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Tag Archives: smartwatches
Galaxy Watch 5 leak gives best look yet at Samsung’s upcoming smartwatches
3D renders of Samsung’s upcoming smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, have appeared online thanks to leaker Evan Blass and 91Mobiles, a month ahead of their expected launch in August. The renders show the two watches from every angle, and line up with other leaked details about the two devices.
First up is the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, the more premium of the two and the rumored successor to last year’s Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. The bad news is that the rumors about the watch no longer featuring a physical rotating bezel appear to be true — there’s no sign of the fan-favorite mechanism in these renders. There’s also only mention of one model size, 45mm, rather than the two sizes we saw last year (46mm and 44mm).
Then there’s the standard Galaxy Watch 5, which has a simpler design. It’ll reportedly be available in two sizes; 44mm and an unspecified smaller size. Both it and the Watch 5 Pro will reportedly feature a pair of physical buttons to the right of their screens, have the option of LTE connectivity, GPS support, and 5ATM of water resistance — meaning they can survive at a depth of 50 meters for up to 10 minutes at a time.
In terms of software, Blass reports that both watches will run Google’s WearOS 3.5, skinned with Samsung’s One UI Watch 4.5. A previous report suggested they’ll support quicker 10W fast charging, rather than the 5W charging of their predecessors.
According to Blass, both watches could be announced next month as part of Samsung’s annual summer Unpacked event. They’ll reportedly be joined by a new set of Galaxy Pro earbuds, as well as new Flip and Fold foldable devices.
You Can Finally Listen to YouTube Music on Wear OS
Good news for YouTube Music listeners! A compatible app for Wear OS is finally available so that you can take your playlists with you on the go.
Google announced in a user community post that YouTube Music is finally a standalone app. This week, the company will start rolling out the ability to stream YouTube Music over LTE and wifi. You’ll no longer need to carry your phone in your back pocket to access your YouTube Music playlists or pre-download the music you want to listen to out on the trail. All you’ll need is an internet connection on the watch itself.
This standalone version of YouTube Music is the first smartwatch app for the streaming service after it brutally replaced Google Play Music in late 2020. Samsung had pre-announced this ability earlier this year for its flagship smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 4, which is one of our favorite Android-based watches at the moment.
If you’re a YouTube Music Premium subscriber, you’ll have access to all of the service’s streaming library, plus premade playlists. You won’t have to endure ads either, and the app comes with a Smart Downloads feature to ensure the newest music is synced to your watch any time it’s back on WiFi. YouTube Music will also start aggregating new playlists based on your history as you keep listening.
If you’re already on a Wear OS smartwatch, you’ll have access to the new YouTube Music tile. The tile is like a quick-launch remote for any recently played playlists. It’ll also allow you to browse the main page of the YouTube Music app from your watch.
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Tiles work like widgets, wherein you can place it in its own screen space of sorts to swipe over to it when you’re ready to listen. Music apps like Spotify offer a similar tile that stays embedded in the Wear OS interface, so you can head over and start the music regardless if you have headphones on.
For more information, Google has updated its support page with instructions on the new YouTube Music app for Wear OS. The update should roll out for YouTube Music users this week.
Google Pixel Watch Release Date Rumored to Be May 26
Rumors surrounding Google’s forthcoming Pixel smartwatch have been circulating for more than a year, and while we know some details about the product, a specific release date hasn’t even been speculated.
Today, that changed. Leaker Jon Prosser posted on Twitter that Google is planning on launching the Pixel Watch on May 26, a date that aligns with the company’s I/O developer conference.
Prosser had previously said that Google might reveal the watch alongside the Pixel 6 in October but warned that the date was a moving target. He later corrected the timeline, claiming the watch had been delayed to Q1 2022. Now the device looks likely to arrive in Q2.
While Google hasn’t confirmed the release date—no less the existence of a Pixel Watch—just yet, this latest leak should be encouraging Android users waiting for a proper Apple Watch rival because, as Prosser points out, this is the “first we’ve seen a set date on the device behind the scenes.” Moreover, Google’s I/O 2022 conference, which took place from May 18 to 20 last year, would be a logical launchpad considering it’s where Google announced Wear OS 3, the most meaningful update to its watch OS in years.
