Gear 2 Is the Wearable Samsung Should Have Shipped the First Time

by Lance Ulanoff

It’s not news that Samsung likes to throw a lot of products at the wall, and see what sticks. But when it came to the original Samsung Galaxy Gear wearable device, the strategy was even more aggressive: Rush the product to market, even if one or two of its design decisions made absolutely no sense.

Having seen and touched the elegant, new Samsung Gear 2, I am more convinced of this than ever. While not perfect, it is definitely the product Samsung should have released the first time around.

 The Gear 2 is lighter, thinner, more powerful, offers a better screen, much, much better battery life, and a sharper, more elegant watch-like profile. Most importantly, there's a camera on the watch itself, rather than the wristband.

Why didn’t Samsung ship this version of the Gear in 2013? I blame Samsung’s Crazy Artist Syndrome.

Think of Samsung as a great, slightly manic sculptor who likes working out in the open: see the work-in-progress! He can’t help but rapidly deliver unfinished works to his patrons, one after the other. Each is slightly different and better than the last, but those who bought the early stuff grow increasingly frustrated as they see the later, far more polished results.

Instead of apologizing to the customers or advising them to postpone purchase, the artist simply delivers a revision many months later.

So Much Better

As I was playing with the Gear 2 and quizzing a couple of Samsung representatives about the new product at the New York City launch event on Monday, I joked that I was sad to see the camera move off the watch band. One laughed knowingly, but the other, who could not see the grin on my face, asked in all earnestness, “Really? Why?”

I told him I was kidding, and appreciated it the moment Samsung made the official announcement at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Moving the camera and wiring out of the band meant you can change or replace the band.

That exec at MWC said almost exactly what I had told Samsung’s PR people last year in private meetings. The company had to know this was a terrible idea when they were shipping the first Gear, and yet they went ahead with it anyway. When I told the Samsung rep that I always thought that putting the camera on the band was an incredibly bad idea, he replied: “but look how far we’ve come in five months.”

He’s right, of course. Samsung has made remarkable progress in a very short period of time. But if you know anything about product development cycles, you know that this edition — complete with a heart rate monitor (on the back), different operating system (Tizen) and a monumentally better second-gen super AMOLED screen — must have been underway even before Samsung released the first Gear.

Why didn’t Samsung wait? The reviews for the first product, especially from women, were not kind. Wouldn’t it have been better to avoid that kind of pain, retain its reputation, and deliver a product that could make even the forever-working-on-a-wearable Apple sit up and take notice?

Work Remains

I am not saying the Gear 2 is a perfect device. Though it is thinner and lighter than before, the Gear 2 had to share the stage with Samsung’s Gear Fit — which, to be honest, stole the show.

The Fit is, as you would guess, is a fitness band; it features the world’s first curved Super AMOLED screen on a wearable. It’s light, fun, sexy, and could be the breakout star of Mobile World Congress. It also highlights what Gear 2 is not: curved and jewelry-like.

Samsung also revealed yet another Gear: the Gear 2 Neo. It’s a camera-free version that lacks some of the Gear 2’s stylish lines; it is likely there to satisfy budget-conscious consumers. By the way, neither Gear 2 model offers much variety when it comes to band options. You get a couple of color choices, but all are rubber and have the same crosshatch texture.

Even with this Gear overhaul, one very big question remains: How much? With the Neo and Fit likely to get $199 and $149 price tags respectively, the full-featured Gear 2 will probably cost nearly $250. That may be about $50 too expensive for most consumers. But if Samsung offers an attractive Galaxy S5 bundle price, they still might have a wearable success on their hands. And on ours, for that matter.

But if you don’t like this Gear, wait five months — the Gear 3 is surely waiting in the wings.

Samsung Finally Reveals The Galaxy S5 – The New King Of Android Phones

The wait is finally over as Samsung has unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S5 at the
 Mobile WorldCongress 2014. Building up on the highly successful and wildly
sold Galaxy S4, the new Galaxy S5 is quite an improvement over its predecessor.

