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No Love From Ars For Samsung's New Smart Watch

Posted by timothy on from the too-little-too-early dept.

Despite the number of companies shipping or promising them, smart watches aren't the easiest sell, and Ars Technica's review of Samsung's entry illustrates why. Despite all the processing power inside, the watch is "sluggish" even for the kind of at-a-glance convenience features that are touted as the reason to have a phone tethered to an (even smarter) phone, and for the most part seems to weakly imitate features already found on that phone. There are a few features called out as cool, like a media control app, but for the most part reviewer Rob Amadeo finds little compelling in the Galaxy Gear.

36 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Yo dawg by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Funny

    So I heard you like phones so we made a miniature phone for you phone so you can talk while you call.

    --
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    1. Re:Yo dawg by binarylarry · · Score: 2

      Do you think this will be available for people who are really, really, ridiculously good looking?

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    2. Re:Yo dawg by mspohr · · Score: 2

      Here's one:
      http://omate.com/
      Complete Android phone on your wrist... waterproof too!

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    3. Re:Yo dawg by mspohr · · Score: 2

      The web site and the Kickstarter site have all the details...
      http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/omate/omate-truesmart-water-resistant-standalone-smartwa

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    4. Re:Yo dawg by Mike+Buddha · · Score: 2

      Oh yeah, that looks a little less like ass than the other one that looks like ass.

      --
      by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
  2. What if Apple.. by drewsup · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Was bluffing all this time, how ironic would it be if just the rumor of Apple coming out with this caused multiple vendors to blow all that R&D and production on a product no one really wants.
    Hate Apple all you want, but there really is no substitute for being the king of the hill...

    1. Re: What if Apple.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Excellent point. Apple hints, companies shoot their wad, consumers are "yawn", Apple learns from consumer reaction, releases killer product, samsung pays for Apple's consumer research, silly samsung!

    2. Re:What if Apple.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What you are suggesting--creating something completely new out of thin air--is "invention," not "innovation." There is a reason why we use two different words to describe these concepts.

    3. Re: What if Apple.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "When did Apple ever innovate? "

      Please learn the difference between innovation and invention.

      And FYI : Apple owns many many thousands of patents.

      "They didn't invent the concept of the PC"

      Oh quite the opposite. They did exactly that. The Apple ][ was the very first PC. What you think of a PC was scrambled together by IBM with leftovers in a hurry when they saw the wild success of the Apple ][.

      Apple ][ was released in 1977. 3 years before the IBM PC.

      ", nor did they invent the GUI. "

      They did indeed invent the modern, working GUI.

      The concept they bought from Xerox was not completely developed and lacked many key features. It was not really usable.

      The first usable GUI computer was indeed the Macintosh in 1984 when all others used CLI.

      "They didn't invent the portable music player (those had been around for years), "

      No. But they innovated A LOT. Guess why the iPod captured 77% of the market in an instant and never dropped below that level.

      Have you seen one of the train wrecks they sold back then? Like the Nomad. Plain awful. MP3 players only became mainstream due to the iPod.

      "nor did they invent the smartphone. "

      No. But just like the iPod there was a time before the iPhone and one after the iPhone. They innovated what a smartphone is. Not with a stylus and resistive display, no more plasticky keys.

      "Truth be told, Apple has never created a completely new and untested product from scratch and been successful with it. "

      Wrong. Just plain wrong. Your bias and lack of knowledge is showing.

      ". It's an admirable skill, but I wouldn't call it innovation. "

      But exactly that IS innovation. Improving a product substantially is the epitome of innovation.

      "Also, marketing. They have really good marketing."

      Their marketing budget is tiny compared to MS or Samsung.

    4. Re: What if Apple.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      " Except Apple aren't king of the hill any more, they have less than 20% of the smartphone market. "

      Which is quite irrelevant. They never had more than 20% of the smartphone marketshare. Marketshare is largely irrelevant for Apple

      The are still king of the hill in profits and of mindshare. No other phone creates that frenzy. 9 million smartphones sold in 48 hours. No one else does this.

      " And they've repeatedly missed the boat on what smartphone buyers really want. "

      Not really. Otherwise they wouldn't have sold so many of them.

