In Barcelona a little earlier on, Samsung announced their latest and greatest, the Galaxy S5. While things haven’t changed much on the outside, Samsung has once again packed this guy with features and if it wasn’t already clear that Samsung likes to thing of their smartphones of lifestyle companions, then the Galaxy S5 should have made that abundantly clear. The Galaxy S5 is absolutely rammed with features concerning fitness and such. It’s kitted out to perfectly fit with the Gear Fit and the new Gear 2 and the smartphone itself has a little trick up its sleeve. Samsung has included a heart rate monitor in the Galaxy S5.
That’s right, you can check how fast your heart is beating right from the phone itself. On the rear of the device, there is a red light next to the LED flash for the camera that can read your heart rate and report it back to the smartphone. Samsung said on stage that this little sensor is the center of the new and improved S Health. There is of course an app to tell you just how high or low your heart rate is, and we have no doubt that Samsung will be using this data throughout the S Health suite. Coupled with the Gear Fit, this little addition to the Galaxy S5 should keep fitness fanatics happy, indeed.
Of course, there’s another point to make here, Samsung is now having three different wearable devices, each with their own level of fitness-tracking baked in. With a built-in sensor such as this, Samsung offers some functionality to those that don’t to strap something to their wrist and at the same time provide a gateway to purchasing a Gear Fit. Samsung has been very clever with this strange yet welcome addition. On the one hand it eschews wearable tech altogether, and on the other it gives users a taste of what functionality they could get their hands on.