One of the standout features of the Galaxy Watch is something you can’t see. Bring the watch dial close to your ear and you will hear the ticking sound of an actual watch. The ticking movement and sound of the needle—a throwback to conventional analogue timepieces—is just one of the few elements that were considered by the product design and user experience (UX) teams that are behind this revamped smartwatch. It might have been designed for millennials, but there are enough conventional elements to admire.
The scrolling bezel, with a knurling finish, and the body have been made with high-intensity stainless steel that, surprisingly, doesn’t make the watch too heavy. And while we are used to watches that stick close to the skin, the protruding sensor at the back of the Galaxy Watch ensures less sweating and enables better recording of user health data.
“We used high-strength 316 stainless steel in the Galaxy Watch. This kind of steel is also used in conventional and analogue watches,” says South Korea-based Jaehyung Hong, senior designer at Samsung Electronics, mobile communications business, design team. If sportiness is not your thing, then you can choose from one of the 12 pre-loaded watch faces that come with the watch. There’s another conventional touch here. The skeleton movement—a signature of classic, mechanical watches—has been reproduced using gyro sensors and is available on some of the preloaded watch faces.
“The ultimate goal of the Galaxy Watch is to provide a real watch experience from a smartwatch,” says Somina Min, a UX designer at Samsung Electronics, mobile communications business. Min leads the UX design for the Galaxy Watch and has also designed the user experience for other products in the company’s wearable line-up. “That’s why we really tried to focus on which analogue elements we could bring to the smartwatch to retain the feeling of a real watch,” she adds.
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Samsung Galaxy watch
OS: TizenOS
Price: Rs 24,990
Compatibility: iOS and Android devices
Processor: Exynos 9110 dual-core chipset