There’s one clear go-to smartwatch for iOS: the Apple Watch. But for Android, there hasn’t been a singular option. Will the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 finally be that watch? At Samsung’s newest folding-phone-focused Unpacked announcement where the latest Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 phones were unveiled, the company also announced the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic — which can be preordered now and go on sale Aug. 27. They’re the first Samsung watches to have the Google co-designed Wear OS 3, which isn’t coming to other smartwatches until next year. Following the already-excellent Watch Active 3, will the Galaxy Watch 4 be even better? It certainly looks like it.
Much like previous Samsung watches, there are two designs: a sleeker, less expensive Watch 4 and a more traditional-looking Watch 4 Classic. The latter brings back Samsung’s physically rotating outer bezel and has more traditional watch-like looks and straps. The prices ramp up based on either design ($250 for the aluminum 40mm Watch 4, $350 for the stainless steel 42mm Watch 4 Classic), size (the larger 42mm Watch 4/46mm Watch 4 Classic cost an extra $30) or LTE data compatibility (an extra $50 on top of that). In the UK, the Watch 4 starts at £249, and the Classic at £349. Australian prices are TBD.
Samsung’s watches have always been good. Then there’s also been Fitbit and even Google Wear OS. But Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 is looking to tie it all together and reboot the Android watch landscape by finally not having a weird split between Samsung’s watch experience and Google’s.
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Promises of better watch-phone connection
The Watch 4’s new Google- and Samsung-developed OS will eventually show up on other smartwatches. But for Samsung’s newest watches, it should mean a more Android-fluid connected experience. Notifications, calls, controlling your phone, syncing with your phone settings: Samsung promises that the Watch 4 will do all this better than previous watches. Samsung’s also promising better battery life and speedier performance. That battery life may still only be about two days, but it’ll be enough to go to bed with and track sleep overnight. Samsung also renamed its watch: The Watch Active name is gone. (Welcome back, Galaxy Watch.)
The Galaxy Watch 4 is only made for Android phones, with no plans for iOS compatibility right now. While previous Wear OS and Samsung watches could pair with iPhones, the Watch 4 is clearly made to be a seamlessly connecting watch for Android (and specifically Samsung) phones. Samsung’s “One UI” philosophy is about syncing wallpapers, designs and settings across phone and watch. Will the watch feel like a seamless extension of the phone? We’ll see when we test-drive one.
The new rear sensor array includes electrical bioimpedance, which promises scale-like body fat/BMI estimates.
Drew Evans/CNET
Health tech: Snore detection and bioimpedance-based body analysis
There are several new health features on the Watch 4 on top of the ones that carried over from the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3. Besides heart rate, blood oxygen and electrocardiogram (and stress-sensing/blood pressure testing that requires calibration with a blood pressure cuff), Samsung is adding a few extras to sleep tracking. Snore detection works using the paired Android phone’s microphone, and the blood oxygen checks now run continuously once a minute overnight (or as a spot-check during the day).
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 comes in two looks and lots of colors
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Samsung also added a new sensor to its rear array: an electrical bioimpedance sensor for full-body analysis using a weak electrical current to measure how conductive you are — and therefore showing what you’re made of. This type of sensor tech hasn’t been on recent smartwatches; the last wearable I remember promising bioimpedance was the Jawbone Up 3.
When using the body analysis feature, there will be readouts on your BMI, muscle mass and body water along with body fat percentages, much like some scales. I’m not sure how I feel about that! Samsung Health will use this readout to calculate a range of where your health is compared to optimal levels.
New sensor tech is always a toss-up: Will it work? Will it be useful? We don’t know yet. Samsung is aiming for this to be a comprehensive body analysis tool, which sounds awfully ambitious. Last year, the Fitbit Sense also introduced new electrodermal stress-detection sensors, but I never found them meaningful in my everyday life. Jury’s still out on the bioimpedance features, too.
