Samsung Gear Fit vs Apple Watch 2 - a review and comparison

Recently I was given an Apple Watch 2 - it's very nice and I've replaced my Samsung Gear Fit with it. After wearing the Watch for a week, there have been a few tangible differences between the two I thought it might be worth noting. If you're unfamiliar with the devices they look like this:

These images are the same as the devices that I have. The physical differences are obvious - the Apple Watch is significantly bigger, with the more square face. Both have OLED displays which make for bright, colourful GUIs. Both are touch screen and both share a variety of internal sensors like heart rate and accelerometer. The Gear Fit is lighter, narrower and for what I've used it for - holds a longer charge than the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch has many more sensors - including GPS/GLONASS and WiFi, checks your heart rate with great frequency daily and keeps telling me to "Breathe"! (this gets a bit annoying after a while)

Here are a few of the summary differences I've found in the last week (and please bear in mind I wore the Gear Fit for 2 years before replacing it).

• The sleep function on the Gear Fit is much better than the Apple Watch - you have to get a 3rd party app for the Watch which I found annoying. It's built into the Gear Fit, mutes and blocks the device and gives you some nice reporting via the Samsung Health app. Also, access to the sleep function I found is better - put the Fit into sleep mode and it's ready to track your sleep, then give you a report in the morning when you turn it off. The Apple Watch - using the AutoSleep app, alleges that it can work out when you go to sleep and then when you get up via some sort of magic I assume. I'm still trying to figure out the meaning of the sleep reporting (which is irritating in and of itself).
• The Watch hasn't locked up yet but the Gear Fit has twice in the last week. This is a full reboot, and lose all of your sleep data - something that happens with semi frequency on the Fit and is quite annoying.
• Notifications are roughly the same through both - configurable and fairly useful. The ability to send detailed replies with the "Scribe" function (you use your finger to write each letter) on the Apple Watch is pretty neat - I've used that several times.
• Both watches can answer the phone, or more likely - divert to message or voicemail. The Apple Watch you can actually talk into the watch and I've been on the receiving end of that a couple of times. It wasn't bad really, but I think you'd feel like a dill talking into your watch like Get Smart rather than use the phone.
• the summary from the Samsung Fitness software is much better than what Apple Health provides (at least for me). I find the sleep data and the way its presented to be significantly better than the Apple information. The Samsung software tells you how often you got to bed on time, and how often you got up on time. I like that. It provides a small sense of accomplishment just for getting my lazy backside out of bed in time.

As a bit of an update to this review - it's been an extra week of using the Apple Watch and I'm still unimpressed by the sleep thing. I have set aside some time to look into this in greater depth because I feel it's so lacking. Keep an eye here for some more info. The alarm feature on the Apple Watch has been pretty good. The vibration on the wrist isn't startling to wake up to, and it doesn't disturb my wife (which she is happy about). 

In summary both of them are really quite good devices. They lock you into their respective ecosystems (Samsung vs Apple) and this is to be expected, potentially not loved though. For purpose, I think the Gear Fit was better for tracking sleep, better battery life and a robust device. The Apple Watch's aesthetics are lovely, it has a tonne of functionality and I've barely scratched the surface of it. I'll go into it more as I play with this thing a bit. It's easy to see where the extra value in the Apple Watch is.

Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2 Review

Recently, through sheer blind luck, I was able to get a hold of one of these excellent little devices. A friend sent it down (he prefers his iPad) so I was able to play with it a bit before handing over to the wife for her amusement. The Galaxy Tablet is a 7" tablet, much like the Google Nexus I recently reviewed and use almost continually. At first blush here are the differences I noted:

• the user interface is different (naturally). I feel that the Galaxy's is more polished, looks crisper but is a lot more busy. The QWERTY keyboard interface for example has the numbers above it and the keys are smaller on screen than the Nexus.
• SD Card slot - upgradeable storage is a nice thing indeed.

Weight, size and battery life appear comparable. My wife loves it. She wasn't convinced initially about a tablet and didn't think she could find a use for it. As a non-technical person it seemed like another gadget to her. Now though she uses it for Pinterest, Facebook, eBay, email and generally web searching.

The Galaxy Tablet is a fine piece of hardware, but I have to criticize the interface. It is not as user friendly as the Nexus and this was actually a factor that led me to purchase a HTC One X over the Samsung Galaxy SIII recently. Navigating through some of the menus has been a pain, and initially finding in the Yahoo Mail app the Create Email option was not straightforward at all. That being said, now I've played more with it it's quite good.

I recommend the Galaxy Tablet to anyone who needs 3G or LTE connectivity as the Nexus doesn't appear to offer this. WiFi connectivity is very good on both devices and the Galaxy has a bright easy to read screen. Occasionally the light sensitivity gets a bit annoying as it dims the screen unnecessarily, or makes it too dark, but otherwise it's very good.