![]() ![]() ANT+ enabled it to connect to a speed/cadence sensor on a bike or to external pulse sensors (Bluetooth could be used as well). Exercise tracking is still a major use case for smart watches. ![]() It didn't have "apps", though it did support plug-ins for Facebook and Twitter, for example. In 2013 Samsung tried its hand at making a smartwatch again. The Galaxy Gear was an actual smart watch as there was no telephony or mobile data. Note that despite the "Galaxy" branding, this ran Tizen on an 800 MHz processor with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB storage (smart watch memory capacities have changed surprisingly little since then). The Galaxy Gear had a 1.9MP camera that could shoot 10-second video clips in 720p. You had to share those from your phone, however. ![]() Still, you could read SMS, view MMS and make calls using the watch (as long as your phone was within Bluetooth range).Īnd more importantly, there were apps - 70 of them at launch, including Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, MyFitnessPal and RunKeeper.Ī year later came the Samsung Gear Live, which did run Android on a Snapdragon 400 chipset. But the Gear watches (and more recent Galaxy watches) have been based on Tizen exclusively.īefore we go on, we'd like to mention the Gear S, which featured a curved Super AMOLED display back in 2014 - at 2" it was huge for a watch and an impressive demo of what AMOLED displays could achieve. The nubia Alpha and Amazfit X are more recent examples of this design. LG also returned to the segment with 2014's LG G Watch, which ran Android Wear and had a square LCD. The LG G Watch R was similar, though it did switch to a circular P-OLED display. The next year brought the Urbane watches, which were a bit weird. The LG Watch Urbane also ran Android Wear and had a circular P-OLED display but no telephony or mobile data. The Watch Urbane LTE, however, did offer a 4G connection, but used a different OS instead - webOS, believe it or not. Palm's OS lives on in LG TVs, though unlike Samsung's Tizen it is no longer part of the smart watch market.
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