It's the software, stupid: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch bags big apps Samsung is not a great innovator, yet it’s certainly one of the world’s greatest imitators. Although it follows other companies into booming markets with me-too products, it remembers to add a little more sparkle to its offerings so that it not merely to catches up with its rivals, it eventually pushes past them. That’s what …
Tethered = sadness and fail. Remember the early Nokia 700 web tablet thingy? Had to be thethered for connectivity outside wifi, which was a deliberate design choice, and as soon as the iphone came out it shriveled and died. Or the hilarity with Blackberry's tablet mail that had to be tethered to the phone at first?
Tethering might increase functionality. It definitely increases hassle and things to fail.
It's not so much about age - it's experience. The whole smartwatch thing comes around every few years or so, and a few maniacs get excited, but then we all realise that our phones have a clock on them and we've all gotten very used to slipping it out and having a quick glance.
None of these 'smart' watches actually do anything particularly smart, and where it comes to functionality they seem to promise little beyond the last wave of them we saw years ago...except for a few acronyms like OLED, etc What they will do it empty your wallet for a thing that won't even last pass staying out overnight at a friend's house, or partying, whatever.
I know which watch you bought then.
This was the one I bought (or something similar).
I can not remember if I ever did get a calculator watch, but I had a very simple "organizer" one that I could store phone numbers on (never used a phone back then, so pointless) and it was made by Casio.
Was one of these http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mlwSOhLASb8OHLwDKl2OX1Q.jpg
Had a radio watch at some point that sadly fell apart.
Never went back to such gadgets again after that. And a rotary watch or two is all I've got. :)
Pah! That makes you a mere whippersnapper.
Anyone remember the Sinclair Black Watch? Two versions; one pre-assembled and the other was one that you had to solder yourself.
All would have worked well but for the essential 1970s fashion items; when everyone wore Bri-Nylon shrts and the static fried the watches.
"because I think this new hype about smarwatches is just that - hype and....." Yeah, but I'm much more likely to use a smartwatchphone than be a Glasshole, especially if I'm doing something like jogging or cycling when I don't want my phone falling out of my pocket and breaking. Pair it with a (discrete) Bluetooth headset and enjoy not looking a total nerd.
Of course, one of the smaller Andorid phones, something the size of the old HTC Wildfire S, mounted in landscape mode on a wrist strap is even better and a whole lot cheaper, and has a far better screen.
I have two main criteria for a watch.
1) Rugged. Metal body and strap (real solid metal, not plastic with silver paint or plastic with a thin metal coating) and a toughened glass screen. Watches don't last long on my wrist. A plastic face has a life span of less than a week before it gets a nasty scratch across the display. My current one meets the specs I mention and has lasted 10 years and only slightly showing wear and tare. No point in me strapping my new shiney to my wrist and accidentally scuffing it on a wall after a drunken stagger to my front door.
2) Water resistant. Not talking deep sea diving. I'm talking about not worrying about the rain hitting it (we are in the UK after all) or sticking your hands in a bucket of water with the thing still on. Something else that has kept my watch going for 10 years. I worry about getting my phone out to check text messages or take a photo when its even light drizzle. That does preclude any watch that needs a cover opened to stick in a charging cable daily. A few charging pads on the back or inductive charging is what you need.
Once the two above are satisfied, I'll consider one, as it will have a chance of lasting long enough to become obsolete. It was tough to find my current watch (which also stores phone numbers if you are looking for the geek angle).
A little digging found one of the most important specs missing from this report... the size of it.
Another site has the dimensions as 37mm wide, 57mm tall and 11mm thick.
Comparing that the watch currently stuck on my arm, it's about the same width, twice as tall and roughly the same thickness. I don't like how thick my current watch is, but, can't find one I like to replace it.
I have slim wrists, and something that big would look ridiculous on there.
