Samsung Galaxy Watch hands-on: Steady progress, but few thrills

We knew Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 was coming, but the new Galaxy Watch was a bit more of a surprise. (Well, as much a surprise as a device Samsung leaked on its own website can be.) The crowds have finally started to dissipate here at Samsung Unpacked, so we snagged a few Galaxy Watches to try on, and there's immediately plenty to like about the wearable. It's light, almost surprisingly so. It runs with a new, dual-core Samsung Exynos 9110 chipset, not the same pokey Snapdragon Wear 2100 that's been in nearly every Wear OS watch for two years. Oh, and it looks pretty nice too. I hear that's important to some people.

With all that said, I can't really call the Galaxy Watch surprising. The versions with darker trim are basically lighter versions of the hyper-masculine Gear S3 Frontier -- that reduction in weight is largely because of the Watch's plastic back and the removal of Samsung's MST payments system. (Sorry, you'll only be able to use NFC for mobile payments.) The rose gold model, meanwhile, is nice and subtle with a textured, light coral band. I don't know that I could pull it off, but Cherlynn is already pretty fond of the thing.

There's 42mm and a 46mm version of the Galaxy Watch, and assuming it doesn't look too awkward on your wrist, you're almost certainly better off splurging on the larger model. That's because Galaxy Watch's biggest selling point might be its battery life: Samsung says the smaller 42mm model only has a 270mAH battery, while the slightly larger 46mm Watch can hit the six-day mark before its 472mAh cell needs recharge. Solid battery life from a Samsung watch isn't much of a shock -- the Gear Sport routinely hit four days of use in our review -- but we'll have to wait a few more weeks to test the company's claims for ourselves.

While Samsung didn't have much to say about when it would see the light of day, it might be worth going for the LTE-friendly Galaxy Watch as well. All versions of the Watch come with 4GB of internal storage, but the LTE version will ship with 1.5GB of RAM -- that's twice the amount you'll get in the standard Bluetooth model.

Unfortunately, some of the Watch's most notable features don't seem to work on the units we've strapped on. Covering a big event like this is often an exercise in stress management, so it would've been nice to use the Galaxy Watch's included Stress applet to help us manage the flood of emotions that come when testing new hardware. And since Samsung hasn't seen fit to fill Barclays Center with treadmills, we obviously couldn't take the Watch's exercise recognition features for a test. That said, Samsung's wearables have historically been between smartwatches than activity trackers, so we're very curious to see if the company has made any meaningful progress on this front.

After watching the company try to craft the perfect wearable for a few years, it seems clear the Galaxy Watch isn't a game-changer. It represents another year of steady progress



via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2AX9pUZ
RSS Feed

If New feed item from http://www.engadget.com/rss-full.xml, then send me

IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to...
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic...
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs? ...
Read more