We’ve been hearing about a Google-made smartwatch for a long time now, and while Google has squashed those rumors in years past, now might finally be the time. A December report claimed the codename for the device is “Rohan” and that it’ll have a round face (like basically every other Android smartwatch). It is said to offer basic fitness-tracking, like step counts and heart rating monitoring, along with other features taken from Google-owned Fitbit.
There had been plenty of speculation about how Google would approach smartwatches after finalizing its acquisition of Fitbit last year. It was unclear whether the company would release a Pixel-branded device or go the Nest route and put its smartwatch division under the Fitbit brand. Anything is possible, but leaks and rumors suggest the wearable will be a companion device to Google’s smartphones.
If past leaks are accurate, then we’ve already seen the device. Late last year, Prosser posted on his YouTube channel what he claims are official promotional photos. They show a watch similar to the one featured in renders from April—it has a circular design and a practically bezel-free watch face that waterfalls around the edges.
As for specs, the rumored wearable could be powered by a Samsung Exynos chip and support Google Assistant, based on a report from 9to5Google that claims to have found a “PIXEL_EXPERIENCE_WATCH” feature tag within a Google app. It might have been assumed that Google would turn to Qualcomm, but remember, Google partnered with Samsung to help it fix its tragically failing smartwatch OS. We wouldn’t be surprised if this partnership also involved using the other’s hardware.
We don’t know how much the watch will cost, but a recent Business Insider report, corroborated by The Verge, claims it will be more expensive than a Fitbit and priced to compete against the Apple Watch. And like the Apple Watch, the Pixel Watch (if it’s named that) will need to be charged daily. In any case, most of what we think we “know” about the Pixel Watch is based on speculation and rumor, so this Android user is keeping his excitement in check.
Google’s Pixel Watch Might Get an Ultra-Fast Google Assistant
Google’s Pixel smartwatch is one of the most anticipated devices on the horizon despite not being a confirmed product, and a new report makes us even more eager to see what’s coming.
The rumored Pixel Watch will apparently be powered by a Samsung Exynos chip and support Google Assistant, according to a report from 9to5Google that claims to have found a “PIXEL_EXPERIENCE_WATCH” feature tag within a Google app.
As the site notes, previous Pixel phones contained similar feature tags that told apps when to provide Pixel-exclusive features. If the forthcoming smartwatch does indeed have its own feature tag, it would suggest that it will receive features you can’t find on other watches.
Hold on, though, because it only gets better from here. The folks at 9to5Google also found references to “Rohan,” the codename linked to the Pixel Watch, and tied them to the next-generation Assistant, or the most recent version of the Google Assistant that debuted in the Pixel 4. The advantage of using the next-gen assistant is that speech can be processed directly on your device in real time, allowing you to quickly open apps, translate speech into text, or perform various functions offline.
As it stands, the latest version of Google’s watch OS, Wear OS 3, is still missing an assistant altogether (the poor Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 relies on Bixby).
Between finding a feature tag containing “PIXEL” and spotting what has been, to this point, a Pixel-exclusive feature, 9to5Google seems pretty convinced that Google’s next watch will indeed be called the Pixel Watch (as has been rumored). This comes just a few weeks after a Business Insider report said it was “unclear” what brand Google would use if it even decides to release the watch.
And while there remains a sliver of doubt as to whether this thing will ever arrive, we have a pretty good idea of how it’ll look if it does. Again, 9to5Google did some digging, but this time, it looked through the Wear OS 3 emulator and found a watch face that seems to give us a glimpse at the Pixel Watch’s design.
One graphic it found shows a round watch face with a prominent crown. On the display is a curved light bar in Google colors (red, yellow, green, blue). While we don’t know for sure, this very much looks like the sort of icon that would appear when you summon the Google Assistant.
It’s worth pointing out that the image found in the emulator looks like the generic watch icon Google used in its Wear OS 3 announcement, and the addition of a pusher button deviates from the leaks we’ve seen thus far.
If those weren’t enough juicy Pixel Watch leaks, we get one more courtesy of 9to5Google, which claims to have “seen evidence suggesting” the Pixel Watch will be powered by a Samsung Exynos processor instead of Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip. Google and Samsung worked together on Wear OS 3 so it’d make sense for them to share hardware.