The G-Shock is rugged and waterproof, but it sounds like you want a watch with a sapphire crystal - which not likely to be featured on a smartwatch which might only be used for a couple of years before being superseded by a newer model. The faces on G-Shocks do tend to be deeply recessed though, so not as prone to scratches as other non-sapphire watches.
Maybe they will give us a nice range, rather than one size fits all.
I've tried the plastic bodied watches before (including the ones that pretend to look like metal but are just metal coated plastic). They scuff up too easily and tend to break where the strap meets the body (where the pins holding the strap go into the body).
Sitting in a bedside cradle sounds like a good idea for the smart watches. As long as the cradle is portable (doesn't take much room in your overnight bag) and doesn't have a bright charging light. Too many things with a bright LED in the bedroom already.
I still find it amusing that my £29 Nook has 800MHz CPU with 256MB RAM, and 16GB of storage. I mean, the idea that the future would have watches and phones that were actually mobile computers with high spec wouldn't have surprised me, especially at hundreds of pounds, indeed, that was what we were expecting the future to be. But 256MB RAM in something that's dedicated at one function, to read books?
It's like saying in 2030, a £20 toaster will have 256GB of RAM and an 80-core processor.
Acorn A305 - 8MHz ARM2, 512KB RAM, and 720KB discs (though 40MB Hard drive was an option) - And you can wear it on your wrist, instead of it taking serious desk space. How far we've come eh?
But, I can't see this flying without at least a week's usage between charges. That must surely be the usable minimum?!?
When I was doing O level French I was reminded that if the examiner asked 'Quel temps fait-il?' not to look at my watch thinking they'd asked about the time.
Now, you'd have to explain to them (in French, of course) that you weren't actually checking the time, but looking at the watch weather app!
But that's a considered contemplation of the weather report and not something you have a quick look at.
info on your next appointment, direction to the nearest Starbucks (an example!), how long to the next train - these are quick look things.
As a bit of a Sammy fanboy I was waiting for this, crossing my fingers that they wouldn't do a 'Sony' and lock it to their phones. Doh - Guess I'll be waiting for Google's offering. I doubt a 'Nexus' watch will only work with Nexus devices; that would be shooting themselves in the foot. Like Samsung has just done.
Samsung isn't really shooting themselves in the foot - they are just ahead of the Android pack and waiting for them to catch up. They have put Bletooth LE hardware in their kit before support for the standard was rolled out in the last major Android update.
Oh, Google bought a smartwatch start-up a few years ago, but the deal was kept secret until last week when some law firm leaked it. If you wanted to develop a smartwatch in secret, you could do worse than to make a song and dance about some smart-spectacles you are also working on.
Guess I'll be waiting for Google's offering. I doubt a 'Nexus' watch will only work with Nexus devices; that would be shooting themselves in the foot. Like Samsung has just done.
I only use Nexus phones anyway because I like my Android vanilla, so a Nexus watch will suit me just fine whether it's brand-locked or not.
Just so long as the screen is scratch-free (i.e. sapphire).
"but Sony don’t have is the budget for a glitzy product launch at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin this week "
Shame... as the new Z1 looks interesting.. not that El Reg has mentioned it yet. Waterproof, microSD card, Full HD screen, 3000mAh battery, 2 GB RAM, and a fast processor (something Sony Erricsson failed at) topped off with a 20.7 MP camera.
Agreed, the Z1 looks an absolute beast. Very interested in the camera add-ons they've launched as well, which El Reg might get round to covering one day.
P.S I saw a few stills of Sony's IFA event and it looks pretty large and glitzy to me. Unlike the Samsung launch the kit on show looked fantastic and pretty innovative too.
(For any Samsung employees watching innovative means coming up with your own ideas. You'll get there one day).
"Though few smartwatches feature a camera, even the Gear’s integrated 1.9MP component isn’t original: Omate is promising to build a 5MP camera into its TrueSmart watch"
I'm fascinated by your definition of originality. Samsung are first to market with a feature (camera in a smartwatch) and yet somehow they're copying a proposed feature from a watch which will only be produced if the crowdfunding works. How does that work then?
