Samsung pimps its Gear smartwatch lineup with word of over 1,000 apps

What makes you choose one wearable over another? Phone compatibility? Price? Hardware design? Just like with smartphones themselves, there are a ton of criteria to keep in mind, and these being smart devices we’re talking about, not the least of those is the variety of software the wearable is able to run. Some platforms are approaching the issue of apps from the phone side, like how Android Wear doesn’t really offer apps that exist independently of your Android handset. Others, like Pebble, are more inclined to

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5 reasons the Samsung Gear Fit doesn’t suck as much as your nerd friends say it does

If there’s one thing about us geeks, it’s our capacity to be super-critical about every little thing you can imagine. Sometimes that’s a good thing: it prevents us from being bamboozled by every piece of techno-trash a company tries to shove down our throat, and it prompts the more vocal among us to shout out loud until those firms refine their offerings. Criticism, on the whole, can have a net positive effect.But sometimes it feels like we complain just for the sake of making noise. Publications like ours ...

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Samsung smartwatch market share rises to 71% following strong first quarter sales

Though many of us argue that Pebble tends to make better smartwatches than Samsung, the Korean company’s marketing prowess is doing its thing again. Thanks to Samsung’s incredible marketing of their smartwatches (by means of celebrity endorsement and otherwise), the company has reportedly sold 500,000 wrist-wearables in the first quarter of 2014. ...

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Samsung Gear 2 Neo unboxing (video)

Our Samsung Gear 2 Neo unboxing video is here, but, we’ll be honest straight from paragraph no. 1: we’ll wait for our Samsung Galaxy S 5 review unit to land at our doorstep until we’ll review the smartwatch. Why? Because we want to take advantage of the added features of the S5 on one hand, and, on the other hand, we want to experience the complete 2014 line-up UX, as Samsung intended it at the Barcelona launch event. As far as the Gear 2 Neo is concerned, we’re looking at a natural evolution of last year’s Galaxy Gear, with some design, internals, as well as ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 091: brace yourselves – the reviews are coming

When an avalanche of reviews is rumbling its way down your mountain, it’s rarely easy to assemble a podcast team – but as we frequently remind you, the Pocketnow Weekly has never missed a week, and we’ll be damned if it’ll do so now. So despite the forthcoming reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S 5, Gear Fit, Gear 2, Oppo Find 7a, Nokia X, and the just-completed reviews of the ZENS Qi line, BlackBerry 10.2.1, and the Verizon HTC One M8, we’re banding together behind microphones in three separate cities on two continents to bring you the news and editorials of a very ...

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Samsung has fixed its Gear pricing … sort of

The wearable space has greatly matured since this time last year. Pebble, for one, grew from the gauche, all-plastic smartwatch behind the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time, to a finely machined luxury watch made of marine grade stainless steel with a blossoming ecosystem of applications and a dedicated development community and fan base. But that’s hardly the only wearables development of the past year. The idea of wearables and, more specifically, smartwatches became more mainstream; ...

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Want to go hands-on with the Galaxy S5 this weekend? Here’s your chance

HTC’s all new One launch event is still… (*checks HTC’s countdown page*) the better part of four days away, and though Galaxy S5 pre-orders have opened (or are just about to) with some of the big US carriers, we’re still three weeks away from seeing those order get fulfilled. If you’re seriously jonesing for some next-level smartphone action, and are sick and tired ...

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AT&T announces start to Galaxy S5 pre-orders, confirms US Gear pricing

With the end of March now in sight, we’re only about three weeks away from when you’ll finally be able to get your hands on Samsung’s brand new Galaxy S5. As carriers prepare for the smartphone’s arrival, we’re starting to get new details on pricing, and learn how the order process will open. Today AT&T fills us in on the details for its own GS5 retail launch, as well as giving some US prices for Samsung’s latest Gear-series wearables. AT&T’s 16GB Galaxy S5 will sell for just about $200 on ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 088: Moto 360, Android Wear, and hacking a path to Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero. It’s become something of a myth in the Pocketnow Weekly recording studio ever since we started actively courting listener feedback all those months ago. Skip a listener-mail section here, another one there, and before you know it you’ve got a mountain of mail it’d take a whole episode to get through. So that’s just what we’re doing. Just like we did on episode 076, we’re devoting an entire podcast to your ...

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Samsung releases Tizen SDK for Gear 2, hints at compatibility with non-Samsung phones

Releasing a smartwatch in this day and age is a massive undertaking. You can’t just throw together some hardware, have it pull notifications from your phone over Bluetooth, and call it a day; maybe that flew in years past, but today’s smartwatch users demands a much more fleshed-out experience. Maybe more than anything, we want apps. Samsung switched platforms from Android to Tizen with the release of the Gear 2 (and Gear 2 Neo), and while that gives the company a ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 086: @evleaks

“What would you say to the people who think that what you do is illegal?” ” … I would tell them that I don’t want to answer this question.” When you’re interviewing the world’s most notorious phone leaker, he’s bound to duck a question or two. But cautious though he is, Evan Blass –formerly of Pocketnow and currently known across the web by his pen name

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iPhone 6 orders to foxconn, Google Nexus 6 rumors, HTC M8 photos & more – Pocketnow Daily

Watch today’s Pocketnow Daily as we talk about the launch of the HTC Desire 310, along with the rumors of an AT&T HTC Desire 610, and the recent photo leaks of the HTC M8. Then we talk about the iPhone 5c, and how its inventories have completely disappointed Apple. Then we talk about the recent rumors that Foxconn expects 90 million iPhone 6 orders from Apple. We also go through what to expect from Apple’s A8 chip, which is rumored for the iPhone 6. Samsung follows the news as we have rumors of the price tag for the Gear 2, the Gear 2 Neo and the Gear Fit. We end ...

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Samsung Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, Gear Fit pricing leaks

Samsung introduced its second-gen Galaxy Gear – this time shortened to simply the “Gear 2” – over a week ago. News of the smartwatch arrived alongside that of the camera-less Gear 2 Neo and the Gear Fit fitness tracker. Samsung shared details about software features, product specs, and even confirmed that sales of these models would begin sometime in April; really, we had everything we could hope to know except for pricing. While we still haven’t seen any official numbers, some figures have managed to ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 085: MWC 2014 wrap-up from Team Barcelona

Anton D. Nagy chasing a taxi on foot. Jaime Rivera almost burning down a building with a power strip. A Honduran drinking palinca and a Romanian doing a Mexican accent. The tales from our leather-clad Barcelona duo are intense – but their intensity is matched by the hot mobile news that burst forth from this week’s Mobile World Congress, the most epic in recent memory. To wit, that news includes an MWC 2014 Samsung Unpacked event that gave the world the latest Galaxy; a Sony unveiling of similar proportions that built on the Xperia legacy; a press conference that saw the ...

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The best of MWC 2014, from afar

Sadly, Mobile World Congress is now over. This year’s mobile show in Barcelona, Spain was one of the busiest, device-driven shows in recent years. We saw a boatload of handsets, a few tablets, some wearables, and a lot of future products that won’t be available for a while. Needless to say, there was plenty for just about everyone to be excited about at least something: a new Galaxy S smartphone, three new wrist-mounted Gear devices, a new Sony flagship, new additions to the HTC Desire lineup, new Huawei ...

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