Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro

Samsung. The savior of apple haters. The maker of truly awesome smart phones. Perhaps, one of the main reasons Android is what it is. I love Samsung because they make beautiful smart phones that actually compete with the stupid iPhone. I know a lot of other great smart phone manufacturers make phones as well. However, I do believe that the Galaxy was really the first phone to start competing against the iPhone, for that reason I love Samsung.

I don’t actually hate apple. I’ve had a few iPhones and some MacBook Pros back in my day. I think Apple makes great hardware. I just don’t like their super simple and non-customizable software. That aside, let’s talk about something unrelated to the former, Samsung’s gear fit pro watch.

Frankly, the Gear Fit Pro 2 (I haven’t heard much better about the 3 either) is rubbish. I can’t tell if it’s because of the software or hardware. I think the hardware is probably sound. I love the look of the watch. It seems very capable. In practice though, I’m left wanting.

The heart rate sensor is always way off on my bike rides. The Spotify app is the most tedious thing ever. Try typing your username and password in, using ABC input from a 10-key interface on that tiny little screen. Then, if you get it to work, great job! For some reason it’s super finicky and hard to get logged in from your watch. They could have always just had you log in on the Samsung Health App from your phone. I don’t understand why they didn’t go that route. Now, let’s talk privacy.

I love that the newest version of Android gives you even finer controls for privacy, such as Location services. Apparently, Samsung has decided that if you don’t, “allow all the time” GPS location services for the Samsung Health app, then you don’t get updates on your watch. How do I know this? Well, I’m somewhat of a privacy enthusiast (I believe more people should be).

I like to only let most apps on my phone utilize location services only when I’m using the app. I see no reason the Samsung Health app needs to ping my location when I’m not using the app. I know some people would love it to do so for convenience. Regardless, when an update for my watch is available if I don’t allow the phone app to have permission to my location all the time, it crashes by closing immediately and then proceeds to not update my watch.

If this is a new trend for Samsung then perhaps it’s time to start rethinking my phone. Hopefully, the Linux Phone keeps making solid progress. Thanks Samsung for sucking.