My work recently gave me an S9 to replace my Nexus 6P. I had actually just replaced the battery on my 6P so I thought I was in pretty good shape though I think it was starting to get a little sluggish. But, man, the difference in battery life between a 6P with a new battery and a new S9 is pretty shocking. Like I go to bed some nights now and the battery is at 50% or higher. Even with the new battery in my 6P, the battery was often down to 10%. I had no idea what kind of limitation I was working with for the past couple of years.
This is my first Samsung phone and I have pretty much only had Nexus devices in the past so I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the Samsung cruft and whether or not I should try and make it more Nexus-y.
My work recently gave me an S9 to replace my Nexus 6P. I had actually just replaced the battery on my 6P so I thought I was in pretty good shape though I think it was starting to get a little sluggish. But, man, the difference in battery life between a 6P with a new battery and a new S9 is pretty shocking. Like I go to bed some nights now and the battery is at 50% or higher. Even with the new battery in my 6P, the battery was often down to 10%. I had no idea what kind of limitation I was working with for the past couple of years.
This is my first Samsung phone and I have pretty much only had Nexus devices in the past so I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the Samsung cruft and whether or not I should try and make it more Nexus-y.
This is just my personal opinion, but I'd recommend at least trying the samsung stuff for a bit. If you don't like it, you can replace later. In the end I replaced samsung calendar with google calendar, and the samsung sms app with android messages. Other than that I left it pretty standard.
Does anyone have experience with the Samsung smartwatches? Or an WearOS recommendation?
I've been using Fitbits for a couple of years since all I really care about is being able to tell the time and monitoring my heart rate and sleep, but that s wasnt accidental and I'm pretty sure my current Fitbit (Charge 2) is dying as its fighting me when I try to charge it. I spoke to Fitbit and they basically just offered me 25% off a replacement, which isnt that great since the Charge 3 just came out and is the same price and combine that with already experiencing a couple of Fitbits dying early on me I'm a little reluctant to throw more money at them.
Samsung Galaxy Watch is what I'm currently looking at, but I'm not sure how well it handles workouts and what kind of app support it has. I basically just run and lift at the gym and dont do anything crazy so my fitness tracking is pretty minimal, but I'd like to be able to at least control Play Music and read text messages using Android Messages and I dont know if it forces you to use Samsung apps.
Alternatively I could grab an WearOS device, but the website wasnt letting me compare specs and I wasnt super into most of the watches I saw...
Oh, and if anyone cares how my Pixel 3 XL saga ended, they ended up shipping me a new phone to a new address as I was going to be out of town for the holidays and the Pixel 3 XL is fantastic. The screen is great, the phone is really responsive, and the extra size is just what I needed as typing on my 5x was annoying. If I had never used a Note the Pixel 3 XL would be my go to phone, but its hard to pull me away from the stylus (even if I rarely use it, and when I do its only to make lists).
Does anyone have experience with the Samsung smartwatches? Or an WearOS recommendation?
I've been using Fitbits for a couple of years since all I really care about is being able to tell the time and monitoring my heart rate and sleep, but that s wasnt accidental and I'm pretty sure my current Fitbit (Charge 2) is dying as its fighting me when I try to charge it. I spoke to Fitbit and they basically just offered me 25% off a replacement, which isnt that great since the Charge 3 just came out and is the same price and combine that with already experiencing a couple of Fitbits dying early on me I'm a little reluctant to throw more money at them.
Samsung Galaxy Watch is what I'm currently looking at, but I'm not sure how well it handles workouts and what kind of app support it has. I basically just run and lift at the gym and dont do anything crazy so my fitness tracking is pretty minimal, but I'd like to be able to at least control Play Music and read text messages using Android Messages and I dont know if it forces you to use Samsung apps.
Alternatively I could grab an WearOS device, but the website wasnt letting me compare specs and I wasnt super into most of the watches I saw...
I have a gear s2 lte which is pretty old by now but it does everything you want. It will try and trick you into using Samsung messenger app but if you tell it no it will still let you read and send messages. I like mine but the battery life is meh.
My wife uses Garmin Vivoactive watches (she just got the Vivoactive Music for Christmas) and she really likes them. Less chunky than most Samsung offerings, based on display models, but otherwise it does what she wants.
The Vivofit line has a form factor closer to Fitbit so at least give those products a look
Does anyone have experience with the Samsung smartwatches? Or an WearOS recommendation?
