Slashdot Mirror
Leak: Almost a Third of Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatches Are Being Returned
llebeel writes "Almost a third of Samsung's Galaxy Gear Smartwatches sold are being returned, a leaked document has revealed, which shows that over 30 percent are being returned after sale at Best Buy locations in the US. The higher than expected return rate could be due to that realisation, with customers impulse buying and then realising that the smartwatch isn't everything it's cracked up to be." I'd like to hear from more people with smart watches who are happy with them, to better understand the appeal.
One out of three people decided they looked like a dork with that awful thing on their wrist.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
I sometimes thought the iWatch rumor was just a plant by Apple to get everyone else in the industry to trip over themselves trying to get the watch out before Apple.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
Or maybe most of them are just treating Best Buy as "try it out before I order it from Amazon."
...which interacts only with your smartphone, requiring you to always the smartphone with you. This whole idea is so fundamentally flawed, and almost unfathomably stupid - as stupid as buying a mini remote control for your main remote control. Why on earth would anyone bother with a "smart" watch if they can just as easily use the phone with a much better experience?
Ha! My first regular watch had to be"recharged" every day. You didn't need to plug it in though, you just rotated the little knob on the side of it until the spring was tight.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Wouldn't be the first time they used rumours to their own advantage. It's widely accepted that Apple seeded rumours of an "under-$1000" price point for the original iPad to make its actual $500 price look really, really good. I doubt it's a coincidence that HP and Microsoft's own tablet, the Slate 500, wound up costing $800 later that year. They surely hoped to undercut Apple's rumoured target price when they were doing the original design work.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
True. But I bet you never left your charger at home!
I think people want them, but Samsung tried to get the jump on Apple by pushing a half-baked product. I don't think Apple will nail it either because what people want in a smart watch is out of reach of current technology - the components are just too big. People want a smart watch which is indiscreet. It looks like a regular watch in both design, function and form factor yet magically can interface with your phone in a way which is neither cumbersome or frustrating. I think right now, people would be happy with a watch which simply vibrates when the phone in their pocket or backpack gets a text or phone call. Maybe scrolls an indiscreet caller id on the screen, or marquee of the text. Perhaps does a voice reply to a text message. That would be enough for now instead of trying to fit a phone on your wrist.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Responding to your subject line, I want a smart watch. I want one that's done right, which means the right functionality, integrated in the right way with my other personal electronics.
I ultimately want to have Google Glass (or similar), a smart watch and a smart phone with a large screen (6" is about right). I think the three devices could work very well together.
The phone, of course, is the brain, the connectivity, and the user interface for "heavy" work. Anything involving data entry or interacting with large amounts of data. Glass is an audio/video output device, to provide no-hands, no-interference content when I need it. Heads-up navigation, audio playback, video messages, etc. But it's not something I'd want to wear all of the time, both because I don't think the battery will stand up to constantly being on and because it's awkward in some social situations. A smartwatch is an ideal form factor for lightweight I/O. It can provide unobtrusive notifications and quick, easy access to small but important pieces of information. It can also be an input device for controlling Glass, one that's a lot more convenient than the frame-mounted touchpad (in fact, I hope a future version of Glass does away with the frame-mounted touchpad using smartwatch integration instead) and provides a lot more control than head gestures.
Galaxy Gear isn't yet the smartwatch that I want, though.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I detest ringtones in the office, so my phone is always set to silent. My Pebble allows me to see my wife calling/texting me. This alone justifies the price. The Gear is overpriced for what it offers, and requires their phone to work. My Pebble works with android and iOS. (disclaimer, I only use mine with android) I can set the watch face to whatever I like, including the very useful Beer O'Clock face that a friend made.
I prefer to check the time with a watch. Till I got my Pebble, I usually wore one of several Invicta chronographs that I own. I don't like digging a phone out of my pocket to verify the time, especially when in meetings. A quick glance is sufficient to tell when I am going to be late getting home, without the rudeness of pulling my phone out and conspicuously checking time.
it is better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. -Terry Pratchett Men at Arms
I have had my Gear (and Galaxy Note 3) for most of the month now. As a business user (I own an IT consulting firm) I find the Gear supremely useful. I don't agree with most of the bad reviews I have read. To dispel some myths: I can go for a few days on a battery charge. I do sleep eventually so slipping it on the charger overnight is no biggie. I am an Exchange user and I get notified of incoming e-mail (and can read a summary) and can see my appointments for the day. Actually taking a call via hands free on the watch works well too, which I was surprised by. I didn't expect that part to be of particular value but I find myself taking calls like that and wearing my Bluetooth earpiece less. This stuff alone is worth the price for me. I think people are expecting this to be some whiz-bang toy and blow sunshine up their butts. This is a productivity tool and delivers it's value in that manner.
