- Today, we're getting our first look
at Samsung's smartwatch collaboration with Google,
with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4,
and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic.
They're one of the biggest deals
in wearables in quite some time,
because it's finally happening.
After years of trying to go it alone
with ties and old smartwatches,
Samsung is finally biting the bullet
and collaborating with Google
on a smartwatch operating system.
(upbeat music)
You definitely get the sense with these smartwatches
that Samsung's hang a little bit of a reset button
with these wearables line up.
Yes, there's the new Wear OS 3 operating system,
which we'll get onto in a little bit,
but Samsung is also taken this opportunity
to simplify it's smartwatch range.
So previously there were two lines,
the Active and the Regular,
and they both got kind of a regularly updated
depending on whether or not Samsung felt like it.
But now there's the four classic,
which is best thought of as a sequel
to the Watch 3
and the regular Watch 4
which is the successor to the Active 2 from 2019,
which yes means they've skipped the 3.
It sounds complicated
but when you look at them next to each other,
it's a lot simpler.
Basically the Galaxy Watch 4 is now the default
and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic
is a slightly more premium model.
The classic starts at $349 while the regular is $249.
It's a little bit cheaper.
Both are available to pre-order from August 11th
and they're shipping on August 27th.
(upbeat music)
So in terms of hardware,
the Classic has one of those rotating bezels
that we've liked so much on Samsung's previous smartwatches.
Samsung wants you to think of this as the more premium
of the two smartwatches
and it's made from better materials like stainless steel.
Whereas the regular Watch 4 is made of aluminum,
or I'm sorry, aluminum.
Meanwhile, the standard Galaxy Watch 4
is the one with a simpler design and materials,
but both of them have a pair of buttons on the side
for pressing.
Both are available in two sizes.
The Watch 4 is a little bit more compact.
It's available in 40 millimeters and 44 millimeters.
While the Watch 4 Classic is 42 millimeters
and 46 millimeters.
But regardless of which version you go for,
the screen sizes are the same.
It's 1.2 inches or thereabouts and 1.4.
and the resolutions have also increased
compared to previous models.
But while one might be the sporty one
and one might be the classy one,
both of them share a lot of the same DNA.
They're both powered by the same Samsung Exynos
five millimeter processor.
Both have 1.5 gigabytes of RAM
and both have 16 gigabytes of storage.
Battery capacities vary slightly between models,
but whichever one you go for,
Samsung reckons you'll get about 40 hours of battery life,
depending on how you use it.
There's LTE on select models
but if you're hoping for 5G, then you might be disappointed.
Samsung says that the amount of data
smartwatches have to process
is just a little bit too small to make it worth it.
But the bigger deal's probably the software
these watches are running.
It's Wear OS 3,
which is the result of a collaboration
between Google and Samsung.
And it should hopefully combine the best of Samsung Tizen OS
with the best of Google's Wear OS.
On Samsung's smartwatches specifically,
the interface you're looking at is One UI watch,
which is Samsung's skin
sitting on top of Google's Wear OS operating system.
Think of it as One UI on phones,
which sits on top of Android.
When it announced his collaboration with Samsung in May,
Google promised a whole bunch of high-level benefits,
like better battery life,
faster loading apps and smoother animations,
but these have never really been problems
for Samsung smartwatches.
So it's kind of difficult to tell how much of an impact
they've had just yet.
But there are other benefits here
that are much more obvious,
like finally having Google's apps and services
on a Samsung smartwatch
and the most important one here is Google maps
because it means there's finally
a capable native mapping app on the smartwatch itself.
Now I know a lot of you are going to be wondering
what that means for voice assistance,
given Bixby's reputation
and Samsung doesn't have a far man's view just yet.
It tells me the Google Assistant won't be available
at launch but then it might arrive eventually.
I should also mention for the sake of
both you Bixby fans out there,
that Samsung says its own apps and services
aren't going anywhere.
So that means Samsung Pay and smart things,
which is great if you've already bought into
Samsung's ecosystem.
It'll also import some settings from your phone,
as well as installing watch apps automatically
when you have the phone version installed,
which is frankly so much more simple
than what Tizen did previously.
There's still an app store on the watch itself though
should you so choose.
And better yet, this stuff isn't Samsung only
and should work on any Android phone
running Android 7 and above
so long as it has GMS.
Beyond Samsung and Google,
you also have to hope for having one fewer operating systems
to target might mean better app support
from third-party developers.
Although it's not new for Samsung smartwatches,
Spotify has an upcoming,
which includes the option for offline listening
and fingers crossed.
This is a sign of things to come.
So sensors, health stuff,
the first bear is worth talking about
is a new three in one health sensor,
which combines PPG, ECG and BIA sensors.
That means there's an optical heart rate sensor,
an electrical heart sensor
and a bioelectric impedance analysis sensor,
which basically means detection of everything
from blood pressure to atrial fibrillation,
blood oxygen levels and body composition.
But Samsung's pitches,
the new addition to the technical individually,
you can also detect it as a whole
using this body composition analysis tool.
It's meant to give you a holistic view of your health
ranging from everything from skeletal muscle
to metabolic rate and BMI.
And the tracking doesn't stop once you go to sleep.
Oh no.
Samsung says that the watch can track
your blood oxygen levels while you sleep
and offers more insight into how your sleep has gone gently.
Oh, and it'll
also track your snoring, which seems rude, but okay.
I'm broadly skeptical of sync tracking features like these
because it's rare they offer any advice beyond,
"Hey, you should go to sleep at the same time every night",
but maybe Samsung's cracked it who knows.
Samsung smartwatches have been our recommendation
for anyone with an Android phone for quite some time,
but it feels like
Samsung's hit a little bit of a ceiling
with what it can achieve
while it's still running its own software.
That's what makes this year's smartwatches
and Google and Samsung's collaboration in general
so exciting.
It banishes so many of those little niggles,
like a lack of native Google apps
that have been plaguing Samsung's recent watches.
Last year, we said it was time for a change
and this year we're finally getting up.
So thank you so much for learning about
Samsung's new wearables, but they also have foldables.
If you want to learn more about those,
then Chris Wedge probably has a video
that's around here somewhere.