I've been using Fitbits for a couple of years since all I really care about is being able to tell the time and monitoring my heart rate and sleep, but that s wasnt accidental and I'm pretty sure my current Fitbit (Charge 2) is dying as its fighting me when I try to charge it. I spoke to Fitbit and they basically just offered me 25% off a replacement, which isnt that great since the Charge 3 just came out and is the same price and combine that with already experiencing a couple of Fitbits dying early on me I'm a little reluctant to throw more money at them.
Samsung Galaxy Watch is what I'm currently looking at, but I'm not sure how well it handles workouts and what kind of app support it has. I basically just run and lift at the gym and dont do anything crazy so my fitness tracking is pretty minimal, but I'd like to be able to at least control Play Music and read text messages using Android Messages and I dont know if it forces you to use Samsung apps.
Alternatively I could grab an WearOS device, but the website wasnt letting me compare specs and I wasnt super into most of the watches I saw...
I have a gear s2 lte which is pretty old by now but it does everything you want. It will try and trick you into using Samsung messenger app but if you tell it no it will still let you read and send messages. I like mine but the battery life is meh.
having read your needs better , yea definitely check out the ticwatch. there are too "budgetier" options the E and S. The S is the sportier of the two but it also has its GPS antennae in the band so it limits options. the band on the E is comfy. I never wore watches, but i got used to this one pretty fast. Its also not gigantic.
I own a gear sport, and I like it way better than any Wear OS watch I owned. there are a couple things that wear OS does better that I wish that tizen had, mostly around how specific things interact.
But in general, in how I use the watch, the Gear sport/Tizen watches are just way better. The Gear Sport gets 2 days of battery life, which is a huge thing. I do not have to charge it every night. In fact, generally charging it sunday evening, and then every day when I am in the shower to top it up, is enough to get me through the week. Not having to charge the watch every night is huge, especially if you want to use sleep tracking.
The things I use it for other than the battery life are notification triage and fitness. The notification triage is among the weakest part. I can see everything, and either dismiss or ignore them. actually acting on a notification on the wrist other than to just dismiss it isn't super elegant, but that's been ok with me.
for fitness, I really like it. It does auto workout tracking super well, and has pretty much all the bells and whistles you could want.
Not really sure when I became a Samsung guy, but unless acting on notifications in a specific more elegant way with Wear OS outweighs the battery life gains of tizen, I'd recommend a samsung tizen watch over a wear os one.
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
How does that work? Like, with headphones I can see it I guess, but Atmos is a.... Thing. You need a bunch of extra speakers in your ceiling and shit. Like... What?
I own a gear sport, and I like it way better than any Wear OS watch I owned. there are a couple things that wear OS does better that I wish that tizen had, mostly around how specific things interact.
But in general, in how I use the watch, the Gear sport/Tizen watches are just way better. The Gear Sport gets 2 days of battery life, which is a huge thing. I do not have to charge it every night. In fact, generally charging it sunday evening, and then every day when I am in the shower to top it up, is enough to get me through the week. Not having to charge the watch every night is huge, especially if you want to use sleep tracking.
The things I use it for other than the battery life are notification triage and fitness. The notification triage is among the weakest part. I can see everything, and either dismiss or ignore them. actually acting on a notification on the wrist other than to just dismiss it isn't super elegant, but that's been ok with me.
for fitness, I really like it. It does auto workout tracking super well, and has pretty much all the bells and whistles you could want.
Not really sure when I became a Samsung guy, but unless acting on notifications in a specific more elegant way with Wear OS outweighs the battery life gains of tizen, I'd recommend a samsung tizen watch over a wear os one.
How was it at calorie counting? Fitbit will take into account heart rate and adjusts calorie burn accordingly, dont know if these smarthwatches do too. I've been reading that the hardware in the Wear OS watches is just old (CPU is from 2016) but that the Samsung ones are really responsive.
Most of the reviews of the Galaxy Watch I've read have compared it favorably to the Apple Watch, but a bunch of user reviews have shit on it for poor step, calorie, and sleep tracking (but same goes for like every watch and fitness tracker I've looked at).
So, the Note 9. how I have it functionally set up the thing does not operate much differently than my s8+. However, the camera is noticeably better. I thought it would be better, but not like "wow this is actually really good" better. The second lens to get 2x is wonderful. And the battery life. I've only had it a few days so I don't have a long term look at it yet but it's looking like a battery champion.
