The Galaxy S4 may have stolen the show -- and indeed, constituted the entirety of it -- but Samsung also unveiled several accessories to go along with its new smartphone on Thursday night.
Three of the new devices are related to S Health, a fitness tracking app that debuted with the Galaxy S4. Samsung will sell a connected wristband (similar to the Nike+ Fuelband or Jawbone Up) called the S Band, which will act as a pedometer and distance tracker, and will also tell you how much you moved during sleep. It will sell for $100. The Samsung Body Scale is a bathroom scale that will also sell for $100. Another device, called the Health Rate Monitor (or HRM), will measure your heart rate as you sleep, and will sell for $70. Each of the devices is Bluetooth-connected to send its data to your Galaxy S4 and sync directly into the S Health app.
Samsung pitched the S Health as a unified calorie counter and fitness diary, where users can log the food that they ate and input stats like weight, blood pressure and pulse. The S Band, Body Scale and HRM will apparently augment the usefulness and accuracy of that app's figures and analysis.
While we usually don't flip for covers (ha!), Samsung also introduced a neat new take on the tried-and-true flip cover at its event on Thursday. Like other flip covers, the S View flip cover powers down the phone's screen when it is covering the display. But unlike other flip covers, the S View contains a small window across the top of the device that shows a few vital notifications -- like the time, unread message count and missed calls.
Samsung will also sell a wireless charging pad. As on the Nokia Lumia 900, wireless charging capability is built directly into the Galaxy S4, so no cover or case is needed. No price was announced at the event.
Finally -- and perhaps most intriguingly -- Samsung also showed off a a Bluetooth-connected gaming controller and cradle at its event on Thursday. TechCrunch has a pretty thorough look at the controller, which it aptly compares to an Xbox controller. Curiously, the controller runs on AAA batteries and only works with games downloaded from the Samsung app store. It's also not compatible with any device other than the Galaxy S4 quite yet. No pricing was announced, though the controller will apparently be released by the end of the summer.
For more about the Galaxy S4, check out all of our coverage here. You can find additional information about all of the accessories we mentioned above on Samsung's official website, though preorders have not yet begun.
Related
Before You Go
