Samsung yesterday unveiled the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, the device that it no doubt hopes will spark the wearable gadget revolution.
Naturally, that will depend on the apps, and the Korean company promised that there will be over 70 available for it.
We've yet to see the full scope of those apps, but at least twelve are known, and they alone provide a fairly wide range of functionality.
Together, these twelve apps seem to do a good job of showing w hat the Galaxy Gear smartwatch will be capable of - but will these and others be enough to convince Android users that they need a watch in addition to a phone?
Convenience vs. function
Major social networks like Twitter and Facebook have yet to pledge support for the Galaxy Gear, but the "private messaging and sharing" social network app Path will be available on the smartwatch at launch.
Other social apps confirmed for the Gear are the messaging service Line; Banjo, a social discovery app; and the location sharing app Glimpse.
As TechRadar noted in our hands-on Galaxy Gear review, eBay is also on board with a partially functional app that lets you see notifications and place bids but not search for items or read their descriptions.
The fitness apps RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal will both be available on Galaxy Gear, along with Evernote and the " ;DVR for the web" app Pocket.
Finally there's task creation app Atooma, which claims to "automate your Android;" Vivino Wine Scanner for the winos out there; the travel app Tripit. Snapchat is rumored but unconfirmed as well.
Some of these apps, like Pocket and eBay, provide just a portion of the functionality that their smartphone counterparts do, but the idea is that it's sometimes easier to hold up your wrist than pull out your phone.
But is it really such a massive inconvenience to simply pull your smartphone out of your pocket like you've been doing for years? Does that make a £299/$ 299 (around AUS$ 325) smartwatch worth the price? We'll find out in October when the Galaxy Gear launches.
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