Screen on time isn't a super great metric by itself, but I can compare apples to apples (or rather, samsungs to samsungs?) of my own usage. When my GS8+ was new I'd get about 6 hours of screen on time on average. the Note 9 is trending towards roughly 9 hours. I'd say a 33% improvement is pretty great.
standby time is also pretty great. I don't usually have my phone on the charger overnight, I top it up in the morning after I get up. It's been losing about 7-9% battery overnight, about 8 hours. so around 1%/hour. I'm impressed.
The s pen is a great novelty that I'm sure I'll use about 75% less a month from now. But I do like it, and I'll use it.
If you haven't already try out Samsung Pay.
It's f'n baller. Better than Google Pay by a mile if for nothing else the sheer ubiquity.
(Sorry if you know this but I didn't and neither did a lot of people I knew... it just works by emitting a magnetic pulse which duplicates a card swipe, so any place that has a fairly new POS for debit cards works)
jungleroomx on
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
So, the Note 9. how I have it functionally set up the thing does not operate much differently than my s8+. However, the camera is noticeably better. I thought it would be better, but not like "wow this is actually really good" better. The second lens to get 2x is wonderful. And the battery life. I've only had it a few days so I don't have a long term look at it yet but it's looking like a battery champion.
Screen on time isn't a super great metric by itself, but I can compare apples to apples (or rather, samsungs to samsungs?) of my own usage. When my GS8+ was new I'd get about 6 hours of screen on time on average. the Note 9 is trending towards roughly 9 hours. I'd say a 33% improvement is pretty great.
standby time is also pretty great. I don't usually have my phone on the charger overnight, I top it up in the morning after I get up. It's been losing about 7-9% battery overnight, about 8 hours. so around 1%/hour. I'm impressed.
The s pen is a great novelty that I'm sure I'll use about 75% less a month from now. But I do like it, and I'll use it.
If you haven't already try out Samsung Pay.
It's f'n baller. Better than Google Pay by a mile if for nothing else the sheer ubiquity.
(Sorry if you know this but I didn't and neither did a lot of people I knew... it just works by emitting a magnetic pulse which duplicates a card swipe, so any place that has a fairly new POS for debit cards works)
Hang on, why would it need to emulate a magnetic swipe and why would that make it more ubiquitous? NFC payments already send the same signal as the chip in the card.
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
So, the Note 9. how I have it functionally set up the thing does not operate much differently than my s8+. However, the camera is noticeably better. I thought it would be better, but not like "wow this is actually really good" better. The second lens to get 2x is wonderful. And the battery life. I've only had it a few days so I don't have a long term look at it yet but it's looking like a battery champion.
Screen on time isn't a super great metric by itself, but I can compare apples to apples (or rather, samsungs to samsungs?) of my own usage. When my GS8+ was new I'd get about 6 hours of screen on time on average. the Note 9 is trending towards roughly 9 hours. I'd say a 33% improvement is pretty great.
standby time is also pretty great. I don't usually have my phone on the charger overnight, I top it up in the morning after I get up. It's been losing about 7-9% battery overnight, about 8 hours. so around 1%/hour. I'm impressed.
The s pen is a great novelty that I'm sure I'll use about 75% less a month from now. But I do like it, and I'll use it.
If you haven't already try out Samsung Pay.
It's f'n baller. Better than Google Pay by a mile if for nothing else the sheer ubiquity.
(Sorry if you know this but I didn't and neither did a lot of people I knew... it just works by emitting a magnetic pulse which duplicates a card swipe, so any place that has a fairly new POS for debit cards works)
Hang on, why would it need to emulate a magnetic swipe and why would that make it more ubiquitous? NFC payments already send the same signal as the chip in the card.
Because it does NFC AND works at places without NFC (MST), of which there are still a lot around here in the states at least.
NFC sends the same signal as the chip. MST sends the same signal as the mag stripe.
jungleroomx on
+1
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Oh that makes sense. It's been 5+ years since I saw a machine without NFC here.
So, the Note 9. how I have it functionally set up the thing does not operate much differently than my s8+. However, the camera is noticeably better. I thought it would be better, but not like "wow this is actually really good" better. The second lens to get 2x is wonderful. And the battery life. I've only had it a few days so I don't have a long term look at it yet but it's looking like a battery champion.
Screen on time isn't a super great metric by itself, but I can compare apples to apples (or rather, samsungs to samsungs?) of my own usage. When my GS8+ was new I'd get about 6 hours of screen on time on average. the Note 9 is trending towards roughly 9 hours. I'd say a 33% improvement is pretty great.
standby time is also pretty great. I don't usually have my phone on the charger overnight, I top it up in the morning after I get up. It's been losing about 7-9% battery overnight, about 8 hours. so around 1%/hour. I'm impressed.
