Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Gear smartwatch back in September. Its notification system wasn’t as good as customers might have hoped, the smartwatch wouldn’t show full notifications from apps that it supported which meant that users would have had to take out their device and check up on notifications the conventional way. This obviously eliminated one big reason of getting a smartwatch in the first place. Fortunately, Samsung has rolled out a new software update for the Gear as well as the Gear Manager app, the smartwatch is now capable of showing full content of a notification, including email and Hangouts messages previews.

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Galaxy Gear Can Now Display Full Notifications For Just About Any App original content from Ubergizmo.

Wearable technology is all the rage these days and a lot of companies, both big and small, have jumped on the bandwagon. Smartwatches have lead the way in this particular arena this year, whereas Google continued to make waves with the Google Glass. Samsung launched its Galaxy Gear smartwatch, but apparently return rates of the gadget are very high. The company is already rumored to be working on Galaxy Gear 2 and today at its Analyst Day event in South Korea, Samsung Vice Chairman and CEO Kwon Oh-hyun told analysts that the company has been spending significant resources towards several new technologies, which includes “wearables.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, which was in attendance, the slide that accompanied Kwon’s comment showed off a Galaxy Gear and eyeglasses that looked like a Google Glass rival. Could this mean that Samsung has been working on smart eyeglasses of its own? It is quite possible that Samsung has prototypes of such a product, but so far no additional information about them has been leaked. Just last month it was rumored that Samsung is developing its Google Glass rival which is going to be released in April or May 2014 as Gear Glass. Samsung is yet to confirm if it has such a product up its sleeve.

Samsung Might Make A Google Glass Rival original content from Ubergizmo.

Back in September, Samsung unveiled its much rumored smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear. Up till now the device has only been compatible with two Samsung products, both of which were announced alongside it. The Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 2014 currently support Galaxy Gear, but Samsung is going to add support to S3, S4, S4 Active and Note 2 through a software update that rolls out in the near future. Apparently customer returns of the Galaxy Gear particularly at Best Buy are climbing, trending above 30 percent.

A memo, apparently meant for Samsung employees working at the Samsung Experience Stores within Best Buy retail locations, has leaked which reveals the over 30 percent return rate of the Galaxy Gear. Apparently the memo asks employees to weigh in their opinions as to why the return rates are so high. Does this mean that despite the initial reviews, the device isn’t doing as well with the customers as Samsung would have hoped? The company has marketed it as a companion to its high-end smartphones and tablet, and it is already rumored to be working on a Galaxy Gear successor. Is the smartwatch bubble bursting already or does Samsung really need to improve upon its existing wearable gadget? Time will tell.

Samsung Galaxy Gear Reportedly Has 30 Percent Return Rate original content from Ubergizmo.

When it comes to the peripheral known as the smartwatch, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a fair number of companies that are already lining up to take advantage of this potentially lucrative range of products. Samsung has gotten the ball rolling on a massive scale with their recently announced Samsung Galaxy Gear, and for the longest time already, we have heard that even the folks at Google themselves have been working on a smartwatch, which will be known as the Google Watch.

Apparently, the latest set of rumors that surround the so-called Google Watch is this – this smartwatch is currently going through the final optimization course, and will most probably be centered around Google Now functionality. Of course, an interesting point to take note would be the possibility that a slew of Google Glass functionality could arrive in the alleged Google Watch, but that is one rumor that we ought to take with a pinch of salt as time will reveal all. Other than that, the Google Watch will also supposedly rely on Bluetooth 4.0 with the Ultra Low Energy standard in order to communicate with your phone, hence allowing it to last longer while it is in action.

Google Watch Rumored For A Release Soon original content from Ubergizmo.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear might not have taken off in the explosive manner that the folks over at Samsung had anticipated, but I am quite sure that it still has its fair share of fans. Well, what the Galaxy Gear could be would be to lead an existence of being a hacker-friendly device. It seems that some folks have already discovered a way to have the Galaxy Gear run on the full Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system despite the smartwatch having relatively low powered hardware in the first place. Apart from that, those with a technical know how will also be able to sideload full Android apps directly onto the device.

Needless to say, you will run into a number of limitations as to what the Galaxy Gea is capable of, since it comes with just a 1.6” display, an 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB of internal memory, and no native data connection to begin with. Still, it does not look too difficult to turn on USB debugging in the first place, which would then enable one to use ADB in order to sideload apps on the device. While it is not really all that functional in the first place, at least it is a proof of concept that it can be done.

Samsung Galaxy Gear Runs Full Android Apps original content from Ubergizmo.