Samsung Health remains the fitness and health platform default for the Galaxy Watch 4, despite the OS change. But a shift to Google Play for apps and new support for watch face complications should mean a lot of fitness apps make the shift, too. (Complications are basically those little watch-face widgets that show data from other apps, and they’re pretty helpful.) Samsung’s already announced that Strava, Calm and Adidas Running are supported. Spotify’s also supported for on-watch music playback.
See that rotating bezel? It’s back.
Drew Evans/CNET
Boosted specs
The Watch 4’s new processor should be faster than the last Watch 3 (20% faster CPU and 50% faster GPU, according to Samsung) and there’s more RAM (1.5GB) and storage (16GB) than before. That should make animations and app-launching speedier. The Super AMOLED display is sharper: the 1.2-inch 42 and 40mm models have a 396×396-pixel resolution, while the 1.4-inch 44 and 46mm models are 450×450. The watches can also quick charge, gaining 10 hours of battery life on a 30-minute charge.
The rotating bezel is back
Both the Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic lean heavily on touching the outer rim of the watch to “spin” and navigate: the Watch 4 has a touch-sensitive rim, while the Classic has a physical rotating bezel. Samsung’s also putting touch controls into these watches to allow swipe navigation, much like Wear OS watches. You can choose how to interact.
A few other buttons on the side of the watch control moving back and forth in the interface and can be reprogrammed. One can be pressed and held for Samsung’s Bixby assistant; the other for Samsung Pay. But you can make Google Assistant and Google Pay the go-to apps instead.
Some of the Google apps on the Galaxy Watch 4 have a familiar Google look.
Google
Google apps onboard
Google’s Wear OS 3 being on the Galaxy Watch 4 means it’ll hook into Google Play, but it’s also getting some revamped Google apps. Google’s already committed to new YouTube, Google Maps, Google Pay and Messages apps, which have new designs for Wear OS 3. There are also third-party updates with new Tiles: Calm, Komoot, MyFitnessPal, Period Tracker, Sleep Cycle, Spotify and Strava are among the first to get updates. Google is committing to rolling out more updates over time, meaning that both Samsung and Google should be keeping this watch full of apps.
But you’re stuck with Bixby for now. Samsung’s voice assistant is still the default on the watch, which comes up when pressing and holding the top button. Google Assistant isn’t available at the moment, which is frustrating — that’s one of the top things I’d want to access on a Google-connected watch.
Could this be the best Android watch?
The Galaxy Watch 4 looks like the ultimate fusion of a Samsung watch with Google watches — and that could be a winning formula for using Google Maps, connected phone features and third-party fitness apps on Google Play, which is the Galaxy Watch 4’s default app store. It should be the hardware-boosted Google watch that we’ve been waiting years for. The software interface seems exactly like what you’d expect: part Samsung, part Google. But is it worth waiting to see how it works out, or should you just go for this first model? Hard to tell, since it’s the first of its kind.
It’s not surprising that Samsung’s new health features and its new OS aren’t coming to older Samsung watches for now. Some of them might, but expect this to largely be a clean break and a reboot. And we also don’t really know how many of the Galaxy Watch 4’s features will carry over to the rest of Google’s future Wear OS 3 watch lineup, which will include watches from Mobvoi, Fossil and eventually Fitbit.
Those Wear OS 3 watch updates won’t come to those other watches until 2022, which makes the Galaxy Watch 4 the only new Google-connected Wear OS 3 watch this year. For that reason alone, it could very well be the best Android watch of the moment. As to how it actually feels and works? We’ll have full hands-on impressions and a review in the days ahead… but the Galaxy Watch 4 looks extremely promising for any Android phone owner who wants a much more hooked-in watch.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence‘s recent rise to the forefront of business has left most office workers wondering how often they should use the technology and whether a computer will eventually replace them.
Those were among the highlights of a recent study conducted by the workplace communications platform Slack. After conducting in-depth interviews with 5,000 desktop workers, Slack concluded there are five types of AI personalities in the workplace: “The Maximalist” who regularly uses AI on their jobs; “The Underground” who covertly uses AI; “The Rebel,” who abhors AI; “The Superfan” who is excited about AI but still hasn’t used it; and “The Observer” who is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Only 50% of the respondents fell under the Maximalist or Underground categories, posing a challenge for businesses that want their workers to embrace AI technology. The Associated Press recently discussed the excitement and tension surrounding AI at work with Christina Janzer, Slack’s senior vice president of research and analytics.