There have been watches with cameras on for... well decades. I'm sure I remember reading about a Cold War-era spy camera mounted in a watch, but all my search terms return are links to that GP who used a modern digital camera watch to film his abuse of patients.
The reporter is well know for his fanboyism :-)
"Samsung is not a great innovator, yet it’s certainly one of the world’s greatest imitators."
He prefer to forget that Apple imitates also, otherwise, why launching a Mini iPad and an iPhone with a bigger display? :-)
"its upcoming Android-based Galaxy Note 3 VLP™ (that's a Very Large Phone)."
Yeah, with the Notes Samsung was a really imitator, not creating a new market themselves with inovative software...:-)
And the best gem in the article:
"This is certainly how Apple would have done it, and it’s how all the other smartwatch makers - established brands and startup alike, including Qualcomm - have approached the market. "
So, if it was Apple presenting a "smartwatch" (whatever its that...), it would be pure genious and inovation! But because it was Samsung, it's an imitation of others...
I had the phrase "Excuse me but do you have anywhere I can charge up my watch?" as the activation phrase for my sleeper cell agents.
Bad enough I had to change it from "I'm really getting tired of this orgasm!" for my 'never will be heard phrase' after American Dad used it!
That kind of reprogramming takes time!
Oddly, no. I do remember saying things like "when will I ever have a decent signal at home so I can dump the fixed line leach and be mobile only". Of course that was when the base + per minute + long distance on the landline was higher than that of cellular each month on my Motorola 2950. Then again, part of that was a local call included cities 40 miles away which I never called and my brother, two towns and 7 miles away, was long distance.
If you don't think of the camera as a device for taking photographs, but instead think of it as a barcode scanner, then it starts to make sense. MyFitnessPal relies on entering calories, and the easiest way to do this is by scanning the barcodes on the packet. Doing that without having to find the phone seems a useful and convenient feature.
Also interesting is the price point Samsung have chosen. To me it seems high (twice the price of pebble). Presumably they've done their research though.
My final thought is that they seem to be visibly disagreeing with some of pebble's key design constraints: 7 day battery, small enough to be a watch (not a phone with a strap), waterproof...
I know plenty of runners, cyclists etc who will gladly spaff 2-300 quid on a wrist worn GPS enabled 'exercise computer' device - eg a Garmin Forerunner, that sort of thing. Those are quite chunky, waterproof (IPX7) and the battery life is rarely more than 20 hours in use.
So I can see a smart watch being able to compete in that market, if it had comparable software. Never used RunKeeper so I can't comment on that but the firmware in the Garmin units is pretty well featured. But I bet the keen athletes would be interested in a smart watch that does what a ForeRunner does, combined with calorie intake / dietary information (barcode scanning your food as mentioned above) and stuff like that.
And how long before a little DIY, blue-tooth gizmo arrives that infiltrates that tethering, trawls your phone for data and leaves it quietly calling premium rate number(s), all because you came within 2m of said gizmo in the pocket of some evil perp intent on all of the above ? Just asking - you know how totally secure all this kit is these days (?).
Maybe not that smart in today's terms but it displays the day, date and time in a number of formats for a variety of time zones, has alarm and stopwatch functions, stores a list of names and telephone numbers, even has a "memo" database, is entirely self-contained with a simple user interface and backlight, is water-proof enough for doing the washing-up and withstands the occasional swim, runs for five years on a cheap battery and cost less than £20.
It just works, is there whenever I need it, no fuss nor hassle, keeps accurate enough time for weeks on end, and when the battery goes bad it dies gracefully over a period of months. The last thing I want is a watch which won't work when I want it to because it isn't charged up.
A new smart watch may potentially offer me more but not without cost and bringing inconvenience and I'm failing to see any compelling reason to 'upgrade'. If they can match what I have now and more on top; then I'll be interested.
