At Google I/O 2014 Samsung’s first Android Wear smartwatch was formally announced. Thousands of attendees who were there at the keynote in San Francisco where later given their pick of a smartwatch. They could either get a LG G Watch or Samsung Gear Live for free. Even though the Gear Live hasn’t officially gone on sale yet there are still quite a few units out there, primarily in the hands of attendees. Some of them report that the charging port on this smartwatch fails after a couple of charging cycles which then leaves the device completely useless.
Some of the Google I/O 2014 attendees have shared pictures on Google+ of Samsung Gear Live units with damaged charging ports. There are quite a few users who have faced the exact same issue.
It looks like this is a design flaw with Samsung’s new smartwatch, at least that what the users believe. Its a small sample size at this point in time but its highly likely that such reports will escalate once the smartwatch ships to customers. For all we know Samsung may have tweaked it a bit prior to shipping out to paying customers, but we’ll have to wait and see if that’s true or not.
One poster on Google+ said that even his adapter had died after a few charging cycles. Obviously when you can’t charge a device it remains of no use. Samsung hasn’t acknowledged any of these issues as yet, but if they’re prevalent on units shipped to customers, in that case the Gear Live might not have a good run in the market.
Filed in . Read more about Gear Live, Samsung, Smartwatches and Wearable Tech.