The phone hosts a 2.5 Ghz quad-core processor with 2GB of Ram. To support the
 added firepower, the phone also boasts a bigger battery which samsung claims,
 will last 20% longer than Galaxy S4 on a single charge. So when it comes to the
raw processing power,Samsung has once again ensured that its flagship phone
 has the best hardware in the competition.
The S5 has a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel sporting the same 1920×1080 pixel
 full HD resolution as before. Just like the S4, this offers superb visual quality,
 though with a slightly lower 430ppi pixel density. The display offers great contrast
and brightness levels while color  reproduction is pretty amazing.

The phone has a 16 Megapixel camera at the back that also supports 4K video
 recording. The enhanced camera also offers real time HDR processing for
further enhancing the photo quality. Overall, the camera interface has been
 improved and the picture quality is phenomenal.

For those of you wishing for something new in design, you’ll be disappointed
 as the phone retains most of the design features of its predecessor. The
 curves and the build is almost the same as the S4. However, the back has
 been redesigned with a new soft dimple finish. The phone is being offered
 in 4 colours, black, white, blue and gold. With the new finish, Samsung
has finally gotten away with the plastic, glossy finish seen in the Galaxy
line before.

So whats cool about the new Samsung Galaxy S5 other than increased processing
power and a larger screen? Well, the phone has a fingerprint scanner embedded
 in the front home button. This fingerprint scanner will offer greater device security
 and privacy. Furthermore, there is even a heart rate monitor at the back of the
phone that can be used to monitor your heart rate.

The phone runs on Android 4.3 Kitkat and hosts several Samsung specific apps
like before. There are also some trivial changes to the front interface which
distinguish it from the S4. The Phone will hit the market in April of this year with
the price tag still a secret. However, there is no doubt that the S5 will sell like a hot
cake like its predecessor because it offers great  refinements and is undoubtedly
the best Android phone in the market right now.

Would you buy the new S5? Let us know in the comments section!

Samsung Announces The Galaxy Gear 2 Smart Watch With Better Battery And Tizen OS, Coming In April

by John Biggs

Samsung has announced the availability of the Galaxy Gear 2 smart watch, a Tizen OS-powered wearable that will get up to three days of battery life and is promised to allow for a improved applications. There will be two models – the Galaxy Gear 2 with camera and the Gear 2 Neo without – and they will ship in April.

The Tizen OS, a new mobile operating system Samsung first tried to use in the NX300m camera, will allow for an “enriched application ecosystem.” The device has a 1.63-inch touchscreen, a 1GHz processor, and 4GB internal storage. Most important, however, the device will be compatible with more Samsung smartphones. Sorry iOS users.

Tizen is Samsung’s open source, multi-device OS that that the company hopes to take to ubiquity in multiple devices including in-car entertainment units and smart TVs. It uses web APIs to allow developers to build applications with a small footprint that can run on multiple screens – including watches.

No pricing yet but Samsung excepts to ship in April. You can read a bit more about the device at Engadget.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Barred From Sale in Europe

 by Todd Wasserman

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is being bounced from another continent.

The Regional Court of Dusseldorf, Germany, has granted Apple a preliminary injunction against Samsung, preventing it from selling and marketing the device in Europe — except for the Netherlands. The court sided with Apple’s claim that Samsung’s device infringed on Apple’s patents and copied parts of the iPad 2. While Samsung can appeal the ruling, it won’t be able to do so for at least four weeks.

Europe is the second continent to ban the sale of the device on these grounds after the tablet’s launch was delayed in Australia on August 1. The tablet hit the U.S. market on June 8.