      "Copy-paste,"

      Covered. And better than all others.

      " big screens"

      The phablet market is tiny despite all the noise from tech forums. According to google the phablet market is just 10%. 90% of all Androids(!) are sold with screens of 4" or less.

      ", folders, notifications, etc etc. "

      They have all of it.

    5. Re: What if Apple.. by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Informative

      20% of the market and probably 50% of the profits

      Samsung Dethrones Apple in Smartphone Profits

      Apple has fallen off the profit throne.

      Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time.

      http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-apple-in-smartphone-profits/

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    6. Re: What if Apple.. by tysonedwards · · Score: 2

      Believe both.

      The first is an "everywhere, forever" statistic.
      The second is a "United States in Q2 2013" statistic.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    7. Re:What if Apple.. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The rumours of Apple developing one came after everyone else started working on theirs, not before. The first ones were on Kickstarter, such as the Pebble. Then Samsung demoed a flexible OLED display and people started to speculate that it would be used for a watch or some other kind of wearable device.

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  3. Is anyone surprised? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hands up all those who've been desperately waiting for a 'smart watch' to stick on their wrist?

    Yeah, thought not.

    1. Re:Is anyone surprised? by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was, and bought a Pebble. Damn close to everything I'd want, and definitely worth the price. Yeah, it would be nice to have a 'smart' watch but I don't think the battery and screen tech currently exists to do it right. The Pebble as a second, low-power, always-on screen with a few controls is pretty much the best available right now.

    2. Re:Is anyone surprised? by Guru80 · · Score: 2

      The last time I thought a smart watch would be the coolest thing ever was in a 70's or early 80's Star Trek or James Bond movie.

  4. Wearable computing... by larwe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... is like home automation. It's always "just about to explode out of a niche market and go mainstream". Specifically to the wristwatch: this device has more or less ceased to fill its original segment of "functional timekeeping, optionally alarm-playing device that's always with you because it's on your wrist" - that functionality is filled by the cellphone, which is also always with you and has a lot more functionality. Watches these days are considered jewelry, not tools - you wear them occasionally to go with nice clothes to achieve a specific aesthetic effect. (This line of thinking is not original to me, by the way, I first heard it when reading some strategic marketing training materials, and have since heard the same story - with credible market research justifications, several times. It seems to pass the sniff test, especially once I walk down the street and look at a few hundred wrists to see what's on them). Given this, the market segment that actually finds the "80s calculator watch" aesthetic to be appealing is pretty limited, and I say that as someone who owned and loved my calculator watches, FM radio watch, "space invaders game" watch, and B&W TV watch in the 1980s. It certainly isn't close to the size of the cellphone market, by orders of magnitude. This whole activity of creating smartwatches is simply a saturated market flailing around to create the Next Big Thing. Throw some hardware out there, see if someone (probably a startup) comes up with a use case that sets the world on fire, acquire startup, profit. In the meantime, hype the widget and milk it for PR exposure time.

    1. Re:Wearable computing... by jez9999 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Specifically to the wristwatch: this device has more or less ceased to fill its original segment of "functional timekeeping, optionally alarm-playing device that's always with you because it's on your wrist"

      Believe it or not, I still wear a digital watch as well as have a smartphone. It's just quicker to glance at the time on it (which I do quite regularly) than take a few seconds taking out my smartphone from a pocket that also has keys in it.

      I quite like the simplicity of the watch, though; a smartwatch kind of defeats the point.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    2. Re:Wearable computing... by bosef1 · · Score: 2

      As I seem to recall from back when the History Channel showed history, the original function of the "wrist watch" was jewelry, especially for ladies. Men wore pocket watches, and wrist watches were women's bracelets with a built-in timepiece. From what I remember, wrist watches weren't really appropriate fashion items for men until World War 1, when mass troop coordination required everyone to have an easily accessible timepiece, and wrist-watches fit the bill. So having the wrist watch return the status of jewelry isn't too unprecedented.

      I find I prefer to wear a pocket watch at the office. I'm not a good typist, and wearing a wrist-watch bothers me when I use a keyboard. The pocket watch lets me have a convenient timepiece that stays in my pants. Plus you can get some really fancy pocket watches.

