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Samsung Also Making a Smartwatch
New submitter evansspann sends word that Samsung will be making a smartwatch. Rumors have been swirling for a few months that Apple is working on a 'watch-like' device, but Samsung's CEO was willing to confirm that his company is working on such a product. "We've been preparing the watch product for so long. We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them." The companies are now likely racing to be the first to market. Production of such a device will likely be easier for Samsung, since it can produce its own screens and chips. It's also likely to work well with the popular Galaxy Phone lines. However, it will have a tougher time with app distribution than Apple, since it doesn't control Google Play the way Apple controls the App Store. "Apple's critics like to say the company's ideas are obvious, but as some pundits have noted, those very ideas once seemed unimaginable. The smartwatch will be a great test for that theory. It'll be interesting to see if Samsung can strike first in a nascent category and still rival Apple's work."
I have a feeling this is going to be downvoted because it happens to be the first post and people will think I'm just posting for that reason, but I totally misread this title as "Samsung also making a sandwich". Maybe someone sexist jerk told them to get in the kitchen, and they took it to heart?
Can't wait to see all old ideas re-patented by adding the language "on a watch".
"Smart watches" have been around in one form or another for decades.
I'm sure both the Samsung and Apple versions will be impressive new steps in the technology, but let's not pretend there's anything fundamentally new about the idea.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm pretty sure Casio introduced the smartwatch back in '70s.
This makes me suspect that Apple deliberately started rumors that they were working on a "smartwatch" simply to trick other companies into wasting effort into actually developing such a useless product.
We've all wanted smart watches since Q gave the first one to 007. It has taken a while, but I'm glad my dreams will finally come true.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
if you look carefully, you can see the Samsung founder Stefan Jobes wearing a smartwatch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YciM_54HzZk
Damn, read that as "sandwich" and thought I was at the onion... maybe I'm hungry.
Misread that as "Samsung also making a sandwich". Got real excited too.
You don't CARRY a watch, you WEAR it.
Indeed. If I could wear my cellphone, I totally would. (Assuming my cellphone also had about 2 years of battery life on a single charge, like my watch does...)
Quick! Patent every existing technology but add the words - 'on a watch'
IIRC, didn't Dick Tracy have a two-way wrist radio back in the 60's? And the "Search" [nee "Probe"] TV series had a tricorder-like device [they called a "scanner"] that could fit on top of an agent's ring.
So, such things were imagined just not realized. Just getting the prior art out there before the youngster lawyers start claiming so-and-so company invented the concept.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
There are plenty of phone watches out there... that is nothing new. What I'd like is something like Pebbl or the Sony Ericsson LiveView that interfaces to my phone (Android or iPhone) with some sort of standard interface for developers.
It can be a two-way interface, relaying video and audio in both directions, as well as have a small touch screen.
$150 is a bit much... LiveViews are available for $30, as they seem to be closeouts... I would like something like this for less than $100, though.
It will be a fashion statement. Though, I personally think it could be a handy little gadget if they simply make it compliment the phone rather than fail at duplicating functions. Display caller id, allow answering calls, function as a bluetooth speaker phone, display alerts so you dont have to pull your phone out of your pocket to find out that no, someone is not texting you, there is an update angry birds, control your music player, and heck, even display the current time.
I could see it as useful, but not exceptionally so. It should appeal to gadget folk. The real trick will be making it smart enough but simple.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I'm with you. If anything watches are dying out, except as a piece of jewelry. I don't see watches as a product category ripe for massive technological innovation, especially when the trend in "smart" devices (like phones) seems to be toward LARGER screens, not smaller.
Dick Tracy cites prior art!
If I am prepared to turn my head a few degrees in any direction I can see the time from pretty much anywhere. Apart from impressing your friends by wearing a Patek Philippe or some such, I don't really understand why people wear watches anymore.
You can, but you look like a douchebag talking to yourself on a bluetooth headset.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
IIRC Bond's watch had a laser in it. One powerful enough to cut... something. I forget what. Handcuffs or something. Hmm. We're going to need a larger speck of plutonium...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just keep releasing rumours about crazy products in the pipe line:
1. TV you talk at. Check, Samsung already made one. Anyone buy it?
2. Watch with battery life about 1/1000th of a normal one. In the pipeline...
3. ??????
If Samsung releases their watch first, Apple will release a "better" one. That of course may mean Apple won't release what they planned to however.
You can't release a competing product that doesn't compete without losing face.
You'll be able to jailbreak the Samsung smart watch, load a new kernel, hell, even compile your own kernel ON THE WATCH using a complete Gnu tool chain. And you won't have to go to some curated app store to get apps for the Samsung watch. You can get 'em from anywhere. For free! How can Apple's walled garden compete with that? Samsung FTW!
You also look like a douche bag talking to your watch on speaker phone because there is no ear piece.
Who said anything about a bluetooth headset? How do you know I don't want to talk directly into my wrist, like an awesome movie spy? (Ok, fine, those probably exist already, and I'm just being silly.)
