Dreaming of Captain Kirk

When Samsung launched its Galaxy Gear smart watch last year, it created an advertisement that featured famous characters from popular culture that had smart watches - George Jetson from the Jetsons, Captain Kirk from Star Trek and Michael Knight from Knight Rider amongst many others. That clip summarizes the misguided perception that many people have about the current crop of smart watches.

As we have mentioned, smart watches today do little more than act as a secondary display for your smartphone or tablet. While that is undoubtedly a very useful function to some, it is certainly not as “smart” as some of us have been led to believe. While characters in the advertisement could communicate with their watches, none of the smart watches in the market today actually offer that kind of functionality. In fact, it could be argued that multifunction watches such as the Casio Protrek are even “smarter” since they have loads of standalone functions which provides useful data such as an altimeter, barometer, compass, world-time and more.

However, the potential for smart watches with greater standalone features and functions is latent, and manufacturers are showing signs of exploiting it. While the Galaxy Gear series can still be considered gimmicky, its a step in the right direction. The other hurdle to overcome is screen size. In an age where smartphone screens have become increasingly larger due to media consumption trends, these usage methods do not really translate well to the tiny screens of a smart watch.

”THE GEAR 2 IS DEFINITELY A BETTER FASHION STATEMENT, BUT STILL LIGHT ON SMARTS.”