    3. Re:Wearable computing... by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. It's lot quicker and easier to glance at my watch than it is to dig my smartphone out of my pocket and wake up the screen. For that matter living in New England, when it's winter I've got to figure out which pocket the phone's in.

      What having a phone with you means is that it's no longer *compulsory* to have a watch for telling time. A watch is still a heck of a lot more convenient than a phone. I think that a phone companion watch that did caller id and notified me of incoming messages and upcoming appointments would be awesome, provided that it could go a couple days between charges. The Samsung device, I think, is a bit over an overreach; it tries to do too much and does some of it not so well.

      I do agree that people aren't wearing watches as much as they used to. My daughter carries a pocket watch. One day at school she popped it open to check the time, and a girl asked, "What's that?"

      "A pocket watch," daughter answers.

      "What does it do?" the girl asks.

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    4. Re:Wearable computing... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also, it's arguable that Samsung's stab at 'Smart Watch' utterly bungles the separation of labor in ways that make the result far less compelling than it could be(which, for the reasons you describe, is still somewhat limited).

      We have 'wearable computing', even your $100 'eh, some kind of android phone' that you get with prepaid plans is quite wearable, and pretty punchy computationally. Until we have the nigh-miraculuous/power density enough to blow your hand off battery tech to get the whole phone onto your wrist, that's where the compute power is going to have to live(there are a few novelty 'dumbphone-on-wrist' watches you can get, and they do work; but the only reason they get reasonable-ish battery life is because they are nth-generation minimalist GSM implementations cut to the bone).

      Instead of recognizing this, and building just enough intelligence to save bandwidth by crunching and formatting messages (rather than using a less power efficient, relatively high speed, RF link to drive a 'dumb' framebuffer style screen or a relatively dumb RFB/VNC style screen), which would actually be doable in a smaller watch, or one with better battery life, or both, they dumped an entire cellphone in the thing, just one without the 'phone' part, or enough power to make Android pleasant, or enough battery to get good runtimes... Brilliant.

      Ironically, Microsoft is probably best positioned (technologically, based on past behavior I'll give them a 90+ percent chance of either not doing it or fucking it up really badly) to do the 'smart watch'+ cellphone combo properly. They've been thinking about peripheral screens connected to more qualified systems since at least 'Windows Sideshow' debuted with Vista back in the day (uptake, approximately zero...) and they also have, for actual application support on the resource constrained peripheral devices, all the work they've done on .NET. .NET Micro runs on next to no resources (no 8-bit stuff; but the memory footprint is under 512k and the target architecture is ARM microcontrollers). .NET Compact is more capable; and of intermediate size, and then full .NET. All use the CLR, and run CIL bytecode applications, all are either quite similar to one another or subsets of one another, and so on.

      Again, MS being MS, they'll fuck this one up in some baffling fashion; but that's a very strong (relative to other companies' portfolios) set of options for building 'smart watch' type devices. Want a really watch-like smartwatch, possibly with adequate battery life? A .NET Micro device will run on just about the feeblest 32-bit ARM microcontrollers you can buy, and would support 'faces' and notification-processing/display engines on the CLR, with WCF-based communication with the handset. Want something a bit punchier? Compact is that, if you can satisfy its hardware requirements.

      Outside of that, you have Samsung's rather pitiful 'take an entire Android phone and gimp it until it fits on your wrist' approach, or Pebble's 'do something totally custom; but more reasonable on resources, and provide a decently sane mechanism for developers to use when approaching your totally custom thing'.

    5. Re:Wearable computing... by dinfinity · · Score: 2

      Specifically to the wristwatch: this device has more or less ceased to fill its original segment of "functional timekeeping, optionally alarm-playing device that's always with you because it's on your wrist" - that functionality is filled by the cellphone, which is also always with you and has a lot more functionality.

      No, it hasn't and no, it isn't.
      Rotating your arm slightly is still much easier than pulling something out of your pants, unlocking/waking it and putting it back in again. I never do the latter to check the time. Because I have a fucking watch.

      In addition to a wrist being a much more accessible location, the idea of something wearable instead of something you carry is that you don't have to worry about losing it or where to put it. Tell me: do you go swimming with your cell phone? Even if it was water proof, you very probably wouldn't.