It’s possible Google’s upcoming watch will be powered by the same Samsung Exynos W920 found in the Galaxy Watch 4, but like everything else in this latest rumor batch, we can’t say for sure until Google confirms this thing is real.
Galaxy Watch 4 review: Still the best Android smartwatches around
When Google and Samsung announced they had teamed up on the latest version of Wear OS, many hoped it would finally bring a smartwatch for Android users that would rival the Apple Watch. With the relatively robust third-party app library from Google and Samsung’s intuitive interface, the platform was promising. The Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic are the first devices running the new “Wear OS powered by Samsung.”
But software isn’t their only intriguing new feature. Samsung also upgraded the biometric sensors to offer, among other things, a body composition scanner and improved sleep tracking. Throw in new 5nm processors and sharper screens and the Watch 4 series looks like a meaty update. Has the Apple Watch finally met its match? Probably not, but one can hope.
Pros
- Comprehensive health tracking
- Bright and crisp screen
- Improved third-party app support
- Touch-sensitive rotating bezel
Before we get too far ahead, it’s worth noting that other than the Classic having a physical spinning bezel and a stainless steel case, there aren’t major differences between the two Watch 4 models. They have the same upgraded sensors, battery and screen sizes, so most of what I’m going to cover in this review applies to both models, unless I specify otherwise.
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Wear OS and One UI
Let’s start with the most intriguing change in both watches: Wear OS. Honestly, if I didn’t know the Watch 4 was using a whole new OS, I might have just assumed this was a minor Tizen update. You’ll still swipe sideways or spin the physical bezel on the Classic to scroll through all your widgets and use the touch-sensitive ring around the regular Watch 4’s screen. But instead of All Apps being one of the pages on the right, they’re now below the home screen. There’s also a customizable quick settings panel above the main page, too.
Of course, the dead giveaway that there’s something more going on here is that you can now download apps from the Play Store directly from your wrist. A section in the Play Store shows all the apps on your phone that have Wear counterparts and I easily added Telegram and Spotify from this page. This seamless installation of apps that are already on your phone onto your watch is one of the features that Samsung said its One UI software would enable. I was expecting them to automatically show up on the watch without me doing any work, but I guess this way you get to decide what you want on your wrist.
One UI also allows for settings on your watch and phone to sync, so that when you enable Do Not Disturb on one, the other activates it too. When you play a song on your phone, a media controller is supposed to appear on the wearable. These only work with Samsung’s phones, though, so if you’re using some other Android device this doesn’t apply. Oh and while we’re at it, the Watch 4 series doesn’t work with iOS, unlike its predecessors. But if you’re an iPhone owner you probably weren’t considering an Android watch to begin with.
David Imel for Engadget
One last thing that Samsung added via One UI: gesture controls. In theory, this will let you answer or dismiss calls by flicking your wrist or lifting your arm. I enabled the setting and was able to answer a call by raising my wrist as instructed, but dismissing them by rotating my fist did not work. This could potentially make it easier to use the watch with one-hand or when I have my arms full, but they don’t work very well at the moment and are limited to responding to calls or messages.
New sensor and new features
In addition to brand new (yet familiar) software, the Watch 4 line also got a serious hardware upgrade. Samsung used a new 3-in-1 biometric sensor that not only should allow for faster and more consistent readings, it also enables bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to offer body mass scans.
The Watch will first ask for basic information like your gender, age and weight. Then, it tells you to place your middle and ring fingers on the two buttons on the edge. It’ll also instruct you to stay still and lift your arms away from your body while it scans, which takes about 15 seconds. Once it’s done, the system spits out a comprehensive breakdown of your body, saying how many pounds of water, fat and skeletal mass it detected.
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I’ve been excited about this new feature, since body composition is generally a better way to understand your overall health than BMI. I’d been using Amazon’s camera-based system in its Halo app to determine my body fat percentage and though that’s been a handy and seemingly accurate method, BIA is a more conventional and common means.
