Gadgetory

what's up Brian song here and welcome to google issues for everything google that we can pack inside of a show each week Mobile World Congress is in full effect and the announcements are putting CES to shame with products that people actually want to purchase right now now Samsung finally revealed the new Galaxy s5 packing a slightly larger 5.1 inch screen with the same resolution and an extremely familiar design that will remain a plastic body and a new perforated backing with colors that a Samsung calls glam probably not the first word you want to hear when a company describes their phone glam now the s5 brings new technology like the fingerprint scanner we talked about to unlock your phone but it's also plugged into paypal for mobile payments its water resistant and dust resistant but you don't want to put this phone underwater there's a slightly cleaned up interface but nothing earth-shaking and they also touted it as the first phone to bring a heart rate sensor on a phone see all you have to do is just touch your finger on that area that looks like a flash but it's not it's a heart sensor and we know everyone is going to want that well the bigger problem Samsung didn't even give us a compelling reason for why it might be important they just said it's an industry-first come on some now my reaction to the galaxy faithful users will be happy with the new improvements we are floored by the announcement but it's the same story with smartphones it's a mature market and it's harder and harder to wow anyone now Samsung also updated their SmartWatch lineup with the gear 2 and gear neo lineup just five months after its initial launch the watch will feature a slightly streamline design the camera placement is on the face and not awkwardly placed on the side for perv shots it includes a heart rate sensor it also has four gigs of storage to play music natively on the device but the biggest improvement is that their entire wearable line is running on Samsung's own Tizen operating system and not Android so it requires less power and early claims expect two to three days of battery life still the UI and os aren't wowing us visually but they will work with 17 galaxy devices when they launched in April the original Galaxy gear only worked with a note 3 on launch now the product I was excited the most about was the Samsung gear fit with a truly new design and form factor Samsung is positioning this as their fitness band but I think it's a huge miss for a company that should have made this their next-gen SmartWatch now my sources close to the project pitch the finalized design as a SmartWatch with its own UI but Samsung corporate decided this would be their fitness device instead and put Tizen on it even if it only works horizontally and not vertically the way you would actually you know look at your wristband or watch comfortably now it has a one-of-a-kind look it does everything the gear to can with heart rate sensors and displays alerts from your phone with a 32 Ford a battery life you guys they absolutely missed it here people weren't impressed with the first Galaxy gear the gear 2 is an improvement but there's no buzz around it and this was a chance for samsung to make this a flagship product instead of just a fitness wristband come on son now all of these products will be available on april eleventh in a 150 different countries but we want to know what you thought of Samsung's product announcements let us know at Google ishes at cnet com and will read a few of your responses next week now there have also been plenty of other surprises at Mobile World Congress like Sony's waterproof and 4k capturing Xperia z2 or Huawei's talk band that's a fitness band with a Bluetooth speaker that you can take out of the band and then use it as a Bluetooth headset or even the geeks phone black phone with a focus on user security and privacy so all you guys got to do is just make sure to check out seeing that special coverage for all things Mobile World Congress and more on our website at cnet com now also there's plenty of google news this week the SmartWatch battles are just heating up and a new cnet report says Google is set to unveil its plans for a SmartWatch centric operating system in March most likely over a blog post with the actual SmartWatch making its debut at Google i/o in June LG is the manufacturing partner for the hardware while the googs will handle the software aspect of the product pinning its SmartWatch OS on its google now voice assistant and this platform is really perfectly suited to be adapted to a smartphone this will be Google's second wearable product in the market if it all comes together and outside of the iWatch Google's watch products is really the only one I'm curious about now according to website recode Amazon's long-rumored Roku like set-top box is rumored to be launching next month with the company aiming for a March rollout they report the box will be powered by Google's Android providing access to amazon instant video service and Amazon's own music catalog while other rumors also say it will double as a gaming console now it sounds ambitious but we know 2014 looks to be the year of the video streaming set-top boxes as well so we'll see what they can do with it to really make this compelling when people already have an Apple TV or Roku or even both what will make me want to buy this one also the big google machine has recently announced project tango and it's an experimental effort to have an android phone equipped with a variety of sensors for advanced motion and space tracking in hopes that it can be used to scan real 3d environments using your phone now their internal video shows how it could be used to open new opportunities for developers for indoor navigation or even gaming experiences and this is just another one of those out-of-the-box thinking projects that gets us all excited with the work Google is doing behind the scenes now the prototype phone includes a 4 megapixel camera to computer vision processors integrated depth sensors and a motion tracking camera pretty much everything I'd want in a woman now the practice is being led by the advanced technology and projects group it's the same team behind project ara and the part of Motorola that wasn't sold to Lenovo that Google kept for themselves alright guys that's going to do it for this week's show again we want to hear from you about Samsung's announcements so email me at Google issues at cnet com or tweet me at brian Tong thanks so much for watching I'm Brian Tommy we'll see you guys next week for some more of that Google Isha's delicious