Yesterday, Sept 4 Samsung announce the release of the Galaxy Gear Smart-watch. This is part of an expanding line of smart watches including the Pebble, the Sony Smart-watch and the mythical Apple iWatch. Smart watches are a portion of a larger group of wearable computers, which include Google Glass. Wearable computers are a key part of the contextual world, which according to tech gurus such as Robert Scoble, and others this is the future. If this is so , then the future needs some work before I am ready to greet it.
The Samsung smart watch has an 1.63 inches AMOLED screen, 320×320 resolution, an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. The 315 mAH lithium-ion battery is supposed to last a day, (it is not clear if a day is 12 hours, 24 hours or 18 hours) even if it is only 12 hours critics say this is being generous. Currently it will only work with the Galaxy Note 3 and the Galaxy Note 10.1. It may work with other Galaxy devices later this year once they get update to Android 4.3. However if you have any other phone for now you are out of luck. Samsung says there will be over 70 apps available for the watch. At this time according to Techradar twelve are known.
Having a lot of apps is great, but for people to buy the watch it must be more convenient for the person to use the watch then it is for them to pull their phone out of their pockets. which means the apps have to pull up fast, with no lag. Also the watch has to be something that you will want to wear daily. To me this is the biggest place that the Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart-watch fails, it is highly unfashionable. The screen size doesn’t include the bezel that is around the screen, so we are talking about a pretty bulky device especially for a woman’s wrist. The strap is made of plastic and comes in a variety of colors including orange, oatmeal, yellow and black. I don’t know about other people but when someone says plastic strap I think of the kind of watch I wore when I was eight or nine. I am not sure I want to wear it as an adult. I want to like the Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart-watch, but I just can’t. I see it as a small step toward a future that is coming, it just not here yet. Apple it is your turn.