This is not a watch. Full stop. A watch is a device whose primary purpose is to display the current time in a readioly understood format. The Samsung WristThing is essentially a wearable secondary screen for an existing smartphone. The fact that it can potentially diplay the time does not make it a watch any more than the same capability makes any one of my existing computing devces a watch. There may be some valid use cases to be made out for the device but for most owners this is simply another piece of shinyshiny designed primarily to separate the user from his money.
Even when the technology improves to include month-long battery life, always on daylight readiable screen and a price lower than the proverbial fried potatoes, it will still be a niche product in real terms.
Mobile device makers are now scrabbling to find additional revenue streams given that high end smartphones are now pretty much interchangeable. Another example of such is Sony's bizzarre clip-on camera/lenses for smartphones. which are inconvenient, need separate charging and cost more than similarly specified actual cameras.
Finally, how does one drive this beasty in a noisy environment such as the pub on a Saturday night? The Samsung Galaxy QuietMuff into which one inserts one's wrist and head?
Won "the amazing new samsung Smartwatch" in a prize promotion through 888.com last month. Assume it's this one as Samsung didn't have one until yesterday.
I don't think think it will come with a new phone (I only have a Galaxy SII - under contract until 2015) so won't have the connectivity, I work away quite abit so unless I always remember the charger then that'll be no good to me either - But no connectivity will save on battery power - but hardly a smartwatch then.
I have a Garmin Forerunner for recording my exercise - whose battery also lasts at least a week.
and I normally wear a Skagen watch - which is only 8mm thick, water-resistant to 3ATM and hasn't needed a new battery in 3 years I've had it so this would feel like a brick in comparison.
Hey - but it's free - maybe I'll sell it on Ebay or leave it in the box and bring it out to show my grandkids in the future.
I have a Garmin 610. Great GPS running tool but fairly useless as a day to day watch due to the battery life of only 18-20 hours. I don't want to carry yet another charger around with me, and what if I relied on the alarm function and forgot to charge it!
So any smart watch would need to improve on battery life before I parted with cash.
Actually who am I kidding. I bought a proper watch last month due to the reason above and can't see the domestic CFO agreeing to a few hundred quid for yet another watch, even if I do have two wrists to wear them on!!
So poor timing and sour grapes on my part.
I have a Garmin 610. Great GPS running tool and excellent as a day to day watch with a battery life of about a month.
I have to physically swipe the touch screen from right to left to initialise the GPS acquisition, then if I do not physically press the " Start Activity " button ( top right ) it times out and reverts to watch mode.
You either have a duff unit or need to RTFM.
Battery life in GPS mode is about 8 hours with 1 second sampling, so no good for Ultras ( 910XT) has 20-22 hours of active GPS
When I wore wristwatches, I had to replace the band once a year because the rubber got brittle. This watch has the camera in the band... which gets brittle... They can sod off, I'm not replacing a watch that costs this much every year.
If you're wondering, my watch is on a lanyard now, and my wrist uniformly tanned for it.
These are not watches and the spec other than having a nice screen is terrible. Until the things battery can last as long as my current watch I will keep my trusty casio.
Simple, round face, hardened face, stainless clip strap, not too thick Casio Wave Ceptor and had it for 7 years now and I only changed the battery a year ago. That is what I call a good battery life. A watch with a 6 year battery ticks my box.
Sir
Apple could have easily bunged some Bluetooth chippery in their old Nano and sold it as a connected companion to the iPhone... it would probably have been alight, and occasionally useful (a remote control for media playback), but it wouldn't have been without some obvious flaws.
The Reg did report recently on an Apple patent for a micro-perforated aluminium touch screen- it's looks like a sheet of normal aluminium, but tiny holes allow for pixels to be seen through it, and touches can be sensed through distortion of the sheet. The patent application mentioned keyboards (the current Apple Wireless keyboard has a power-indicator LED that is nearly invisible when off) but the technique has some obvious potential for a smart-watch.
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