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Amazon's big Samsung sale includes laptops, watches, phones and storage
Amazon's deal of the day is all about Samsung today, with products on sale ranging from laptops to Galaxy S smartphones to storage.
Gucci takes on esports fashion with a $1,600 Fnatic dive watch
Gucci is getting into the esports fashion world in an unusual fashion: a premium, limited edition Fnatic dive watch.
Casio unveils a NASA-themed G-Shock watch for space fans
Casio has unveiled a limited edition NASA-themed G-Shock watch that lets you flaunt your love of spac.
The UK may ban all watches during exams to prevent cheating
The UK will consider banning all watches from school exams in an attempt to prevent cheating. An independent commission hired to investigate exam malpractice says it's too difficult to distinguish between regular and smartwatches, and it's impractical to ask proctors (or invigilators) to check every student's watch. A sweeping ban, the commission says, would be more appropriate.
Samsung's Gear watches will help with senior care and employee safety
Samsung is taking on the world of work via three new integrations with its Gear smartwatches. SoloProtect uses the Samsung Gear S3 to keep tabs on people who work alone, like real estate agents and home healthcare workers, while Reemo integrates with the Gear S3 and S2 to monitor the health of seniors in care facilities. Ability Wearables, along with Samsung's Gear Fit 2 and S3 devices, helps keep track of people who work long shifts, like truck drivers, construction employees and healthcare workers. Samsung is spotlighting these and a VR solution for fitness centers at the Mobile World Congress Americas conference in San Francisco this week.
Fossil hopes you’ll like one of its 300 smartwatches
Back in March, Fossil revealed its plans to introduce 300 smartwatches in 2017, including a mix of hybrid analogs and others running Android Wear 2.0. The new wearables come from Fossil itself as well as brands like Misfit, Diesel, Emporio Armani and Skagen, all of which are owned by parent company Fossil Group. The firm says the idea here is to offer consumers more choices, since not everyone likes the same style of watch. Pictured above, for one, is Skagen's Hagen Connected Steel-Mesh, a $220 hybrid smartwatch with a traditional design and features such as activity tracking, sleep monitoring and support for phone notifications.
Luxury fashion brands slowly embrace internet shopping
Luxury fashion brands have been notoriously reluctant to embrace the internet. While you can find their wares on some third-party stores, you typically have to visit an old-fashioned retail store if you want to buy straight from the source. However, that's set to change. LVMH, the owner of many of the world's biggest luxury brands (including Bulgari, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton), is launching its own online store in June.
Complete your steampunk cosplay with a Samsung pocket watch
As the world's biggest watch show continues to pump out smartwatch variants from nearly everyone, at Baselworld, established player Samsung apparently wanted to pay lip-service to the horological items that came before watches got smart. It unveiled a handful of concept devices, including one Gear S3-esque device that houses a mechanical Swiss-made movement -- apparently instead of your smartwatch touchscreen. It also had three more typical Gear S3 watches with upgraded build materials -- classier Gear S3 smartwatches. However, my attention was drawn to the device on the far left: a hybrid pocket watch version of the Gear S3 that appears to pair two smaller watch faces with a compass, for bonus ... "innovation" points.
Garmin's outdoorsy Fenix5 smartwatches are pretty small
Smartwatches, especially those designed for the rigors of outdoor adventuring, tend to be on the beefy side. But at CES this week, Garmin announced three smaller-form-factor iterations to its Fenix smartwatch line called the Fenix5. At 1.6 inches to 2 inches in face diameter, they're up to a half-inch smaller around than the previous Fenix3 line.
Watchmakers think smart features will beat smartwatches
Fossil is the fourth-biggest watchmaker in the world, responsible for about 5 percent of global timepiece sales. The company produces watches for a variety of brands, including Armani, Kate Spade, Michael Kors and Skagen. This week, ahead of the holidays, all of those labels have launched traditional-looking analog watches that come with activity tracking, notification vibrations and automatic time setting. When a company feels this confident that its users want this tech, you know something's going on. That's because this is the moment that the future of wearables becomes a race to see how deep you can bury your geeky credentials beneath a pretty case.
Google could be working on two new Android Wear watches
Sources close to Android Police claim Google is hard at work right now on two Android Wear devices of its own. According to the report, the watches are fundamentally different from one another, with one acting as a larger and sportier option and the other aimed at budget adopters, smaller and without mobile data and GPS.
Tag Heuer Connected review: $1,500 for a smartwatch?
Smartphone makers have churned out watch after watch in hopes of happening upon something game-changing. If nothing else, they're getting good at making pretty gear. Still, none of them have the clout that horological giant Tag Heuer does, which is why our collective ears perked up when we heard that the Swiss company was making an Android Wear watch. The result is the Tag Heuer Connected, a watch that looks like some of the company's most iconic models ... and works just like every other Android Wear device out there. At $1,500 (£1,050), it's also the most expensive Android Wear watch around, but -- spoiler alert -- it's hardly worth the price.
