Does Samsung Galaxy Watch Have A Camera

Samsung's first smartwatch was a surprising thing. Announced alongside the Galaxy Note iii during the IFA trade bear witness of 2013, the Samsung Milky way Gear was a curiosity in the early smartwatch globe. It carried features no one expected — amongst them a camera — and managed to set the bar particularly loftier for what smartwatches could do.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear was primarily sold equally an accessory to the Galaxy Note 3. In fact, it was merely uniform with the Note 3 at launch. The $299 smartwatch served upwardly a ane.63-inch AMOLED display with a loftier 320 x 320 resolution. It was powered past an 800MHz processor and carried 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. Information technology connected to the Notation 3 via Bluetooth 4 Low Free energy and included other features such as an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The internal 315mAh battery was enough to provide 24 hours of bombardment life per charge.

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What? A camera?

The lookout had two middle-opening features for the fourth dimension: a camera and a speakerphone. The camera was built into the watch's strap and captured i.9MP images, and could record 720p video. Samsung pitched the camera as a tool of opportunity, something to use when your smartphone wasn't handy. (No, Samsung didn't promote spying, despite the spy-similar nature of having a photographic camera on your smartwatch.) Video capture was limited to a maximum of 10 minutes, cheers to the 4GB of storage. The quality of the photos and videos was questionable at best, which was no surprise given the limitations of the technology at the time. Moreover, because the camera was an internal component of the strap, that meant no swapping straps.

The camera was built into the lookout man's strap and captured one.9MP images.

Speakerphones may be common to the smartwatches of today, but in 2013 they were not. The speakerphone produced just enough audio to manage your voice calls in placidity spaces. Gear owners were able to dial calls direct from the sentry and issue commands to Samsung'due south Due south Voice tool.

Pushing the limits

The Samsung Galaxy Gear did face some limitations. For example, it did not have Wi-Fi, LTE, or whatsoever other way to independently connect to the internet. Information technology was wholly reliant on the Galaxy Note 3 for its connexion. The charger was terrible. It was a clunky thing that acted more like a clamp around the picket than a cradle. The lookout couldn't serve as a standalone music player, though it could control the associated phone'southward music app.

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Speaking of apps, the phone ran Google's Android operating system (pre-Android Wear) with a heavy user interface overlay. Samsung said information technology stripped down the UI to make the sentry easier to use with a single finger when on the move. A single hardware button took you back to the home screen. Information technology included several lookout man faces, as well as elementary apps similar a stopwatch and pedometer. There were some 3rd-party apps available equally well, including Evernote, eBay, MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, and Tripit. In that location was even a "detect my phone" tool that helped you locate your lost Galaxy Note 3 — as long as it was within Bluetooth range.

Accept at that place been any smartwatches with cameras since the Galaxy Gear? Samsung trotted out a Gear 2, which also had a photographic camera, but few of the chief smartwatch makers added the tech to their own wearables. For example, you won't find a camera on the Apple Scout. The bulk of smartwatches with cameras available in the market today are novelty devices, with many targeting children rather than serious users.