The s pen is a great novelty that I'm sure I'll use about 75% less a month from now. But I do like it, and I'll use it.
If you haven't already try out Samsung Pay.
It's f'n baller. Better than Google Pay by a mile if for nothing else the sheer ubiquity.
(Sorry if you know this but I didn't and neither did a lot of people I knew... it just works by emitting a magnetic pulse which duplicates a card swipe, so any place that has a fairly new POS for debit cards works)
Hang on, why would it need to emulate a magnetic swipe and why would that make it more ubiquitous? NFC payments already send the same signal as the chip in the card.
Because it does NFC AND works at places without NFC (MST), of which there are still a lot around here in the states at least.
NFC sends the same signal as the chip. MST sends the same signal as the mag stripe.
If you go up to reader which only takes swipes instead of NFC it can emulate the magnetic strip being swiped into the reader. Note this only works with certain phones, and not if you have a magnetic (or maybe any?) case on the back. I really liked it with my GS8 but I think my GS8 active can't do it because of the thicker or tougher back.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Oh that makes sense. It's been 5+ years since I saw a machine without NFC here.
We've been
Well
Behind the curve adopting NFC/Chip payments in many areas of the US.
+2
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
They don't want to spend any money upgrading their infrastructure, both the banks and the companies who had to buy new readers. Got to maintain that fat profit margin at all costs.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
+2
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
They don't want to spend any money upgrading their infrastructure, both the banks and the companies who had to buy new readers. Got to maintain that fat profit margin at all costs.
It doesn't help that the vendors for these payment systems are charging (ha!) an arm and a leg to deploy them.
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
They don't want to spend any money upgrading their infrastructure, both the banks and the companies who had to buy new readers. Got to maintain that fat profit margin at all costs.
It doesn't help that the vendors for these payment systems are charging (ha!) an arm and a leg to deploy them.
Also that, until 2017, retailers weren't on the hook for losses if they didn't upgrade. Notice how quick everyone switched when they were considered at fault in any fraud?
Chip payment is mostly ready everywhere except a handful of places. But NFC, not so much. One of the grocery store chains was bought here and actually lost the ability to take NFC payments when they got their "new" POS.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
They don't want to spend any money upgrading their infrastructure, both the banks and the companies who had to buy new readers. Got to maintain that fat profit margin at all costs.
It doesn't help that the vendors for these payment systems are charging (ha!) an arm and a leg to deploy them.
Also that, until 2017, retailers weren't on the hook for losses if they didn't upgrade. Notice how quick everyone switched when they were considered at fault in any fraud?
Some around here still don't have them. It's funny because all the mom and pop convenience stores around here have them but arguably the biggest franchise in the area doesn't
That generally has to do with mom and pop places not processing their own credit cards. They'll be partnering up with a payment processor whose only job is processing cards, so they're more likely to be on the ball with upgrades and the like.
I think the Target data breach was one of the catalysts to deploying chips in the US. At least from what I remember, it's partially what spurred enacting the law to make it mandatory.
The US can really be a backwater for stupid shit sometimes.
Related: I have yet to see a gas pump with a working chip reader here. Which is one of the reasons we still have people putting in swipe readers at pumps to steal numbers.
Here in Canada we went to chip/PIN a long time ago, and we actually went to NFC based payments on the cards themselves. so my credit card has an NFC chip in it that works with tap to pay like my phone does. Because we went to that a few years ago, tap to pay with phones has actually been slow to adopt here.
I never understood what makes NFC more secure than swiping.
NFC isn't a generic 'we transmit the data in the swipe', but instead is a type of challenge-response system. You can still technically steal NFC data, but each transaction encodes the vendor's identity specifically, which means anyone trying to run unauthorized transactions is going to get caught very quickly.
I never understood what makes NFC more secure than swiping.
AFAIK contactless payments using a card are as secure as chip and pin (aside from not needing the second factor that is your PIN), and assuming the Wikipedia article is accurate are processed the same way as your EMV payments. It is basically a short range, wireless "chip" that is processed faster than the physical chip when you insert the card into the reader.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
I think I still don't entirely follow, probably because I don't know enough about the technical workings of paying via magnetic swipe. Why does encoding the vendor's identity in the transaction matter? And how is that different from what happens when paying via swipe?
