Samsung's Smart Watch Coming September 4th, Without Flexible OLED Screen

First time accepted submitter lager_monste sent in a tidbit from Mashable about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart Watch: "Samsung will launch its smart watch, the Galaxy Gear, on Sept. 4 ahead of the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin, Germany. Lee Young-hee, VP of Samsung's mobile business, confirmed the date and some details about the device in an interview with The Korea Times." Ars Technica notes that the Gear is nothing like what was expected from a patent filing for a watch with a flexible OLED. Maybe next generation.

Re:They still haven't explained what this does

[_anomaly_]

Nobody knows what they do yet.

Wrong, unless you're only talking about these yet-to-be-released smart watches. Anyone with a Pebble or Metawatch can knows what they do.

I finally got my pebble about 3 months ago, so let me give you my $0.02 worth.

I don't use my phone a whole lot. It's a personal phone, so I don't use it for work, except when I'm away from the office I will occasionally check and respond to email. I purchased a pebble because I thought it sounded like a cool idea, and I could use a new, decent-looking watch (I already had a couple of standard watches that I'd use when camping, hiking, or doing other things outdoors where the watch may be subject to minor abuse). At the $150 price-point, it was not a big leap, even for someone who isn't using their phone non-stop.

I not only thought the pebble looked good, but I also liked the idea of being able to have any number of customized watch faces and having the ability to create my own (with their SDK).

I liked the idea of keeping my phone on silent, in my pocket, checking texts and incoming phone calls by glancing at my wrist when it vibrates. Being able to receive all notifications you would receive on your cell phone on the watch itself, without having to take my phone out of my pocket (or laptop bag, etc) was enough to sell me on it.

And I think it's enough for there to be a market for these smart/dumb watches. This isn't even to mention the many "apps" out there being created for the pebble. One that I've actually used is the FreeCaddie app that uses your phone's GPS to send yardage information to your watch while playing golf. It may seem impractical in that most golfers I know don't want to keep their phone in their pocket, or a watch on their wrist, while playing, but strapping my watch to the golf cart and keeping the phone in my bag is a really convenient way to get GPS on the course, without spending $300 on another device.

I think the fact that I'm not a hardcore hardware geek, only having used my pebble fairly lightly, and I still find it worth the money and useful is (albeit anecdotal) evidence that smart watches do have a market and I believe it's here to stay. The key will be getting the buyers to take that initial leap since, on the surface, they seem superfluous when you're already carrying around a smart phone.

If and when an Apple device hits is when we'll see motion in the market, whether that device is good or bad.

You may be right in that it could take a big player like Apple, or Samsung, to enter the market before we know if the general public will bite. However, since Pebble has hit Best Buy, we just might know before Apple does anything.