Item — HN Reader

For this “desert island” use case, a solar powered quartz watch seems like it would work the longest, of COTS options today (although a mechanical watch might be fine without servicing).

Of course, my favorite watch in this case would be something like the Breitling Emergency (https://www.breitling.com/us-en/emergency/) which could call for rescue. Looking forward to a satellite connectivity version in the future — iPhones are able to do this now, so something like the Apple Watch Ultra 2 may be able to.

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I’ve got a 20 year old G-shock with solar that’s never been serviced that’s been worn for thousands of miles of offshore sailing. It gets the time every day at 3am from some 60kHZ radio signal in Colorado and as long as I wear it a few times a year all day in the sun, it never dies. Its time has been within ~500ms of GPS time continuously since 2004. I leave it on a small metal rack near a south facing window with the antenna touching the rack for increased reception of the nightly time calibration, and a bit of solar in the morning. One day it will die, or some of the rubber on it will rip and I will replace it with the same model from Casio. It’s still only ~$100 and looks identical just with a new battery and more modern antenna/electronics.

Hoping for an EPIRB on my wrist or maybe even just a 162 MHz emergency AIS transmitter that fits on the wrist sometime in the next 5 years.