Maybe I'm not thinking of the right kinds of fraud. I guess I'm imagining someone duplicating my card and then going on a shopping spree somewhere, which is probably very simplistic and naive and not how actual fraud happens.
I think I still don't entirely follow, probably because I don't know enough about the technical workings of paying via magnetic swipe. Why does encoding the vendor's identity in the transaction matter? And how is that different from what happens when paying via swipe?
Maybe I'm not thinking of the right kinds of fraud. I guess I'm imagining someone duplicating my card and then going on a shopping spree somewhere, which is probably very simplistic and naive and not how actual fraud happens.
replicating a chip is hard, as can cloning NFC data, but can be done. chips and NFC have way more protections than a magnetic stripe does.
This is not exactly how it works, but for simplicity sake think of it this way. A magnetic stripe is like a plain text password. your account information is readable by anyone who can read the stripe. a chip or NFC module are encrypted, and have a unique identifier in them, and then when a transaction is completed the vendors unique identifier is also added into the data. Magnetic stripes do not do any of that, so that the transaction is way more secure when the data is sent into the system.
Again, that's not exactly how it works, but it makes it a bit easier to understand it at a high level.
a chip or NFC module are encrypted, so that the transaction is way more secure when the data is sent into the system.
And for a slightly more complicated answer:
The chip in the card (regardless of whether you are inserting it or using NFC) will verify its messages with a MAC (Message Authentication Code), and newer cards have a public/private key pair and certificate signed by the issuer. Even on old cards the issuer can verify the card (and vice versa), and with the newer cards the payment terminal itself can verify the signed response from the card.
The card also stores a counter of how many times it has been used that affects future communication, so even if you managed to eavesdrop on the conversion you couldn't just replay it, whereas a magstripe will be the same every single time.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Posts
This is my first Samsung phone and I have pretty much only had Nexus devices in the past so I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the Samsung cruft and whether or not I should try and make it more Nexus-y.
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
This is just my personal opinion, but I'd recommend at least trying the samsung stuff for a bit. If you don't like it, you can replace later. In the end I replaced samsung calendar with google calendar, and the samsung sms app with android messages. Other than that I left it pretty standard.
I actually really don't mind samsung's launcher.
The S Pen I almost never use, but when I want to use it I'm glad I have it.
I've been using Fitbits for a couple of years since all I really care about is being able to tell the time and monitoring my heart rate and sleep, but that s wasnt accidental and I'm pretty sure my current Fitbit (Charge 2) is dying as its fighting me when I try to charge it. I spoke to Fitbit and they basically just offered me 25% off a replacement, which isnt that great since the Charge 3 just came out and is the same price and combine that with already experiencing a couple of Fitbits dying early on me I'm a little reluctant to throw more money at them.
Samsung Galaxy Watch is what I'm currently looking at, but I'm not sure how well it handles workouts and what kind of app support it has. I basically just run and lift at the gym and dont do anything crazy so my fitness tracking is pretty minimal, but I'd like to be able to at least control Play Music and read text messages using Android Messages and I dont know if it forces you to use Samsung apps.
Alternatively I could grab an WearOS device, but the website wasnt letting me compare specs and I wasnt super into most of the watches I saw...
I have a gear s2 lte which is pretty old by now but it does everything you want. It will try and trick you into using Samsung messenger app but if you tell it no it will still let you read and send messages. I like mine but the battery life is meh.
PSN:Furlion
The Vivofit line has a form factor closer to Fitbit so at least give those products a look
having read your needs better , yea definitely check out the ticwatch. there are too "budgetier" options the E and S. The S is the sportier of the two but it also has its GPS antennae in the band so it limits options. the band on the E is comfy. I never wore watches, but i got used to this one pretty fast. Its also not gigantic.
But in general, in how I use the watch, the Gear sport/Tizen watches are just way better. The Gear Sport gets 2 days of battery life, which is a huge thing. I do not have to charge it every night. In fact, generally charging it sunday evening, and then every day when I am in the shower to top it up, is enough to get me through the week. Not having to charge the watch every night is huge, especially if you want to use sleep tracking.
The things I use it for other than the battery life are notification triage and fitness. The notification triage is among the weakest part. I can see everything, and either dismiss or ignore them. actually acting on a notification on the wrist other than to just dismiss it isn't super elegant, but that's been ok with me.
for fitness, I really like it. It does auto workout tracking super well, and has pretty much all the bells and whistles you could want.
Not really sure when I became a Samsung guy, but unless acting on notifications in a specific more elegant way with Wear OS outweighs the battery life gains of tizen, I'd recommend a samsung tizen watch over a wear os one.
