Whatever the fascination with smart watches is, it’s catching on and spreading fast. The only real benefit many can see from this technology is facilitating human laziness by not requiring you to take your phone out of your pocket to use, a tedious chore indeed. But maybe we’re being too cynical.
While it is true that this technology has a long way to go before it becomes practical, those of you on the frontier of developing technologies are probably hankering for either the Galaxy Gear or the Sony Smartwatch 2. Wondering which is better? Here’s what it comes down to:
Samsung Galaxy Gear
The Galaxy Gear is about $100 dollars more expensive than its Sony counterpart, but why? Well, the Galaxy Gear is a lot more ambitious than the Smartwatch 2. It allows you to do a lot more and carries out many more functions. It has an in-built speaker and microphone that allows you to make and receive calls from your watch.
While that’s pretty cool and should take you back to the good old days where you played secret spy agent games as kids and talked to your wrists, it doesn’t work very well in the real world. The speakers are sub-par and are difficult to hear in a crowded room. And when they are audible, they don’t offer much privacy, so it’s a struggle to see when this would actually be useful.
Another piece of hardware that the Gear exclusively offers is a camera, reminding us that technology is a wonderful thing. Since the early days where one had to lug around big and cumbersome equipment to take photos, we’ve progressed to make portable cameras, which aren’t practical enough since we are often without such cameras. Phone cameras have been a great advancement in technology, and are continuously developing in quality.
Sony Smartwatch 2
The Sony Smartwatch 2 looks to be the most promising of the bunch, this watch goes a step further to let you check Facebook and Twitter, while the Gear will just give you notifications. There are more apps available on the Smartwatch – almost three times as many in fact – and some of them are quite useful.
Fake Call is a favorite: a tap on your watch and you’ll receive a phantom phone call letting you escape awkward social encounters or find your phone assuming it’s within range. Another positive thing about this watch is that it’s compatible with more Android phones, while the Gear is only compatible with the latest Samsung smart phones, and this really limits its market. The battery life on this watch is longer than its Samsung rival and to top it all off, it just looks great!
The Verdict
The Sony Smartwatch 2 is generally agreed to be the better of the two. It’s cheaper, simpler and runs like clockwork (pun intended). It does less, but the things it does do, it generally does better. While it’s difficult to endorse this as a must have, it certainly is a cool novelty that will impress your friends and colleagues. Maybe when we’re able to play games on them they’ll be more useful as you can check up on your games under the radar.
Adrian Rodriguez is a freelance writer and technology enthusiast. While he is not enthusiastic about smart watches, he tests out the newest in technology with some help from Flexirent.
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