FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Gadget review: Better exercise, better sleep

Gadget review: Better exercise, better sleep

Paisal Chuenprasaeng The Nation

Like its little sibling the Galaxy Fit e reviewed here last week, the Samsung Galaxy Fit is a light fitness tracker with a heart rate sensor and functions that let you monitor your activity all day long but also offers a larger and more colourful display, more memory and an additional sensor for better fitness data accuracy. 
Galaxy Fit uses a 0.95-inch AMOLED display with 120x240 pixels in 16 million colours, compared to Fit e’s monochrome 0.74-inch PMOLED display with 128x64 pixels resolution.
Galaxy Fit has 2 megabytes of memory, compared to the Fit e’s128 kilobytes, and also boasts a gyro sensor on top of the accelerometer and HR sensor also used in Fit e.
Despite its larger size and weighing a little more, I found Galaxy Fit is comfortable to wear – even when I went to bed. The size is right for a man’s wrist I think, and the larger display is easier to read. The display has good brightness and it is easy to read outdoors too.
Gadget review: Better exercise, better sleep

The Galaxy Fit is tough, not least because it complies with military-grade durability standards, and comes with a water resistance of 5 ATM so you can use it outdoors even when it’s pouring with rain.
Two apps are required for use with Galaxy Fit. First, you need to install the Samsung Galaxy Wearable app that will connect the Fit to your smartphone and download all the interface software necessary to communicate with the fitness tracker. Then, you will need to install the Samsung Health app to allow the fitness data from the tracker to be transferred to the cloud storage of your Samsung Health account.
The Galaxy Wearable app will guide you to link Galaxy Fit to your smartphone using a Bluetooth connection. Once connected, the fitness tracker will relay notifications from your smartphone to the Fit. You can use the app to adjust which app can send notifications to the tracker.
You can also use the Galaxy Wearable app to set alarms on the tracker, which will vibrate when the scheduled times come round.
The Galaxy Wearable is also used to select the location for weather data to be sent to your Galaxy Fit.
Unlike Fit e that is buttonless, Galaxy Fit has a multi-purpose side key, which can be used to turn the tracker on and off. When the tracker is on and but the display is turned off, you simply press the side key to turn it on. Once you’ve done that, you tap the touchscreen to navigate it, launch an app or select a menu item. You can swipe the screen left or right or up or down to view panels. You can also touch and hold an item and then drag it to a new location.
Gadget review: Better exercise, better sleep

The first screen of the tracker, which is called clock face, shows the current time and the current heart rate. Some 20 more clock faces can be downloaded to replace the default one.
The factory setting on the watch has four widgets, Health Summary, Exercise, Sleep and Weather. The Health Summary reports current accumulated steps, your burned calories, and your heart rate. The Sleep reports the length of your sleep and the Weather report – as you will have guessed – tells you what the weather is doing at any given time.
Use the Galaxy Wearable app to add seven more widgets including calendar, stopwatch and timer or remove the ones already installed. You cycle through the installed widgets by swiping the display.
Galaxy Fit starts tracking up to six activities automatically. Select and customise up to 10 preferred activities from more than 90 workouts on the Samsung Health app including aerobics, crunches and dancing. You can also register a favourite activity for a quick start by pressing and holding the side key.
Apart from having the tracker automatically record exercises that last at least 20 minutes, you can use the Exercise widget to select Walking, Running, Cycling and Swimming for the tracker to start recording.
The first time you use Samsung Health, you should specify your birth date, gender, height and weight so that the tracker can accurately calculate the calories you have burned.
Gadget review: Better exercise, better sleep

The Samsung Health app sets the goal of 6,000 steps each day. The app will display a dashboard that shows your progress towards that goal, the amount of active time spent and the number of calories you have burned and as well as how long you slept the previous night.
You can also use the app to update your weight and the number of glasses of water you have drunk and the amount of calories you have consumed.
The Galaxy Fit automatically tracks your sleep and analyses your sleeping patterns throughout three stages of sleep by detecting the movements of your body. 
During the test, I wore Galaxy Fit to walk to the mouth of my soi to exercise and buy food. The tracker automatically detected my walk and recorded it, and also detected my stopping and waiting for the food and saved the activity automatically. The distance calculated by the tracker was quite accurate.
The tracker has a good battery life. One full charge lets you use the tracker for seven or eight days.
Samsung Galaxy Fitness is available in white and black for Bt3,290.
Key specs:
OS: FreeRTOS
Bluetooth: Bluetooth v5.0
Display: 0.95-inch AMOLED with 120x240 pixels, 16M colour depth
Memory: 2 MB RAM, 32 MB ROM
Sensors: Accelerometer, Gyro Sensor,HR Sensor
Battery: 120 mAH, 7-8 days typical usage time
Dimensions: 45.1 x 18.3 mm
Weight: 23g

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