Not everyone wants a smartwatch, nor do they want to carry their smartphone on them all the time. What a lot of people do want to do though is track those all important steps, If you don’t track it, did you really exercise? Samsung’s new fitness tracker is aimed at these customers.
The Samsung Charm is a small ‘squircle’ shaped activity tracker, which should be a comforting design to fans of the TouchWiz iconography they’ve developed over the years. The Charm comes in Gold, Black and Rose Quartz colour options, with a number of different matching bands you can attach it to, which presumably Samsung will sell separately so you can mix and match.
The Charm has a 17mAh battery which Samsung says will give you up to 14 days of use before needing to recharge using the included Pogo-pin charging cradle. This extended battery life is obviously due to a lack of screen, but it is an activity tracker, and though Samsung only lists functionality as counting how many steps you’ve taken, which will obviously give you data on how much distance you’ve covered and how many calories you’ve burned, it could also extend to sleep tracking.
Even without a screen, the Charm will notify you of events on your phone as well as incoming calls and text message alerts using colour coded notifications with the built-in LED. The new Charm by Samsung app which is available in Google Play (and the Samsung App Store) will let you configure what colour notifications are assigned to apps.
Samsung has released the Charm already in Korea, Italy, France and Russia, and has plans to release it more broadly in other markets though they haven’t announced which ones as yet. We’ll check in with Samsung Australia on Monday and let you know if they have anything to announce.
