I’d love to buy a Galaxy Watch 6, but it isn’t the smartwatch for me

If rumors are to be believed, we’re about a month away from the Galaxy Watch 6’s launch. And we’re additionally a month away from me watching Samsung’s keynote with a little bit of jealousy as a result of as a lot as I need to love this watch, it isn’t for me. The cause is easy: Samsung retains locking a few of its watch options to its personal telephones and, as a multi-phone (and particularly Pixel) consumer, I might be lacking out on a number of essential options if I purchased this watch.

I say this with the resignation of a smartwatch fan who obtained a Galaxy Watch 4 in 2021 and cherished how it blended the better of Samsung with the better of Google and Wear OS. It took a few months and updates, but having entry to each Bixby and Google Assistant or Samsung Pay and Google Wallet was neat. So was the skill to set up Gboard and Google Messages on the watch to have a uniform expertise with my telephones.

Battery life was poor on my 40mm mannequin, although that appears to have been improved with the Galaxy Watch 5. Samsung Health wasn’t preferrred both, particularly when it got here to sleep monitoring, so I wore a Fitbit tracker on my second wrist to maintain all my well being knowledge there (I had been carrying Fitbits for eight years and didn’t need to transfer to one other platform). But, as I discussed earlier, the greatest letdown was how Samsung had tied some Galaxy Watch options to its telephones.

As lengthy as my Galaxy Watch 4 was linked to my Pixel telephone or some other non-Samsung telephone I occurred to be testing at the time, I couldn’t document an ECG or monitor my blood stress. These are two of the most vital well being metrics I’d purchased the watch for; my late-thirties physique needed that further peace of thoughts. So I had paid for sensors I couldn’t use solely as a result of Samsung determined that I need to buy into its complete ecosystem to get these options.

Companies can do no matter they need with their merchandise and methods, I received’t argue that, but the limitation felt arbitrary, grasping, and unfair to me. If there was a cheaper model that eschewed these further sensors and dropped the value a bit, I might’ve appreciated it extra. But alas, no.

And these weren’t even all the unique options for Samsung telephone house owners. I couldn’t management the digital camera on my telephone, sync Do Not Disturb mode or Bedtime mode with my telephone, or make/obtain calls when the watch wasn’t linked to my telephone through Bluetooth. The first options are considerably understandably tied to a parallel characteristic on the telephone, but the latter is puzzling. Why would I want to be paired to a Samsung telephone to make calls with out the telephone?

Things haven’t gotten any higher with the Galaxy Watch 5 both. As far as I can inform from my on-line analysis, the pores and skin temperature sensor requires pairing to a Samsung telephone too. And who is aware of what number of of the upcoming One UI 5 for watch options may also be locked to Samsung telephones?

I don’t like arbitrary exclusivities and closed-garden approaches that exist solely to power customers into a shopping for nook. I selected Android as my main cell platform greater than a decade in the past as a result of it promised interoperability and openness. Yet we discover ourselves now at a time the place vastly worthwhile corporations like Samsung and Google have to resort to anti-consumer measures like locking the Galaxy Watch’s ECG to Samsung telephones or the Pixel Buds Pro’s head monitoring spatial audio to Pixel telephones.

So sure, despite the fact that I feel the Galaxy Watch 6 will probably be a superb smartwatch and can possible surpass the upcoming Pixel Watch 2 in lots of elements, I’ll have to cease myself from shopping for it. My cash is healthier spent on a watch that works effectively with any Android telephone.