Gadget History with the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch

Gadgets are proliferating again. When smartphones were first introduced in the early 2000s, they promised to reduce the gadgets we all have to tote around. Instead of carrying a GPS, cell phone, MP3 player, and flashlight (because one of the first apps for all smartphones is inevitably a flashlight app), all these devices consolidate into a single one. Then came the tablet and e-reader. They supposed to target a different market, substituting for laptops and physical books. Now comes the beginning of what may be a bevy of smartwatch announcements with the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch from Samsung, despite a number of smartwatches being introduced years before. Don't forget Google Glass. Looks like we've moved from carrying around a lot of cheap gadgets each of which have limited capabilities to carrying around a lot of expensive gadgets each of which have extensive and potentially overlapping capabilities. This is great for advertising brokers. Now they can push ads to you on multiple screens. They might even figure out how to make the ad experience across gadgets seamless under the guise of enabling you to continue where you left off on another device.

Galaxy Gear boasts 70 native Android apps that can run on its 315 mah battery. From the looks of things, there is a good sampling of phototaking and fitness apps. For fitness, wearable tech isn't uncharted territory. Companies have been linking heartbeat monitors, pedometers, and such to portable consumer electronic devices for a while, first with the mp3 players, then with phones. What is really the killer app here?