Summary
- Smartwatches like the Galaxy Watch offer convenience for calls, texts, schedules, fitness, and productivity.
- Integration is smoother with smartwatches that match your phone brand, such as Apple with iPhones and Samsung with Galaxy phones.
- Apps like Spotify, 2048, Scores Widget, and Shazam offer music, games, sports scores, and song recognition on Galaxy Watches.
You can pretty much run your entire life through a smartwatch. While this may be overreaching a bit, there’s a lot you can do with your watch to help you in your day-to-day life. Not only can you take a phone call or send a text message from your watch, but you can keep tabs on your schedule, have it guide you while running a marathon, and more. It can make you healthier (if you actually put the work in) and help you stay on task with your productivity.
Not all smartwatches are the same as certain ones work better with the phone that you have. Apple Watches are designed to work well with those who have iPhones. While you don’t have to have an iPhone to wear an Apple Watch, it makes integrating your life a lot easier. The same goes for Samsung’s Galaxy Watch. If you have a Samsung phone, using a smartwatch with Wear OS makes this integration simpler.
If you’re looking for more that a Samsung Galaxy Watch can do, it can also keep you entertained. While you may not think of a smartwatch as something that can be used for fun, there are some great Wear OS apps that can do just that. With that in mind, here are some of the best entertainment apps for the Galaxy Watch.
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Galaxy Watch Ultra
$475 $650 Save $175
The Galaxy Watch Ultra is a rugged, titanium smartwatch with a new Quick Action button that you can assign to a shortcut of your choice.
1 Roku
You can’t watch on your Watch though
Roku Remote
The Roku mobile app lets you control your Roku Remote from other devices, such as phones and watches. The Wear OS version works with a Samsung Galaxy Watch.
While it might be pretty cool to be able to watch some TV on your actual watch, that’s probably the smallest screen you could imagine watching something on. For most people, it’s just not worth it. But what your Samsung Galaxy Watch is good for is acting as a remote for your Roku. This means you don’t have to keep track of that pesky Roku Remote, which tends to get lost as it is much smaller than most TV remotes.
You’ll be able to turn on your TV and adjust the volume from your watch. But you can also navigate the Roku home screen with the Roku Remote’s well-known arrows. Just tapping on the interactive Galaxy Watch face can bring you to the home screen, maneuver around it, and then turn the Roku off.
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2 Spotify
Download music right to your watch
Spotify
Spotify is a popular audio streaming platform that offers music, audiobooks, and podcasts. It can be used on mobile and on desktop, allowing you to listen to music in a ton of different places. You can even download music to your smartwatch.
Spotify on your Galaxy Watch works with or without your phone. If you’re listening to something while out on a run, you can have your phone strapped into an armband and then control the music from your Galaxy Watch. The interactive app lets you pause, play, skip, fast-forward, and like a track. It shows you the name of the song and the artist that performs it, keeping you in the know as you’re listening.
But if you don’t want to bring your phone with you, that doesn’t mean the music has to stop. You can download playlists of music to your Galaxy Watch and listen when you’re offline. That means you can connect your headphones to your Galaxy Watch and listen to music, audiobooks, podcasts, and more when you’re commuting, without a phone, or just in a spot with poor service. It brings new life to what might be an otherwise boring trek.
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3 2048
Play games right on your watch
2048
2048 is a simple yet addictive puzzle game where you slide numbered tiles on a board to merge them. The goal is to create a tile with the number 2048. If you run out of moves, the game ends.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch can be used to play several games as well, giving you even more functionality than you may have realized. You can download 2048, which is a popular mobile game where you try to join number tiles to add up and reach the 2048 title. It’s a puzzle game that’s addictive and can help pass the time.
Normally, it’s played on a phone where you can swipe up, down, left, and right to move the tiles. But the same is done on your Galaxy Watch interface, allowing you to play whenever you’re bored. The puzzles are challenging, as every move that you make changes the trajectory of the game itself. It’s also ad-free, making it a more seamless gaming experience.
The game is downloaded to your watch, so you don’t need a signal for it to work, allowing you to play offline.
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Keep tabs on all of your favorite teams
Scores Widget
Scores Widget is available to install for free to your Wear OS device. It will display upcoming games as well as live scoring updates for current matches.
Want to keep up with the score of a game but had to head out before it was over? Scores Widget is a terrific addition to your Galaxy Watch. You can set the teams or leagues that you want to follow and have an easy time reading the table of scores and updates. The Scores Widget only takes you looking at your watch to give you a score update. You can force it to reload to refresh the scores, giving you updates instantly. You don’t have to wait for it to manually update and refresh.
The leagues you can follow include the following:
- NFL
- MLB
- NHL
- NBA
- NCAA Football
- NCAA Basketball
- WNBA
- World Cup
- MLS
- EPL
If you don’t like the way that it’s displayed on your Galaxy Watch, you can change the font size, colors, and color code the games to indicate which ones are live now and what ones are upcoming.
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5 Shazam
Figure out that song before it’s too late
Shazam
Shazam is a music app that provides you with the song title and artist after listening to a song for a few seconds. It pulls from a large library of songs to identify the tune for you.
How many times have you heard a song over the speakers at a store and tried to place it but couldn’t? It’s probably happened to you at least a few times. With Shazam on your Galaxy Watch, you can just tap the app and Shazam will not only tell you what the name of that song is, but also who sings it. If you have a Galaxy phone, it records the song name and artist in the app, allowing you to look back at all the songs you’ve found with Shazam. Rather than having to Google a few of the lyrics that you think you know (but probably sing incorrectly), let Shazam do the heavy lifting.
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