Smartwatches are the talk of the street right now and for a very good reason. They are cool, capable and understated. At the IFA 2013 expo, both Samsung and Qualcomm announced their smartwatch representatives: the Galaxy Gear and Toq. Naturally, we had to compare them to the Sony Smartwatch 2, which was announced a couple of months ago.
You may be thinking that smartwatches aren’t really our scope, but remember that while we are professional phone reviewers, we are also geeks. This puts the smartwatch product category right in our alley.
Okay, what makes a smartwatch tick and what is its purpose in life? It may sound a bit philosophical, but without a purpose this product niche doesn’t make any sense. Happily, those little fellas are really smart, hence their name. They are very well connected — the Sony Smartwatch 2 even boasts NFC connectivity — and all of them can connect to your mobile phone via Bluetooth.
And here’s where their wizardry kicks in. The Samsung Galaxy Gear for example can make calls on its own thanks to its built-in microphone, while its 1.9MP camera can snap 10-second 720p videos and make photos that get automatically uploaded to its accompanying Samsung Galaxy smartphone or tablet.
We admit that the Qualcomm Toq announcement was a surprise – you don’t get to see a chipset manufacturer dip its toe into a niche that’s outside its main reach. This means that the smartwatch market is a lucrative one, and that’s hardly a surprise considering their coolness factor at the moment.
Anyway, we’ve prepared a comparison table including the Samsung Galaxy Gear, Qualcomm Toq and Sony Smartwatch 2. Mind you, not all of specifications are available at the moment, so you have to bear with us as we hunt them down.
Posted in: Gadgets