Look, wrist watches were replaced by cellphones. There is no reason to introduce a watch again, unless it will replace the cellphone. Then, tell me - how the battery life problems were solved?
Why use a battery? When you can have a human fuel cell?
An internet connected wearable spice rack for your arms. Welcome to the world of the future.
An iWatch would be a fashion accessory just like iPods and IPhones are fashion accessories, an iPad is just a digital purse.
(and Andriod tablets are digital cargo pants, while Surface tablets are digital fannypacks.)
As in others will "copy" Apple's lead by following from the front?
Pebble
Sony MN2SW
Metawatch
From what I have seen, I would say Apple is more of a Johnny-come-lately than any sort of "market leader".
But you can keep on believing what you want...
This, dammit. I would pay good money for such a thing if it also contained a powerful rechargable lithium polymer battery and two or more USB ports (for power, not data).
I was given one of these recently:
http://www.siibusinessproducts.com/eu/english/products/sp582e.html
It's irrelevant now, but it is a good example of a third-party creating new ways to work with equipment we already have. Bring on the Bracer dock...
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
It better have a wrist-lojack-o-mater on it.
I got here through a series of tubes
Ohh ohh and knockout gas, I want knockout gas!
I got here through a series of tubes
The why is blindingly obvious to me.... Because with the trend of phones being 5"+, a watch is a HUGE lot handier to manage than having to pull out the phone unlock it, read some sms or email which likely doesn't require an immediate response anyway, or hang up a call from someone you don't have time to talk to at the moment. Add to that some other on-a-glance features, like... *the time*, a stopwatch, countdown timer etc, and hey presto, a whole package of quite useful stuff which may come in handy.
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
Another win for ADHD!
This feels a lot like history might be repeating itself here.
Anyone remember the ill-fated CrunchPad? Public announcement preceded that of the ipad, but for a bunch of reasons it never amounted to much while the Ipad took off and even Apple's competitors did better than how the crunchpad ended up.
Now we have the Pebble Watch which actually did make it to market (despite many unforseen delays) before the iwatch and other competitors (I think sony has a crappy smartwatch, but it is crappy). Even so it is immature with only modest software functionality at the moment.
Meanwhile all the chatter gives the impression Apple and others have got their own versions coming real soon now. Maybe its just FUD to scare people into wait-and-see on Pebble instead of going out and buying one right now. Or maybe there really is something good right around the corner that will clobber Pebble.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The smart money is on a complementary device, I think. No need to sacrifice tablet and smartphone sales.
I'm hoping for a device that works well with any smartphone (that's a pipe dream, of course -- until someone roots the thing it'll probably only work with Samsung or Apple devices) to provide the types of things you suggested, but is not dependent on a connection for everything.
For example, give it enough memory to download a playlist, so I can use it as my MP3 player while working out.
Give it enough sensors and processing power to run some interesting apps, without a phone connection.
"First!" isn't what counts here, this isn't an internet forum. Apple didn't build the first "smart" phone, or first MP3 player, or the first tablet. It built the most useful, and user friendly, tablet and smartphone and MP3 player to date. I'm not sure it matters if Samsung is "first". If Apple's product seems significantly "better" it's going to dominate anyway.
As a wise man once said ...
Charlie: Okay, the reason why men say hot girl at, like, 12 o'clock or 3 o'clock, is to specify a location using the clock face as a kind of a map.
Jake: What if you have a digital watch?
Charlie: First of all, you're not gonna meet any women if you wear a digital watch. Second of all, it doesn't matter; the clock face is imaginary.
Jake: Then how do you know what time you saw the girl?
Charlie: Oh, my God!
Apple said "Hey someone left fudge on the ground." Samsung looked over, grabbed a hunk and chowed down. Google couldn't find them because she had smeared something all over her eyes. Microsoft was alone on the swingset wishing he could blind himself and eat poo, looked fun. Yeah I'm not a fan of this idea. No one bought cellphone watches, why make them smart?
I suppose you've never met a shift-worker with a dual-time watch where the second display is set to 07:00 on waking so that one doesn't forget to each lunch when the real-world strikes 03:00.
I suppose you don't operate a stop-watch by feel and sound and habit when driving around town to determine the most efficient routes (is it even legal to fumble with your phone's stop-watch application?)
I suppose you've never forgotten to pack your phone's charge cable, or taken a vacation to some remote place where leaving behind your phone and phone's charger is considered a wise idea.
I suppose you've never got your hands covered with some kind of horrible construction adhesive while working on the construction of an out-building that isn't even wired for power yet.
I suppose, in general, you don't get out much. I've coined my own term for this condition: use-case blindness. But you do seem to read the advertisements for status bling in magazines left lying around in your local coffee shop, so you must get out at least a little bit.
just what I wanted... a watch that will need to be recharged every night. I already have one of those...
