The Galaxy Gear just got interesting.
While the Samsung Galaxy Gear isn’t the greatest piece of consumer technology we’ve ever seen, once you sidestep Samsung’s not-very-useful software, you’ll find a pretty cool platform for hacking.
The Galaxy Gear ships with a “USB debug” checkbox in the settings. Check that box, hook it up to a computer, and it will be usable with ADB, the Android Debug Bridge. ADB will in turn allow you to fire up a command line and sideload whatever you want onto the Gear’s 4GB of storage. The Gear runs Android 4.2.2 with an 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM, so it can run real apps just like any other Android device. Considering that the original Android phones all had 528MHz processors and only 192MB of RAM, the Gear is a miniature powerhouse in comparison.
This could very well be the saving grace for this otherwise mediocre consumer device. I’m very curious to see what the XDA community can do with this.
Watches are too large.
Samsung should make a signet ring (with curved display !), and run angry birds on it.
Just for hype.
Hardly. Galaxy Gear is still too much of everything useless, too little on substance — really shoddy implementation of notifications, requires a phone to function, but still insists on shipping with its own, built-in crappy camera, way, way too little battery-life and so on. It’s just never going to gather much traction the way it is.
Yeah. I could imagine a programmable watch being useful… but I’d be much more likely to try doing it myself using something along the same lines as the Solder:Time II ( https://www.adafruit.com/products/950 ) with a monochrome pixel LCD rather than an LED matrix and more battery than just a single CR2032.
Edited 2013-10-09 22:25 UTC
If these were going to take off, I’d probably have seen a cellphone watch somewhere in real life. I know I can buy one incredibly cheap but I like everyone else opted for something bigger. Now we have smart ones, whoopity doo.In the US the only ad that features the Gear has a little kid with a tablet in the other hand using it without any acknowledgment that he has a smartphone strapped to his wrist.
And yet, if this was a peripheral I’d be all for it. Seems to be a common thing for me, don’t want Google Glass, I want a hud. I don’t want a Samsung Gear, just a stupid touchscreen with bluetooth. Next we’ll get those little screens from Looper and I’ll be wanting well, anything but those little screens. They look intensely annoying to use.
edit: I tell a lie, there’s an ad on youtube that lovingly shows you fifty or so watches you want way more than the Gear and they’re probably all available right now.
Edited 2013-10-11 02:34 UTC