HANDS ON: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

by Chris Taylor

Samsung just delivered another broadside against Apple in the tablet wars. After unveiling a 7-in. Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab, late last year to what became an underwhelming customer response, the Korean company upped its game, announcing a 10-in. version running a better operating system. The Tab 10.1 will be one of the lightest tablets in an increasingly crowded marketplace, and it runs Honeycomb, the next-generation version of Android optimized for tablets. It ships this spring in Europe and Asia; no U.S. launch date has been announced yet.
Here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Tab 10.1 is attracting more buzz than just about any other device, especially after pictures were leaked at the weekend. So is it worth the wait? I made a beeline for the Samsung booth to find out.
An important disclaimer up front: I’m a hard-core iPad user, so any tablet I use is inevitably going to be viewed through that lens. But I’m also not best pleased with the lack of features Apple left out of the first generation iPad (and the lack of new features currently being reported in iPad 2), so I’m prepared to be impressed by its rivals.
Speaking of lenses, that’s one of the first things you notice about the Tab 10.1: an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 2-megapixel camera on the front. The dual-core Nvidia chipset, new for the 10.1, means it can support HD video recording at an impressive 24 frames per second. The happiest experience I had, and this was true for other show attendees I watched playing with the Tab, was taking snapshots, recording videos, and playing with the camera settings. Had video chat been possible on MWC’s spotty wifi coverage, I suspect we would have enjoyed that too. Take that, Apple!
But that, unfortunately, is as good as it gets with the Tab 10.1. Every positive feature of the device comes with a large “but.” Yes, it is supremely light at 1.3 lbs, but it achieves that weight with a cheap-looking plastic faux metal. Yes, the form factor is thin at 0.43 in wide, but that doesn’t take into account the unevenness of the back. Yes, the back has a rugged texture that stops the Tab from slipping out of your hands, but it also gets as hot as a laptop in one corner, which is presumably where the dual-core processors are being thrashed. (One thing you notice about the iPad is that it almost never gets hot, even when you leave the thing out in the sun.) Are you going to want to lean back with a burning device, even if it is only partially burning?

Then there’s the Honeycomb interface, which I’m afraid I and other attendees found to be a confusing mess. The home screen is way too crowded with widgets. The basic app screen is hard to find, as are other important features within apps — such as how to see the photo or video you just captured from the camera screen. Like a lot of Apple tablet rivals, Samsung has seen fit to make their device as button-free as possible; you won’t find anything like the iPad’s all-important home button here to get you straight to your apps. Getting home involves pressing the on-screen back button several times, in the style of a browser. And let’s not mention the several times the Launcher application crashed, which I’ll put down to teething troubles with Honeycomb.
To Samsung and Google’s credit, there is a smoothness to this interface that was lacking in the first Galaxy tab. Scrolling — through slideshows, through app screens, through libraries — is fairly seamless. I enjoyed turning pages in the Book app far more than I do in Apple’s iBooks. The touchscreen was responsive enough. I look forward to trying this device again when it’s closer to a U.S. release. But on first impressions, this hot little device is not going to tempt me away from the iPad’s icy grip.

Leaked Images Of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ & Galaxy S II [PICS]

by Charlie White

Shortly after that leak of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ specs, now there are new pictures of the new tablet and the Galaxy S2 smartphone, too.
Along with these pics comes confirmation of those specs we reported on earlier — the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab has an 8-megapixel camera with HD recording and playback, 1200 x 800 resolution, and runs the Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS.
The 8.49mm-thin Samsung Galaxy S II Smartphone doesn’t have the 1.2 GHz dual-core processor rumored before, but according to Samsung Hub it has a 1GHz dual core processor, weighs just over 4 ounces, and has a a 4.27-inch AMOLED WVGA display.
We have the pics, we have the numbers, and now we have boots on the ground in Barcelona — Mashable’s Chris Taylor and Stan Schroeder will have first-hand reports about these two devices and many more from Barcelona all week.