Will it be standalone without having a phone? Or will it require it? It would be nice to have it in the phone.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Sony already makes and sells a SmartWatch. This seems to have gone completely unnoticed by the blogosphere, who keep using terms like "first to market" and "new category" and don't seem to be able to use a Google search to see whats already out there. Sony's Smartwatch also is the benchmark that Apple will copy pretty much everything from, including the way it syncs with your existing Android phone and bluetooth gadgets. (You can bet it will do less cost too much, just prettier, and sell millions more).
Apple seems to pick on poor Sony, they already stole Sony's idea with a one-brand retail outlet. (Sony Style stores opened in the 1980s - decades before Apple Stores). Apple's original iPhone was almost as similar to some of Sony's touch screen concept phone, that you you wonder. Now they'll copy the Smartwatch.
Samsung has some very cool display tech though, such as flexible screens - there's a damn good reason why they aren't in Sammy's new phones (S4 etc). I would put good money on Smartwatches being the first use of these screens and that's where production resources are being directed right now.
Unless Apple uses AMOLED for their watch, Samsungs going to be the winner.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The Pebble (seems / claims) to do most of what you're describing. From what I understand, though, it doesn't have a speaker.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Obligatory Douglas Adams quote:
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...
Although I wear a relatively smart digital watch, I often wonder whether an automatic piece of jewelry (say, a Breguet) would be nicer on my wrist. Can't afford, so the question is purely philosophical.
Somebody said it above, and I think they're right.
A small touchscreen that talks to your phone over bluetooth. If I had a watch that displayed my caller ID on incoming calls, and could control my music I'd be content if it looked nice and was cheap (though, I doubt it would ever replace clocktwo in my heart). Add to it an app so that it can display texts, email (from and subject), battery life and whatever other status widgets I want, and clear them too, it'd be a nice companion to a phone.
The issues I see are battery life, and display. Unless it's high res e-ink with a dim light for dark (like an actual watch) I predict something that will suck in the sun, and be completely obnoxious in the dark. It will probably blank unless I look at it, but how good will it be at predicting if I'm peeking at it? I don't want to wear a watch that I need to reach over and push a button to light up and see.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"You're wearing it wrong!"
I want Jarvis.
They are probably running Tizen and not Android in line with their dropping of Android.
lulz. webui on a phone makes so much sense.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They should definitely stop for one second and ask people what they think. Then they'd hear "that's stupid and I don't want one" from all customers everywhere and not waste their money. They look ridiculous, the screen is unreadably small, and they'll likely be prone to damage. Also, a lot of people like me can't wear a watch because constant nerve pressure causes horrible headaches.
So, if the wearer doesn't respond to email or a facebook post in time, they can be "shocked" into compliance. Two shocks for forgetting to post a picture of breakfast, and three for forgetting to notify the world of your bowel movement.
I personally cannot wait for the new wave of smartwatches so that we can enjoy all of the exciting lawsuits over who started working on which one first.
Even the introduction quote sounds like an opening move in the gambit: "We've been preparing the watch product for so long." Not a specific time, just so long - long enough to make it legally questionable who had the idea first.
I personally can't wait for Casio to leap into the fray, patents blazing. I'm gonna need to license me some popcorn for this.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Apple's critics like to say the company's ideas are obvious, but as some pundits have noted, those very ideas once seemed unimaginable.
Apparently, rounded corners are unimaginable...
Look, wrist watches were replaced by cellphones.
Only for children and hipsters.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or, depending on how you wear your smartphone, you'd look more like Leela from Futurama.
Come to think of it, why HASN'T anyone made a bracer like the thing Leela wears on her arm, complete with a place to mount a cell phone? That seems like something some Futurama fan would've come up with by now...
I got one of those "sports" phone holders the other day. It holds your phone in landscape orientation perfectly if you put it on your forearm instead of your biceps, which is useful for, er, watching videos one handed on your phone. However, I wouldn't be seen dead with it like that in public.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And one of those circular saws disguised as a diver's watch bezel.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Look, wrist watches were replaced by cellphones.
If you believe that either you've never actually tried to use a phone as a timepiece or you're just plain delusional.
Most likely they're under twenty and think it's cool because everyone else is doing it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I don't like to wear a watch on my wrist. Even a good waterproof one gets too dinged up. I especially don't want a good one on my wrist getting manure on it.
But you don't mind getting shit on your smartphone? Hmmm...
By the way, I just threw that bomb in to see if you were paying attention. Did you catch it?
I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who didn't have my own bomb at home.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It'll probably need a daily charge, making it worse than the old clockwork watches in that respect.
Although it was slightly annoying and not difficult to forget to do, at least winding a watch only took about ten seconds (IIRC).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Let's see if anyone knows what this Kronom KD-2 is...
Hell yes. Samsung, are you reading this? Get to it!
I got here through a series of tubes
Maybe he lives somewhere where it's never cold enough to need an overcoat. That or he never goes outside.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't have a smartphone. No reception out here so no reason. When I'm out working in the field I don't need the time more accurately than the sun tells.