I really should have recorded myself reacting to samsungs announcement of this watch because i was genuinely excited for it, not just for the overall design and how sleek it looked, but also because samsung and google worked together on this watch, one of the biggest downfalls of last Years galaxy watch 3 was that it ran tizen os a somewhat outdated looking operating system that just didnt have enough third party apps to support it. Samsung aimed to fix that this year, by bringing google on board to put wear os on their newest watches, heres. The thing, though, this watch does a lot of things right, but it also has some pretty significant downfalls. Hence the title of this video. Let me start with the things that i love and then well get into the problems that you might run into. If you buy this watch reason number one. First of all, let me just say that i absolutely love the minimalistic design of the galaxy watch. 4.. I went with the all black version to match my z, flip 3, but there are tons of colors to choose from both for the cases and for the straps. The edges of the case are much flatter this year and theres two buttons on the side to help out with navigation. The display is also a lot nicer. This year, theyve pushed the bezel a little closer to the sides and theyve upped the resolution to 450 by 450. On this tiny 1.
4 inch amoled screen thats one of the first things that i noticed. Actually, you can definitely tell a difference in sharpness on this display versus last years. Display theres. Also a bunch of new watch faces now im, not personally into these weird bitmoji faces or animoji or whatever the heck. You call them, but there are some really nice ones in here. My personal favorite is the digital dashboard, theres, five different complications that you can customize and you get the benefit of prolonged battery life with it, because that background is black and amoled displays love black backgrounds because they can give the pixels a break and shut them off. Now, if you dont, like any of the watch, faces here, no problem since the galaxy watch, 4 runs wear os. There are a ton and i do mean a ton of custom third party watch faces available for you to choose from both directly from the google play store and through apps like facer, and that brings me to reason number two. I love this watch and this is a big one. Wear os now im not saying wear os is perfect or anything, but because this is a platform thats being used by a lot of different watch. Brands like fossil xiaomi, motorola, skogen and a bunch of others theres a lot of support from third party app developers. The google play store is filled with great third party apps, a lot of which werent available on samsung watches running tizen.
But beyond that, you also get access to a ton of fantastic google apps google maps, google keep youtube music and even gboard, which gives you an actual qwerty keyboard to type with. If you switch to it in the default keyboard, settings, samsung is a huge player in the smartwatch game and making the switch to wear os is definitely going to entice a lot more developers to jump on board and start bringing more of their apps to the platform. So theres a good chance that app support will continue to get better in the future number three on the list of things that i love is the comfort. This is definitely one of the most comfortable smart watches that ive owned its actually the only smart watch. Besides, the apple watch that i can wear while sleeping the silicone band that comes with it, is very comfortable and its a lot easier to put on than the standard apple watch bands that tend to painfully tug on my arm. Hair, for some reason, is silicone. The best looking material, no absolutely not, but it is comfortable and it has the added benefit of being very durable when exposed to water or sweat. And since the galaxy watch 4 is water resistant up to 50 meters, its bound to get hit with plenty of that at some point. Another thing i really like about this watch is the fitness tracking. Now, when i first got this watch, this was an area that i was a little disappointed in, because the very first workout that i tried to do with this watch was on my indoor exercise bike and i couldnt track it.
They only had support for outdoor cycling at the time. Thankfully, within a couple of days, they added exercise bike, tracking and ive been happy with it. Ever since i wore both my apple watch series 5 and the galaxy watch 4. At the same time, for a couple of different workouts and honestly, they seem to track nearly identically, which is good enough accuracy for me, im not much of a health nut, but they also have things like body composition, measurement using bioelectric, impedance analysis, technology, thats a mouthful. I know, but its basically supposed to measure everything from your the weight of your skeletal muscle, skeletal skull, skeletal skeletal muscle to your bmi and then theres reason number five that i love this watch battery life. Now, if you compare this watch to a rugged, smart watch, like my garmin instinct, or to a hybrid smart watch like my fossil hybrid hr, the battery life of the galaxy watch 4 is not really going to impress you. Those watches can hit a week or even 2 weeks before needing to recharge, and the galaxy watch 4 can just barely hit 2 days if youre lucky, but those watches have far fewer smart features and have either extremely low resolution. Displays or e ink displays that have extremely low refresh rates and poor performance for a wash that has such a bright, sharp colorful amoled display and is able to run tons of third party apps 36 to 48 hours is solid for battery life and its.