The problem I realized after a few days is that a watch might not be the best place to have BIA sensors. Since the scan requires you to be fairly still and not touch other parts of your body, it can be quite awkward to do. That would be fine if the only issue were standing in an uncomfortable stance for 15 seconds every now and then, but small changes in your posture can affect your result.
I took two scans just seconds apart, one with my arms lifted further away from my body than the other. The first time, I got a 26 percent fat scan result, and the next I got 30 percent. I wasn’t expecting complete accuracy, and I know consistency can be affected by time of day and how you’re standing, but so far the results are unreliable.
I’ll need a few more weeks or months to test the BIA system, measuring at the same time of day, to see if it produces helpful overall trend data. After all, changes in your body composition can take time to register.
David Imel for Engadget
Something else that requires more time for me to get a sense of its usefulness is continuous blood oxygen detection. That’s one of the new sleep-tracking features the upgraded sensors enables, and that data feeds into Samsung’s Sleep Score algorithm, which considers other things like duration and restfulness. In older Galaxy Watches, you can get your blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) readings at-will, but the Watch 4 is able to do a constant measurement overnight. When I woke up, the Watch 4 told me my SpO2 was between 93 and 97 percent, which is slightly lower than I’d like, but could explain why I’ve been so fatigued.
Blood oxygen is one of five factors that go into Samsung’s sleep score, which the company said considers a variety of metrics. Another new thing the Watch 4 can detect this year is snoring. If you want to enable snore detection, you’ll not only have to wear the watch to bed, but also place your phone “on a stable surface near your head” within two feet of your person, and have the bottom of the phone pointing at you. You can choose to have snoring detection on always or only for one night, and you can also opt to record audio to hear your sleep noises the next day. Samsung also gives you the option to delete the recordings after a day, 31 days or 100 days. I don’t snore but the potential medical benefits here could be useful for those who do.
The one thing I’d like Samsung to fix is very minor: I couldn’t find the setting to enable snore detection in the Health app until after I had recorded a night of sleep. This was pretty easy to do — I just manually added an entry.
The rest of the updates that the new sensor brings about are less noticeable, like faster heart rate monitoring and updated calorie count algorithms that take into account continuous and discrete pulse readings. These are mostly under the hood, which makes knowing whether there’s a meaningful difference hard to tell until I’ve spent a lot more time with the devices.
Samsung’s Smartwatch Chip Could Be a Game-Changer for Wear OS
Good news for those of you who are eagerly waiting to see what’s new for Android smartwatches. According to a new SamMobile report, Samsung’s next-gen Wear OS devices will be powered by a beefy new chip called the Exynos W920—and at least on paper, the gains are promising.
Let’s get to the nitty-gritty. The Exynos W920 will reportedly be 1.25 times faster, with 1.5GB of RAM and 8.8 times the graphic performance compared to the Exynos 9110, the chip that’s powered every Samsung smartwatch since the Galaxy Watch. SamMobile also says Samsung specifically created this chip for the new Wear, a unified platform that mashes together the best bits of Tizen OS and the old Wear OS. Just looking at the numbers, this is massive. No Wear OS watch currently on the market has more than 1GB of RAM, and the overwhelming majority are still running on last-gen processors.
These specs dovetail with a rumor we heard in May from leaker Ice Universe, who claimed the new Samsung watches would sport a 5nm processor. But hasn’t Wear OS’s problems been mostly about neglected software and incremental updates? Well, to an extent, yes. However, another massive problem has been that, until now, nearly all Wear OS watches have been powered by Qualcomm’s lackluster Snapdragon Wear platform. The Snapdragon Wear chips have always used incredibly outdated processor tech, putting it far behind Samsung’s Exynos and Apple’s S-series processors. That in turn led to a chicken-and-egg scenario. No matter what software updates Google would push out, they would always be somewhat hamstrung by the Snapdragon Wear chips.
For years Wear OS languished on the Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip, which was built on 28nm process tech. This was process node tech that was superseded by 22nm in 2012. That’s two years before the first Wear OS—then Android Wear—smartwatches ever showed up. The Snapdragon Wear platform didn’t get a meaningful update until 2018, when Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform. While it added a co-processor, this chip was also based on 28nm tech. In 2018, both Apple and Samsung had moved on to 7nm and 10nm process tech, respectively. Last June, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform, which promised to boost processing power from 28nm… to 12nm. While that’s a significant boost, it’s still tech that’s several generations behind. In 2021, there are still only two Wear OS smartwatches that use Qualcomm’s 4100 platform: Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 and the TicWatch Pro 3 LTE.
