Life trackers are all the rage right now, but why do they all have to look the same? Giant band, tiny screen (if any) and an obnoxious interface. What about designs direct from the future? Thankfully, there’s the new Samsung Gear Fit to the rescue: a curved OLED touchscreen for your wrist.
The Gear Fit is Samsung’s latest go at wearable tech announced at Mobile World Congress early this morning.
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It’s a wristband with a 1.84-inch SuperAMOLED screen which curves around your wrist. It supports interchangable straps if you get tired of the black one it comes with, and supports a whole bunch of standalone fitness software.
The integrated Fitness Manager software promises “real-time” coaching on your wrist, by telling you your steps, your distance travelled as well as real-time instructions beamed onto the screen like “speed up” when you work out.
Underneath the band is an optical heart-rate tracker for measuring your pulse and recording it in the device, both when you’re resting and when you’re working out.
The integrated fitness manager also integrates with S-Health 3.0 for the Samsung Galaxy S5, also announced this morning at MWC in Barcelona. You can read all about that over here.
The Gear Fit also works with your Galaxy devices as a notification remote for your incoming calls, emails SMS messages, alarms, S-Planner (calendar) and other third party applications.
It pairs to your phone via Bluetooth 4.0 Low-Energy, meaning that compatibility will be limited to the Galaxy S4 and above.
Samsung is promising that the device’s battery will last for anywhere between three and five days of “ordinary usage” with low usage lasting for up to five days. Why you’d buy it only not to use it is baffling however.
The Gear Fit is also waterproof and dustproof so it can be worn all the time, and weighs a miniscule 27 grams. You barely notice it on your wrist.
Samsung won’t tell us the software it’s running on, saying only that it doesn’t run Tizen or Android. That’s curious considering that the Gear 2 and the Gear 2 Neo both run the Samsung-developed Tizen OS. We’ll see if we can get more on this.
Check out our hands-on with the device right here.
Luke Hopewell travelled to Mobile World Congress as a guest of Samsung.