What youll find from competing watches like the apple watch? Okay, now lets talk about why i have such a love, hate relationship with this watch. To be clear, absolutely none of the reasons that im about to give you are complete deal breakers on their own theyre, mostly just nitpicks, if im being honest, but when you combine them all together, the watch just starts to feel a little unpolished reason number one: the Galaxy watch 4 is riddled with bugs now, if youre watching this video several months or even years into the future, this point might not even be relevant anymore, but as of right now, wear os on this watch has many little bugs that need to be ironed out. For example, and this one is the most annoying to me personally, notifications from certain apps refuse to vibrate the watch in any mode, whether that be ring or vibrate and im, not the only one thats experiencing this theres. Currently, a nine page support thread over on samsungs forums, full of people complaining about this and ive seen several reddit threads as well. Gmail is one of the apps that just will not vibrate, and i need those notifications for work so its extremely annoying. Another bug that needs fixing is when you answer a call on the watch. The speaker will be extremely quiet, even when the ui shows that its turned up all the way. You need to turn that dial down and then all the way back up to get the correct volume.
Also annoying then theres. The fact that the raise to wake feature only works about 70 of the time right now, every now and again ill turn to look at my watch and ill rotate. My wrist to see the time. Thankfully, the galaxy watch 4 has an always on display. So, even if the screen doesnt wake, i can still see it, but if my watch vibrates for a text message, sometimes it just refuses to wake up. When i bring my wrist closer to my face, you can always tap it to wake it too, but even that doesnt work properly sometimes reason number two at the moment: theres no google assistant on this watch, which seems really bizarre, given that this is a wear os Watch made in partnership with google. The only thing thats available right now is bixby, which is less than stellar and cant even really get a lot of text to speech. Commands right. This one will be solved in the future. According to samsung, they will be bringing the google assistant to the watch soon. We just dont know when reason number three has to do with the always on display its great that we have it on this watch and im glad that its here, but samsung needs to do something about the brightness of it outdoors, its borderline unreadable in direct sunlight. This watch has the capability of going up to 1 000 nits of peak brightness, so i know it.
Doesnt have to be that way. In all likelihood, samsung just doesnt want to compromise the battery life any further, but id be willing to take a slight hit to battery life for the small price of being able to actually read my display without waking it up, which is the entire point of the Always on display in the first place reason number four is something a lot of you probably wont run into, but its the fact that for the first time ever, this galaxy watch is not compatible with an iphone. I get it apple, watches arent compatible with android. So why should samsung make their watches compatible with the iphone, but its kind of weird that they chose this watch to do that on because, to my knowledge, every other wear os watch is compatible with the iphone in at least some ways and every other galaxy watch Is too, if i want to switch to an iphone in the future, i wont be able to take the galaxy watch 4 with me, and people that have iphones right now just wont be buying the new galaxy watches anymore bummer. And finally, the last thing that i really dont love about the galaxy watch 4 has to do with the performance. Look. I appreciate the fact that samsung put a faster cpu and more ram in this watch compared to last year, but it still doesnt seem to be quite enough for wear os. Yet, for the most part it seems to be smooth enough, but every so often animations will freeze or opening apps will take just a little too long and it just doesnt feel very refined for a brand new smartwatch.
If the performance is just good enough now chances are youre not going to feel too great about it in a year or two. So am i going to return the galaxy watch? 4. No, of course not. While i dont think this watch quite lives up to the personal hype that i created for it, that doesnt mean it doesnt have great potential, it really does if samsung and google can continue to work out the bugs and improve their overall software experience.BCpBHFk0tas