This is a big reason why Wear OS smartwatches often felt laggy in comparison to Samsung’s Tizen OS watches, Apple Watches, and less power-intensive Fitbits. It’s also why marquee features like LTE connectivity and sleep-tracking took so long to make their way to Wear OS hardware.
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So the fact that the first smartwatches to feature the new unified platform will be powered by chips using current process tech? That’s worth noting. It’s absolutely not a guarantee that the new platform will be outstanding, or that it won’t have growing pains to overcome. However, it’s at least giving this fledging platform a chance to start off on the best foot possible.
When Samsung and Google officially announced their collaboration, Gizmodo asked if it was possible that Samsung might license its processor tech to other companies in the space. At the time, Samsung declined to comment. It’s very possible that it won’t and that this beefy processor will only work on Samsung watches. However, if it does make its way to other smartwatches, that would be huge. And even if it doesn’t, proving that the new Wear OS could be great on current hardware might give Qualcomm a kick in the butt to stop dragging its feet on updating its Snapdragon Wear platform. Or, who knows? Perhaps it might inspire other vendors to experiment with their own SoC and bypass Qualcomm entirely.
Whatever ends up happening, a capable processor that can showcase Wear OS’s actual potential is long overdue—and it’s reason to hope that Google and Samsung are serious about this new venture succeeding.
Huge leak indicates that Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked may bring new foldables, smartwatches, and earbuds
We might now know a lot of what’s coming at Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked event thanks to a series of tweets from noted leaker Evan Blass. It seems like the event could be a big one, as Blass tweeted a long thread with GIFs of two new Galaxy foldables, a new Galaxy FE phone, two new Galaxy Watches, and even a set of new Galaxy Buds. He also says the event is set to take place one month from now on August 11th.
First up, the foldables. Blass has already leaked what appear to be official renders of the rumored Galaxy Z Fold 3 (which could support the S Pen stylus) and Galaxy Z Flip 3, but the new GIFs he shared give looks at both devices at all angles.
Here’s the Z Fold 3, which Blass shared GIFs of in white, green, and black:
And here’s the Z Flip 3, which Blass tweeted in purple, black, gold, and green:
Blass’ thread also includes GIFs of what look to be the rumored Samsung Galaxy S21 FE in white, a yellow-ish gray, purple, and black. The phone, if released, will likely be a mid-range version of the S21 and looks to take a lot of design inspiration from the Samsung flagship (like how the S20 FE looked similar to the S20).
Whether or not this phone is actually in production has been something of an open question; in June, in response to a report claiming Samsung had stopped production of the phone, Samsung said that “nothing has been determined regarding the alleged production suspension.” These GIFs from Blass might be a sign that the phone is a go.
But Blass didn’t just share GIFs of phones — he also tweeted GIFs of two new Samsung watches. One model seems to match closely with rumors of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, with what appears to be a rotating bezel and two buttons on the right side. The watch, which Blass tweeted in white, black, and gray, is also expected to run Google and Samsung’s new smartwatch platform.
The other watch shared by Blass appears to match rumors of the Galaxy Watch Active 4. This watch doesn’t look to have a rotating bezel, and according to OnLeaks and GizNext, it might come in two different sizes: 44mm and 40mm. Blass shared GIFs of the watch in gray, dark green, white, peach, and two tweets of a black watch (though I can’t tell the difference between them besides what’s shown on the screen).
Blass’ GIF thread also reveals three colors of unannounced Galaxy Buds that match rumors about the Galaxy Buds 2, which, according to leaker Ice Universe, will have active noice cancelation. Blass’ GIFs show the buds and the inside of the white case in gray, purple, and white, matching the style of a leaked render shared by 91mobiles that showed green, black, and white bud / inner case combos.
