Samsung’s 2025 TVs and Smartwatches: A Gesture-Controlled Future (Maybe)

Samsung is known for its ambitious innovations, often pushing the boundaries of technology to create seamless and interconnected experiences. Sometimes, these innovations address clear consumer needs, solving everyday problems in elegant ways. Other times, they venture into uncharted territory, offering solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had. Their latest endeavor falls somewhat into the latter category: controlling your 2025 Samsung television with your Samsung smartwatch.

Yes, you read that right. Imagine a scenario where your trusty remote has vanished, swallowed whole by the couch cushions or mysteriously transported to another dimension. Instead of embarking on a frantic search, you can simply glance at your wrist, activate the connection, and navigate your television with a series of gestures and movements. While the practicality of this feature might be debatable, the technology itself is intriguing and demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

To experience this new level of interconnectedness firsthand, I had the opportunity to test drive the system with the Samsung Neo QLED 4K (QN90F), one of Samsung’s newest flagship televisions, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra. The experience, while initially awkward, proved surprisingly functional and highlighted both the potential and the limitations of this gesture-based control system.

The foundation of this technology lies in the seamless communication between the smartwatch and the television. Once connected, the Galaxy Watch Ultra essentially transforms into a motion-sensitive remote control. A cursor appears on the TV screen, mirroring your arm movements. Moving your arm around translates into the cursor gliding across the screen, allowing you to navigate menus, select apps, and control playback.

The initial setup requires a bit of finagling. You need to disable the Universal Gestures setting on your watch, a seemingly counterintuitive step. After that, a simple wrist shake initiates the connection, prompting a confirmation message on both the watch and the television. It’s a slightly cumbersome process, but once established, the connection remains stable and responsive.

The gesture controls themselves are relatively straightforward. To select an item, you simply hover the cursor over it and pinch your fingers together. This action registers as a "click," allowing you to launch streaming services, open apps, and confirm selections. Exiting a show requires making a fist, while accessing the home screen necessitates a double fist gesture. Scrolling through menus and content is achieved by running your finger along the interior of the watch bezel.

Initially, I felt self-conscious waving my arm around like a conductor leading an orchestra. The act of controlling a television with gestures feels inherently performative, as if you’re putting on a private show for an audience of one. However, after a few minutes, the awkwardness began to fade, replaced by a sense of novelty and even a bit of amusement.

The responsiveness of the system was surprisingly impressive. The cursor tracked my movements with minimal lag, and the gesture recognition was accurate. Pinching, fist-making, and bezel-swiping were all reliably interpreted by the system, allowing for relatively smooth navigation.

However, the experience wasn’t without its quirks. One immediate annoyance was the persistent presence of the cursor and scroll bar, even when watching videos. On a visually stunning television like the QN90F, these elements felt like distractions, cluttering the screen and detracting from the viewing experience. Ideally, these visual aids would disappear after a period of inactivity, as they do with a traditional mouse. Unfortunately, the cursor remained stubbornly visible, a constant reminder of the unconventional control method.

This issue highlighted an unforeseen side effect of the gesture-based control system: it made me acutely aware of how much I fidget. To make the cursor disappear, I had to consciously hold my arm still, a task that proved surprisingly challenging.

Another area that requires refinement is the precision of the controls. While sweeping arm movements are fine for navigating large menus, smaller, more precise actions, such as hovering over the play/pause button in YouTube or dragging the cursor in the progress bar, proved to be more difficult. The system lacks the finesse required for these finer manipulations, making it prone to accidental clicks and imprecise positioning.

The bezel control for scrolling also presented some challenges. The scroll speed felt overly sensitive, making it difficult to stop at the desired location. A more granular control over the scroll speed would significantly improve the user experience, allowing for more precise navigation.

Despite these shortcomings, the watch-based volume control proved surprisingly useful. Adjusting the volume with a flick of the wrist felt intuitive and convenient, especially in situations where the remote was out of reach.

Ultimately, the question remains: is controlling your television with your smartwatch a gimmick or a genuine innovation? While the technology is undoubtedly impressive, its practical value remains debatable. The gesture-based control system feels more like a party trick than a necessity.

To truly elevate this feature from novelty to necessity, Samsung needs to address some key limitations. The precision of the controls needs to be improved, the visual clutter needs to be minimized, and the functionality needs to be expanded.

One potential area for improvement is the ability to input channels or switch to favorite channels using the smartwatch. While the tiny screen might not be ideal for complex text input, a simplified interface with pre-defined channels could significantly enhance the user experience.

In conclusion, Samsung’s smartwatch-controlled television represents an intriguing step towards a more interconnected future. While the current implementation has its flaws, it demonstrates the potential of gesture-based control systems and highlights Samsung’s willingness to experiment with new technologies. Whether this particular feature will become a must-have for consumers remains to be seen, but it undoubtedly offers a glimpse into the future of television control, a future where our wrists may hold the key to our entertainment. It is an interesting innovation, but whether it becomes a standard feature or a forgotten experiment depends on Samsung’s continued development and refinement of the technology. The core idea is there, but it needs some polish before it becomes truly practical and widespread. Only time will tell if we’ll all be waving our arms at our TVs in the years to come.