I literally have a 4k HDR tv in the bedroom but the screen on the note 9 is so good it's absurd.
Huh?
yep the note 9 has atmos support. https://www.sammobile.com/2018/08/24/tip-enable-dolby-atmos-galaxy-note-9
How was it at calorie counting? Fitbit will take into account heart rate and adjusts calorie burn accordingly, dont know if these smarthwatches do too. I've been reading that the hardware in the Wear OS watches is just old (CPU is from 2016) but that the Samsung ones are really responsive.
Most of the reviews of the Galaxy Watch I've read have compared it favorably to the Apple Watch, but a bunch of user reviews have shit on it for poor step, calorie, and sleep tracking (but same goes for like every watch and fitness tracker I've looked at).
If you haven't already try out Samsung Pay.
It's f'n baller. Better than Google Pay by a mile if for nothing else the sheer ubiquity.
(Sorry if you know this but I didn't and neither did a lot of people I knew... it just works by emitting a magnetic pulse which duplicates a card swipe, so any place that has a fairly new POS for debit cards works)
I just turned this on.
There is a very noticeable effect. Impressive.
Yeah it's weird. It's definitely not Atmos, but it's.. different? More spacious? I don't know, but it's neat.
Hang on, why would it need to emulate a magnetic swipe and why would that make it more ubiquitous? NFC payments already send the same signal as the chip in the card.
Because it does NFC AND works at places without NFC (MST), of which there are still a lot around here in the states at least.
NFC sends the same signal as the chip. MST sends the same signal as the mag stripe.
If you go up to reader which only takes swipes instead of NFC it can emulate the magnetic strip being swiped into the reader. Note this only works with certain phones, and not if you have a magnetic (or maybe any?) case on the back. I really liked it with my GS8 but I think my GS8 active can't do it because of the thicker or tougher back.
PSN:Furlion
We've been
Well
Behind the curve adopting NFC/Chip payments in many areas of the US.
By chip payment I assume you mean the inserting card method. That was already established technology here in 2007 when I got my first credit card. That really is behind the times. I wonder why the banks are so slow to roll it out. Over here they were beyond eager to roll it out and make it easier to spend money.
They don't want to spend any money upgrading their infrastructure, both the banks and the companies who had to buy new readers. Got to maintain that fat profit margin at all costs.
PSN:Furlion
It doesn't help that the vendors for these payment systems are charging (ha!) an arm and a leg to deploy them.
Also that, until 2017, retailers weren't on the hook for losses if they didn't upgrade. Notice how quick everyone switched when they were considered at fault in any fraud?
Some around here still don't have them. It's funny because all the mom and pop convenience stores around here have them but arguably the biggest franchise in the area doesn't
The US can really be a backwater for stupid shit sometimes.
Related: I have yet to see a gas pump with a working chip reader here. Which is one of the reasons we still have people putting in swipe readers at pumps to steal numbers.
NFC isn't a generic 'we transmit the data in the swipe', but instead is a type of challenge-response system. You can still technically steal NFC data, but each transaction encodes the vendor's identity specifically, which means anyone trying to run unauthorized transactions is going to get caught very quickly.
Maybe I'm not thinking of the right kinds of fraud. I guess I'm imagining someone duplicating my card and then going on a shopping spree somewhere, which is probably very simplistic and naive and not how actual fraud happens.
replicating a chip is hard, as can cloning NFC data, but can be done. chips and NFC have way more protections than a magnetic stripe does.
This is not exactly how it works, but for simplicity sake think of it this way. A magnetic stripe is like a plain text password. your account information is readable by anyone who can read the stripe. a chip or NFC module are encrypted, and have a unique identifier in them, and then when a transaction is completed the vendors unique identifier is also added into the data. Magnetic stripes do not do any of that, so that the transaction is way more secure when the data is sent into the system.
Again, that's not exactly how it works, but it makes it a bit easier to understand it at a high level.
EDIT: added a line of clarification
The chip in the card (regardless of whether you are inserting it or using NFC) will verify its messages with a MAC (Message Authentication Code), and newer cards have a public/private key pair and certificate signed by the issuer. Even on old cards the issuer can verify the card (and vice versa), and with the newer cards the payment terminal itself can verify the signed response from the card.
The card also stores a counter of how many times it has been used that affects future communication, so even if you managed to eavesdrop on the conversion you couldn't just replay it, whereas a magstripe will be the same every single time.