One of the many benefits of owning a smart watch is its integrated health and fitness functions. Whether monitoring everyday wellbeing, staying fit or maintaining quality of life, many of these functions become increasing beneficial — even essential — the older we get.
Both the Samsung Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch will set activity goals, collect body data, track heart rate, detect falls, and, if necessary, alert emergency services.
By putting a wealth of wellness applications and tools on your wrist, a smart watch ensures your personal health metrics are never more than a touch or glance away, shareable with friends and family, and accessible in the event of an emergency by doctors and caregivers.
Let’s look at some simple steps you can take to help maximize your new watch’s potential.
Syncing
The Samsung Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch both make the syncing of essential health functions super easy. Start by entering your medical data into the health app on your device. It might take a little time, but once done and synced, then simple, everyday things like medication reminders will go straight to your watch, and everything you need to monitor your daily health will be active and available 24/7.
Sharing
Smart watches allow users to securely share their health information with up to five friends, family members or caregivers. By making health details available to a range of people, you’re not just providing peace of mind to all parties, you're sharing information that might one day save your life.
Medical ID
The medical ID feature on every smart watch contains all the medical information people need to know about you in an emergency, including names, medical conditions, blood type, medications, allergies and more.
You can also enable Share During Emergency Call on an Apple Watch. This function automatically shares your encrypted medical ID with emergency services when you call them. This can be especially important in serious circumstances when emergency services need your health information as quickly as possible. A simple tap in Emergency SOS settings will enable your smart watch to connect to emergency services (911). It also provides GPS location tracking.
And unlike traditional medical alert devices, there’s no monthly subscription fee — you only pay for cellular service.
Lifestyle Tools
It’s a fact of life: as we get older, our senses slowly lose their sharpness and acuity. No matter. Your smart watch has a host to cool features to help mitigate the passage of time.
Sight
The visually impaired can quickly and easily reconfigure how information on their smart watch is displayed. With a few simple taps, the user can adjust brightness, enlarge displays and increase text size. For users with more limited vision, Apple Watch boasts Voiceover, which speaks items on the screen. You can choose the speaking speed, voice and volume, and whether to use haptics. The Samsung Galaxy Watch has a similar feature called TalkBack.
Hearing
For the hearing impaired, haptics are available in audio settings and deliver tactile information via vibration or touch. On the Samsung Galaxy Watch, this feature is called Good Vibrations. The Apple Watch also has a smart feature called "Sound Recognition" that can detect specific sounds such as a doorbell or a smoke alarm and alert the wearer with haptic feedback or visual cues.
Mobility
Apple Watch has a Motor section within Accessibility that allows users with less mobility to customize some touch controls, such as the side button click speed, to suit their needs. Samsung Galaxy Watch has Universal Gestures, an innovative feature designed to empower individuals with a touch-free experience via simple and intuitive movements that don’t require the user to lift a finger or press a button.
And remember, you don't have to have a smartphone to send hands-free texts, share a location or make calls from a smart watch. In fact, if you lose your phone, a ping from your watch will play a sound to help you find it.
Ready to explore Smart Watches? Take a look at some popular options here.