Custom $3,100 Apple Watch celebrates famed Russian leaders
If Lenin weren't so pickled, he'd be rolling over in his display case at the sight of Caviar's limited-edition luxury Apple Watch Epoca. The company has unveiled three unique designs for the new Epoca line. Each costs about $3,100 and celebrates one of three famed Russian leaders: Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Lenin and Peter the Great. The watches come replete with either leather or Milanese link bracelets, as well as engravings of Lenin's mausoleum or Putin's signature. Heck, you can even get the old Soviet logo on the crown -- because if anything represents the failures of Russian Communism, it's a custom-designed Apple Watch sporting the Hammer and Sickle that costs ten times more than its base model.
Way before Apple Watch and Android Wear, there was Casio
Casio might be only lightly involving itself in the current boom in smartwatches and wearables, but the company still makes plenty of money from its G-Shock series and rugged outdoor watches. That's not to say it hasn't experienced a combination of hits and misses: Casio would say it "pioneered" a huge array of features in its digital watches over the decades, many of which have returned -- in a more appealing or functional form -- in smartwatches today. It crammed GPS into a watch in 1999, lashed a rumble-pack to its early gaming watch and even made a waterproof watch that warns you've been out in the sun too long. And that's just the beginning. Smartwatches may be capable of much more, but credit is due for how Casio was tackling these features decades (too) early. Niche? Yes. Fascinating? You bet.
Keep tabs on your Volkswagen with the Apple Watch
Volkswagen America announced Tuesday that its Car-Net app is coming to the Apple Watch and will allow drivers to remotely interact with their cars using it. The Car-Net platform is VW's driver safety and fuel efficiency suite. It offers features like automatic crash emergency response notifications, remote vehicle access and "health updates" on wearing parts like brake pads -- all delivered through the Car-Net mobile app. Now, instead of fishing for their phones in pockets and purses, drivers of many 2014 and newer VW vehicles worldwide will simply have to look at their wrists to know how their cars are doing.
This Windows Phone Pebble app isn't available for long
The Pebble Time may have broke $1 million in Kickstarter pledges at a record-setting pace, but it likely didn't do that with much help from Windows Phone users. The wearable lacks an official first-party app for Redmond's handsets, but Microsoft apparently developed a demo internally to show the smartwatch company how Pebble might work within its ecosystem. You can download that from Windows Central right this moment, but there's a catch -- it'll only be up for 48 hours. Past that? Where else it could appear is up to the internet, really.
The wearables industry needs to brace itself for the Apple Watch
Since the launch of the iPod, Apple's either dominated or come close to dominating every industry that it has entered. The only market where the company isn't the world number one is in set-top boxes, a field that has always been described as a "hobby." It's not too much of a risk to think that Apple will do to watches what it's already done to personal audio, smartphones and tablets -- even if global success isn't overnight. What then, for everyone else in the world of wearable technology?
Withings Activité activity trackers are beautiful, but limited
Forget notifications, forget apps, forget all of the noisy little distractions masquerading as help -- sometimes a wearable is at its best when it stays out of your way. As it turns out, that's just what French hardware house Withings had in mind when it built the Activité ($450) and Activité Pop ($150). In addition to that, though, these fitness bands have something perhaps even more important going for them: With their round faces and classic dials, they don't actually look like activity trackers. Indeed, they're not quite traditional fitness devices, nor are they full-on smartwatches, and I sort of love them for it. Just know that one of them probably isn't for you.
Garmin intros three smartwatches, all of them aimed at sports junkies
Credit where it's due: Garmin has managed to basically reinvent itself. Once the king of in-car GPS navigation, the company is now equally known for its sports watches and fitness trackers. Indeed, with the exception of a few low-end navigators no one cares about, Garmin is pretty much only showing wearable devices here at CES. In brief, this year's lineup runs the gamut, with prices starting at $250 and going all the way up to $600. Still, they all have this in common: They're equal parts smartwatch and fitness tracker.
LaserWatch: The story of a man with too much time on his hands
Your smartwatch may may be the height of wearables today, but it can't get you out of a supervillain's elaborate death trap. That's where Patrick Priebe's LaserWatch comes in, which is like something out of a Bond flick. On the surface, it looks like any other digital watch. But hit a button and you unleash the fury of a 1,500-milliwatt laser. That's enough to pop balloons, light matchsticks, or cut through duct tape. But with only five to ten minutes of battery life (hey, it's just like a smartwatch after all), it's more a parlor trick than a deadly weapon. Priebe, who previously developed a laser-shooting glove and an Iron Man gauntlet with real rockets, says he'd charge at least $300 for the watch if he built more. Unfortunately for aspiring super agents, the LaserWatch isn't strong enough to cut through metal restraints yet. But you've got to start somewhere, right?