      Wearable personal computing devices make complete sense. The current implementations are just not very good.

    6. Re:Wearable computing... by larwe · · Score: 2

      Yes, we've regressed to an era where we have to pull something out of our pockets to check the time. The thing is, the *simple* and *cost effective* answer to that is a $1 digital wristwatch. Wrist mounted timepieces just aren't as popular as they once were. The $300 smartwatch (which will cease to function as soon as you upgrade to a different brand of phone) is a ludicrous proposed solution to the problem "I don't want to have to reach into my pocket to check the time".

  5. Samsung Proprietary by markdavis · · Score: 2

    The first major problem with the Samsung is that it is proprietary- working only with Samsung phones. This is a huge no-no for lots of us. In addition to that, it has very low functionality for something so expensive.

    The Omate, on the other hand, is far, FAR more interesting. Being not only compatible with all phones, but also even being a real phone, itself if you want. And it is a full Android device with Play access and lots of local CPU/RAM/Storage with bluetooth, GPS, gyro, vibe, and WiFi. And also a better camera, better display, and much better face (a sapphire crystal) and it just has my wallet itching...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omate_TrueSmart

    1. Re:Samsung Proprietary by guises · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Galaxy Gear actually exists. You can criticize it, fine, but you can't come along with a reference to a Kickstarter project and say, "I wish the Galaxy Gear was more like this one - imaginary."

  6. Missing the point, folks. It's not for you. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Folks, like many expensive watches, this is a fashion item, not a solution to any particular problem (other than how to fleas money from rich yups). Like a Rolex. It's jewelry.

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    1. Re:Missing the point, folks. It's not for you. by the_B0fh · · Score: 2

      That piece of garbage is jewelry? *puke*

      You're just taking a piss on this aren't you?

    2. Re:Missing the point, folks. It's not for you. by whisper_jeff · · Score: 2

      Folks, like many expensive watches, this is a fashion item...

      You clearly haven't seen the watch if you think it's a fashion item. It would have been ugly had it come out in the mid-90's. In 2013, it's downright embarrassing. There's nothing, what-so-ever fashionable about the Samsung Gear. And, for the love of gawd, please don't compare it to a Rolex which actually is a fashionable piece of jewelry.

  7. Re:FIRST! by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2

    Of course, it's wrong.

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  8. iWatch by thestudio_bob · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't it be funny, if iWatch was for the name for the rumored TV product that Apple is supposedly working on.

    Like in "Watching TV", not "I wear a watch".

    --
    The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.
    1. Re:iWatch by thestudio_bob · · Score: 2

      Have you been living under a rock? You seriously haven't heard any of the gazillion rumors about Apple's rumored secret TV project they've been working on. And no, not the (Even Apple calls it a hobby) AppleTV.

      --
      The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.
    2. Re:iWatch by ToastedRhino · · Score: 2

      You're gonna have to define "nobody much." Five million sold in 2012 seems like quite a few, especially when compared to the number of set top boxes everyone else has announced selling. Would be interesting to see Chromecast number, though. If Google would release them, of course.

  9. WTF? by handleym99 · · Score: 2

    "smart watches aren't the easiest sell, and Ars Technica's review of Samsung's entry illustrates why." Ars' review has nothing to do with whether or not smart watches are a hard sell; it is all about the fact that THIS PARTICULAR smart watch is a piece of garbage. You may disagree with Ars' conclusion, but don't try to pretend that it is something it is not --- it is a very pointed criticism of the Galaxy Gear and of NOTHING else.

  10. Re:Ars Apple bias by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Verge thought it was shit too

    --
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  11. Samsung more profitable than Apple? Debunked. by rsborg · · Score: 5, Informative

    20% of the market and probably 50% of the profits

    Samsung Dethrones Apple in Smartphone Profits

    Apple has fallen off the profit throne.

    Last quarter, Samsung Electronics made more money selling handsets than Apple for the first time.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-apple-in-smartphone-profits/

    Try again. This has been debunked: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-dethroned-apple-in-mobile-profits

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  12. Really?! by yoshi_mon · · Score: 2

    Its not Intel and not Microsoft? And Ars's does not like it?!

    Stop the presses!

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