Officially a geek since 1984
Maybe they always were. Functional, but they're jewlery. I have a nice Citizen Ecodrive I'm fond of. It's functional, it's lightweight, it never needs batteries, and it looks nice. It's titanium, with a sapphire face.
It allows me to casually check time in meetings without being rude; it looks professional; that's important for what I do, less important for others.
Smartwatches are horrible to look at. They are gaudy and tacky. I am not sure what they say about the wearer, but I am not sure they are part of the image I would want to project. Yes, that type of thing matters to some people. Particularly, I suspect, those who still wear watches.
What I want is a nice watch like that that maybe has a silent notification capabilty, and perhaps, can pick up some biometric data (pulse, whatever). I would find real value in that - something that my phone can't do, an an alert to get me to check my phone for something interesting or pressing.
I can see myself getting Google Glasses before a smartwatch.
Get off my lawn.
..don't panic
No. 20 years ago we had the Casio databank watch... A calculator, world time clock, and personal contact manager. It wasn't cool back then either, it made you a nerd.
I had a Casio calculator watch (just a boring calculator watch, without the databank stuff) when I was a kid, and I can assure you it didn't make me a nerd. In fact, the causality is exactly opposite; being a nerd made me get a calculator watch.
My dad (65yo) has a Pebble, and is pleased as punch with it. He uses it with an iPhone, but they supposedly work with Android, which would include all the (2) devices Samsung's Gear watch works with. So perhaps that's a better alternative for folks looking for a smartwatch.
And for those making the "look like a dork" cracks, he's a very succesfful lawyer and takes great care with his professional appearance. He did change the band out for a decortive one that looks much better in the circles he hangs out in. You can do that with a Pebble because it uses a standard watch band. The Gear?...nope.
Makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a tiny electrical generator built into a smartwatch that you "wind" the same way. You might be able to extract, say, 100 milliwatts, meaning your power budget for all-day use would be tens of microwatts. A typical digital watch can get by on about 10 nW; I've used microcontrollers that do useful processing on a few 100 uW. So there might be some realm where this could be possible. I wonder what the average power of the Pebble watch is.
You can forget about having a touchscreen, though, or a radio with any significant throughput.
It doesn't help (for Samsung, at least) that whatever small 'smartwatch' market exists is largely being catered to by outfits who are more realistic about how much you can actually cram into something that fits on the wrist.
I have absolutely no interest in owning either; but the 'Pebble' outfit managed to get not-totally-ridiculous battery life, along with reasonable size; by being realistic about what they could do: low power transreflective display, limited firmware (with SDK; but not one connected with any broader ecosystem).
Samsung just goes and bolts the guts of a first/second gen-ish Android phone, minus the cell modem and wifi, to your wrist. Glowy color screen, CPU that's fast enough to gobble battery (but not fast enough to make Samsungified Android run smoothly), integrated perv cam that makes the strap impossible to swap, the thing's a bulbous mess to fit a battery large enough to last a day, and they managed to make it compatible with almost nothing(it is Android; but it's already on the edge of acceptable battery life, has anemic performance, and a small display, so it isn't meaningfully 'compatible' with the broader ecosystem, and its notification display features only work with a small number of applications). Brilliant work.
I'm not sold on 'smartwatch' as a concept; but even if we accept the goodness of the idea as a foundational assumption, Samsung fucked it up.
Why not just sit down and use a laptop rather than trying to be Star Trek? You might actually get work done, and save a ton of money in the process.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What are you, a jock?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Perhaps, but people said almost the exact same thing about phones when the iPhone came out. "This is huge. Who wants a phone that big? It's so much bigger than my Razr. I think right now, people would be happy with a phone which simply vibrates makes calls and doesn't try to fit a computer in your pocket." And a few years later, here we are.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?