The Future of Wearable Technology

It has been about 2 months now that I have been using the Galaxy Gear Smart Watch. For the most part my experience has been a good one and I enjoy using the watch. With the holidays approaching and everyone looking for great tech gifts I wanted to recap very clearly my impressions of this and then write a little bit about my thoughts on the future of wearable technology in general.

So here we go.

The Galaxy Gear

The pros of this device are that it is great way to keep up to date with email and text messages without needing to grab your phone constantly. You can of course customize the watch display in various modes to include the date, current weather conditions, steps walked and more.

There is also a camera on the wrist band which can take pictures and short video clips which are automatically sent to your phone as well. The quality of the images are low at about 2mp which is to be excepted.

Because it is connected to your phone through Bluetooth it also acts as an extension to your phone. Incoming calls can be viewed to see who is calling without reaching for your phone and you can even accept or reject the incoming the call from the watch, You can even carry on a conversation with the watch.

The cons include the watch band which I have found is bigger then is should be which is probably the result of the camera which is in the band. Also the battery needs to be charged about every 2 days and there is a dock/cradle which you must use. I mentioned the ability to talk (on the phone) through the watch, however this is very difficult if not impossible in crowded places or if you want to have a private conversation. The last negative point I will mention here is that the Galaxy Gear currently only works with the Samsung Galaxy S II and III and Note 2 and 3.

In conclusion if you have one of the supported phones and you like some of the benefits I mentioned here you might enjoy checking this out. There is some real good uses here and it is always a conversation piece when people see it.



Every time I sit at the pub people ask, "hey is that - that smart watch on TV" and just about everyone I have met is curious about what it does. This leads to my prediction which follows.

The Future of Wearable Technology

First is there a future here? The answer is yes and although we are in the very early stages of finding what works (the smart watch) and what does not (google glass). The "google glass" kind of freaked people out. Who wants to have a conversation with someone who's attention is obviously somewhere else and who could be taking pictures of you and even recording the conversation. However wearable technology is actually a natural fit for watches and I believe that this is the area where we will see a successful evolution and acceptance by consumers.

The smart watch will be the first successful and profitable wearable technology and this will probably occur during the next two years. You will see this when the watches get a little smaller and can act independently from smartphones.