Finally, let’s talk quickly about that rumored date, August 11th, which to me seems like the one you might want to circle on your calendar. When Samsung showed off its smartwatch platform developed with Google at the end of June, it said there would be an Unpacked event “later this summer,” so August 11th would fall in that timeline. And the company has hosted summer Unpacked events in early August for a few years now, meaning August 11th wouldn’t be out of the usual pattern.
Since Samsung hasn’t officially announced any of these products or the date of the event, there’s always the chance that what Blass leaked doesn’t actually come out. But given Blass’ past track record and the detail of the GIFs he shared, it seems possible he may well have revealed some of the biggest news from Samsung’s next Unpacked event.
I’ve Waited So Long to See the OnePlus Smartwatch and…Hmm
It’s not every day that a new player enters the smartwatch game, so I was intrigued when OnePlus’s then-CEO Carl Pei hinted last summer that a wearable might be on the way. The rumors have been ramping up the past few weeks, and now we know what the watch will look like. After months of curiosity, I am…underwhelmed.
Ahead of OnePlus’s upcoming March 23 event, @UnboxTherapy dropped what appears to be a leak of the oh-so-cleverly-named OnePlus Watch. After scrutinizing the image for about two minutes, I can confirm to everyone it looks like every other non-Apple smartwatch out there. There are two buttons on the right side, black straps and a black case, and a fairly standard-looking watch face. Woo. This is some drab, milquetoast design and honestly, I expected a little better from OnePlus.
Smartwatch leaker Ishan Agarwal also dropped some more deets on his Twitter, noting that the watch would be 46mm (a big boy!). It’ll also have IP68 water resistance, 4GB of storage, and the ability to control music and OnePlus TV. In terms of health features, which have become a huge selling point for smartwatches, OnePlus will reportedly offer automatic workout detection, include swimming workouts, and also track sleep, stress, blood oxygen saturation, and heart rate. No word on battery life, but Agarwal said it’ll support Warp Charge, or the ability to get a week of charging in 20 minutes. That implies that you get at least a week of wear out of this thing, which would be great, but who knows.
The interesting part about these rumors is that the OnePlus Watch will not run Wear OS, despite being an Android watch. This has been heavily rumored leading up to the March 23 event, and per the Verge, CEO Pete Lau confirmed in a forum that this will be the case. Instead, the company has opted for an RTOS (real-time operating system) type of OS. No word on what that means for a third-party app ecosystem or a digital assistant. As for why OnePlus didn’t go for Wear OS, Lau says the company wanted to provide a smooth, reliable experience along with great battery life. Wear OS has made improvements over the past year, but battery life is still a sore point for that platform.
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This is all well and good, but it’s not what anyone would describe as terribly exciting. It’d be one thing if OnePlus came barging out the door with a unique design, or decided to put its own spin on Wear OS as the Oppo Watch did. But OnePlus looks to have played it safe—arguably too safe. Unless we see something absurd like 30-day battery life, unique software, or a breakthrough health feature (for which we are not holding our breath), this smartwatch seems like it might be for diehard OnePlus fans only.
The next Moto smartwatches will include an Apple Watch clone
Moto-branded smartwatches are staging another comeback, and they won’t rely on your Moto 360 nostalgia quite so much this time. As WatchSmarty and 9to5Google have noticed, a CE Brands (which runs eBuyNow) presentation has revealed a trio of Moto watches arriving in 2021. Notably, none of them appears to be a direct Moto 360 sequel.
The first is a Moto G-inspired watch due in June. Although the lone slide doesn’t reveal specs, the G looks to be an appropriately budget-oriented circular model with a simple case and no rotating crown. Things will get more interesting in July, however. On top of a more upscale-looking One, a Moto Watch would switch to a rectangular case — more than a little reminiscent of an Apple Watch, and a clear break from tradition.
All the devices are likely to use Wear OS, and they might use newer chips like the Snapdragon Wear 4100 when CE Brands and eBuyNow tout their partnership with Qualcomm on “premium wearables.”
The new Moto watches aren’t guaranteed to match expectations. If they succeed, though, they could offer serious competition to larger Wear OS watch makers like Mobvoi (of TicWatch fame) and Fossil. The Wear OS smartwatch market is still relatively small compared to what Apple and Samsung offer, and that provides opportunities for relative newcomers to thrive.