are round, and they always have been. It's just the right shape for the job, and I wonder if Apple doing a squared-off watch face is really an admission that they couldn't do a round one properly. As it turns out, no. The round face on the Ulefone is a dreadful idea. I keep hitting the bezel when I try to swipe around, for one thing, but that's not the worst of it.

The flaw that makes you give up on this watch is its error messages. Ulefone chooses to display error messages in regular rectangular boxes –– on a circular screen. I can't tell you what the first error message I got was, because I couldn't tell what it was about. The key words were off the screen. I know it was important though, because there were two buttons at the bottom. Not that I know what they were, as their labels were also cut off.

Apple gets praised for its attention to detail, but sometimes I think it's just that they switch their products on. Here's a small example that I found on the first day with the Ulefone, and which may be why my subconscious told me not to bother bringing the charger. I really wish that Apple Watch would stay on all the time; it's not as if it's hard to turn your wrist and have it wake, but on-all-the-time would be better.

For most of the first day with the Ulefone Smartwatch, every time I wanted to use it, I had to press a button on the side. It was unbelievable that you had to press a button like you did on digital watches of the 1970s. It could not be possible that this was a final, shipping, finished product.

It wasn't. You can have the Ulefone Smartwatch switch itself on as you turn your wrist. Only, you have to switch that setting on. It's a setting. An option. A buried option I only found by accident. There must be situations where you wouldn't want the watch to turn itself on, but they must be in the minority. Ulefone expects you to study what the watch can do, Apple expects you to want to get on with your life.

If you're from the Ulefone company then you probably want to tell me that there are many more features in this watch that I haven't even looked at. I found some of them. It's just consistently the same problem every time: when you know something is there, you have a shot at finding it and adjusting it. It is far from unreasonable to expect a user to spend time seeing what their new watch can do, but hiding features is just a joke.

Picky

Maybe you are someone who enjoys fiddling with settings, it's not as if that's rare, so let me provide you with a bigger example of this being a poor watch. If you set it up to, you can make your phone calls on your Ulefone Smartwatch instead of on your iPhone.

So far, so good. Actually, so far, so impressive: this really is a non-Apple smartwatch that works with iPhone. Only, again it just doesn't look as if anyone tried it. This is the Microsoft approach: can you make calls via the watch? Yes, tick. Is it in fact usable? We'll get back to you on that.

For what happens is that once you've set it up so that you can make calls on your watch, you can't make them on the iPhone anymore. Correction: you can dial out on the iPhone successfully, but you will stand there with your phone next to your ear wondering why no one ever answers you. They do. They're shouting down the line, wondering why you're not speaking. You are. It's just all pointless, because the iPhone speaker is switched off in favor of the watch's one.

You have to undo the connection to the phone in order to be able to use your phone (perhaps there's another buried setting somewhere, but so far none of the expeditions I sent out to find one have reported back). If you don't have an Apple Watch, you may not see how different this is: when you get a call and you have an Apple Watch, your iPhone and your watch ring. Answer the call on either device. Dial out from either device. It's so seamless, you don't think about it.

That's the killer app

Apple Watch's "killer app" is that it slots into your life, and on the rare occasions when you think about it, it's either because an app is too slow, or because you suddenly appreciate a little Apple-esque touch you haven't noticed before. What I learned from this week is that I don't want a smartwatch. I don't want a boys' toy, I don't want to play with electronic gadgets for the fun of it, and I do not want to have to find obscure settings for obvious things.

I do not want a smartwatch. I want a Watch.

When I got back to my office and the Ulefone charger, by the way, it was extremely clear and obvious how to connect it all up together. Even so, it was hard. I felt I must be doing it wrong, I felt I must be about to break some of the plastic off either the smartwatch or the charger. Then, when I got it right and could see that the watch was firmly in its little cradle, when I could see that the metal connectors were, well, connecting, it didn't work.

The watch did not charge the first time I tried it. As I say, I knocked my Apple Watch off its stand last night, so you and I both have to think it's my mistake again. When I tried doing exactly the same thing again, though, I did. I did exactly the same thing, but now there was a sound and the screen lit, it strobed a battery-charging icon. You look at it, you wonder what was different, and you think enough already with the strobing icon.

Again, if you don't have an Apple Watch, you may not know this but you won't be surprised: when you switch an Apple Watch on, it turns on. When you switch it off, it switches off. No fanfare. No palaver. When you switch on the Ulefone watch, it bellows out a clarion call of a tune that's saying look at me, look at me, see me, me, me. Then when you switch it off, it shows the word goodbye, and again puts on a show with a band.

It's interesting: the watch that demands your attention then doesn't make it worth your while with functions, or even appearance. The one that has a far better screen, vastly better features, and an attention to detail that rewards your increased use, that's the one that doesn't make a fuss at all. Ulefone wants you to buy this watch, buy me, buy me, tell your friends. Apple figures you've already bought it, let's get on with being useful. Until Apple Watch 2 comes out, and makes the original one seem old-fashioned, anyway.

I spent about $800 on Apple Watch (I bought two: one for me, and one for my wife Angela) and the Ulefone costs around $80. Again, that sounds like a win for Ulefone, but it is not. It's easy to say you should buy the more expensive choice, yet of course plenty of us can't afford it, or can't justify spending this much even if we can. Yet buying this Ulefone Smartwatch is not you spending $80 to get a cheaper Apple Watch -- it's you throwing away 80 bucks.

Be fair

Please do let me say this again: I couldn't make the Ulefone Smartwatch, or any other one like it. Not a chance. Plus, without question, without fail, your mileage may vary, and there could be things you like in this watch. However, Apple Watch slipped into my life easily and immediately and gratifyingly. This afternoon when its battery had died, I still looked at it around 10 times.

Ulefone Smartwatch has a long feature list, but it didn't fit into my life. It made me annoyed and frustrated. It made me angry. As a drama writer, I have to admire anyone or any company that can conjure up an emotional response to their work, but I took this watch off a few days into the week, and you could pay me to put it back on, but that's the only way it'll happen.

-- William Gallagher (@WGallagher)