No Love From Ars For Samsung's New Smart Watch

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.

Comments

What if Apple..

[drewsup]

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...

Re: What if Apple..

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[Nerdfest]

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.

Samsung more profitable than Apple? Debunked.

[rsborg]

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