Q: What do you make about the wide range of perceptions about AI at work?
A: It shows people are experiencing AI in very different ways, so they have very different emotions about it. Understanding those emotions will help understand what is going to drive usage of AI. If people are feeling guilty or nervous about it, they are not going to use it. So we have to understand where people are, then point them toward learning to value this new technology.
Q: The Maximalist and The Underground both seem to be early adopters of AI at work, but what is different about their attitudes?
A: Maximalists are all in on AI. They are getting value out of it, they are excited about it, and they are actively sharing that they are using it, which is a really big driver for usage among others.
The Underground is the one that is really interesting to me because they are using it, but they are hiding it. There are different reasons for that. They are worried they are going to be seen as incompetent. They are worried that AI is going to be seen as cheating. And so with them, we have an opportunity to provide clear guidelines to help them know that AI usage is celebrated and encouraged. But right now they don’t have guidelines from their companies and they don’t feel particularly encouraged to use it.
Overall, there is more excitement about AI than not, so I think that’s great We just need to figure out how to harness that.
Q: What about the 19% of workers who fell under the Rebel description in Slack’s study?
A: Rebels tend to be women, which is really interesting. Three out of five rebels are women, which I obviously don’t like to see. Also, rebels tend to be older. At a high level, men are adopting the technology at higher rates than women.
Q: Why do you think more women than men are resisting AI?
A: Women are more likely to see AI as a threat, more likely to worry that AI is going to take over their jobs. To me, that points to women not feeling as trusted in the workplace as men do. If you feel trusted by your manager, you are more likely to experiment with AI. Women are reluctant to adopt a technology that might be seen as a replacement for them whereas men may have more confidence that isn’t going to happen because they feel more trusted.
Q: What are some of the things employers should be doing if they want their workers to embrace AI on the job?
A: We are seeing three out of five desk workers don’t even have clear guidelines with AI, because their companies just aren’t telling them anything, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Another opportunity to encourage AI usage in the open. If we can create a culture where it’s celebrated, where people can see the way people are using it, then they can know that it’s accepted and celebrated. Then they can be inspired.
The third thing is we have to create a culture of experimentation where people feel comfortable trying it out, testing it, getting comfortable with it because a lot of people just don’t know where to start. The reality is you can start small, you don’t have to completely change your job. Having AI write an email or summarize content is a great place to start so you can start to understand what this technology can do.
Q: Do you think the fears about people losing their jobs because of AI are warranted?
A: People with AI are going to replace people without AI.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would provide up to $325 million to Hemlock Semiconductor for a new factory, a move that could help give Democrats a political edge in the swing state of Michigan ahead of election day.
The funding would support 180 manufacturing jobs in Saginaw County, where Republicans and Democrats were neck-in-neck for the past two presidential elections. There would also be construction jobs tied to the factory that would produce hyper-pure polysilicon, a building block for electronics and solar panels, among other technologies.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters that the funding came from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. It’s part of a broader industrial strategy that the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, supports, while Republican nominee Donald Trump, the former president, sees tariff hikes and income tax cuts as better to support manufacturing.
“What we’ve been able to do with the CHIPS Act is not just build a few new factories, but fundamentally revitalize the semiconductor ecosystem in our country with American workers,” Raimondo said. “All of this is because of the vision of the Biden-Harris administration.”
A senior administration official said the timing of the announcement reflected the negotiating process for reaching terms on the grant, rather than any political considerations. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the process.
After site work, Hemlock Semiconductor plans to begin construction in 2026 and then start production in 2028, the official said.
Running in 2016, Trump narrowly won Saginaw County and Michigan as a whole. But in 2020 against Biden, both Saginaw County and Michigan flipped to the Democrats.
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