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Images courtesy of Samsung Hub

New Samsung Galaxy Tablet Specs Leaked [REPORT]

by Charlie White

As Mobile World Congress approaches, we’re hearing rumors that Samsung is readying a successor to its Galaxy Tab and is planning to show off the unnamed tablet Sunday night in Barcelona.
An unnamed source tells Pocket Lint the tablet will be thinner and lighter than its predecessor, and faster, too. It will reportedly have an 8-megapixel camera, a 10.1-inch touchscreen and a dual-core Qualcomm processor — perhaps the same 1.2 GHz chip said to be powering the Samsung Galaxy S2 Smartphone.
This rumor doesn’t come a moment too soon, especially since consumers don’t seem completely happy with the current 7-inch Galaxy Tab (pictured above), reportedly suffering from a return rate of 16%. Compare that to the return rate of iPads at 2%, and there’s clearly a problem.
However, much of that difficulty might have to do with the Android 2.2 “Froyo” operating system, which wasn’t specifically designed for tablets. This new Samsung tablet will likely be running the tablet optimized Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system that’s due to launch February 17.

Don't count out the iPad competitors

By Adam Ostrow, Special to CNN 

(CNN) -- Amidst reports that the Samsung may be touting inflated numbers for sales of its Galaxy Tab tablet -- and reports that those that do buy the device are returning it at an alarming rate -- one might jump to the conclusion that Apple has little to be worried about in the way of competitors to its iPad.However, that would be a mistake.

While Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 and closed the year with 75% market share in the tablet space, that was down from 95% in the third quarter of 2010, before the Galaxy Tab went on sale.

And regardless of whether or not the Galaxy Tab is a hit or a dud --Samsung claims its return rate is actually 2% -- a slew of better Android devices are about to invade the market -- not to mention offerings from other players including RIM and Palm.

One advantage that upcoming tablets like the Motorola Xoom have on the Galaxy Tab is that they'll be using Honeycomb, Google's operating system that's optimized for tablets that was officially revealed on Wednesday.

Believe it or not, the Galaxy tablet is running an older version of Android that's designed to run on smartphones, which essentially renders the device as an awkwardly sized Galaxy S.

Also, let us not forget recent history. It was less than two years ago that pundits were beginning to suggest that Android was a failure. At the time, there were only two Android smartphones on the market, despite the dozens of partners that Google had announced at the launch of Android in late 2007.

To many, the features of the nascent operating system also seemed underwhelming.Fast forward to today and Android smartphones are outselling iPhones, thanks to the multitude of manufacturers now offering devices at a variety of price points -- all the way down to free.

Gizmodo says: "If you consider where Android was when it started versus how far it's advanced in 18 months with Android 2.2, you might get brain freeze."All of which should signal that the tablet race is far from over.

The next few months will see not only the introduction of the Xoom, but also devices from manufacturers like LG, Vizio and Acer.Much like smartphones, having more than one manufacturer to choose from is one of Android's big advantages, as each device offers its own unique features that consumers can weigh when making their selection.

That's no different in tablets, where consumers will be able to choose based on things like operating system, screen size and front-facing cameras, not to mention price.And price could ultimately prove a huge driver of sales of iPad alternatives. Whereas Apple and its carrier partners, AT&T and Verizon, have thus far offered data plans for the iPad on a month-to-month basis, T-Mobile is enticing customers with a $249 retail price when you sign a two-year data contract for the Galaxy Tab.

While the contract-less iPad has its advantages, namely the ability to switch devices more than every two years, it also means you'll need to drop at least $629 initially to get a 3G version of the tablet.

Meanwhile, much like we saw with netbooks, pricing is likely to drop further -- perhaps all the way to free -- as carriers look to lock in customers on their expensive new 4G data networks and manufacturers churn out devices with lower manufacturing costs -- something Vizio, for example, does well.

An iPad 2 (very likely) and subsidized pricing (less likely) could give Apple another pop in the middle of this year, but make no mistake: The same tides that lifted Android past iOS in the smartphone world will soon do the same with tablets.

That's not to say that Apple won't continue to build a huge, lucrative and ever-growing market for itself, but rather to point out the inevitability of its competitors also cashing in on the tablet craze.