Samsung introduced new watch faces for its Galaxy Watch devices on March 31, displaying the current time on various planets in the solar system. Named Galaxy Time, these watch faces were created through a collaboration between Samsung and the European Space Agency (ESA). There are eight watch faces in total, each corresponding to one of the eight planets. In addition to showing the current time on these planets, the watch faces also provide other relevant data about them.
Mario Winter, Vice President of Marketing at Samsung Electronics Germany, announced the new watch faces in a post on the company’s German newsroom. He emphasized the significance of the partnership with ESA, stating, “In this project, ‘Galaxy’ truly embodies its meaning. Together with ESA, a major player in space exploration, we’ve developed a watch face that offers Samsung Galaxy users a novel and distinctive approach to exploring our solar system. With ESA’s scientific data provided to Samsung developers, Galaxy Time users can seamlessly delve into our planetary neighborhood beyond Earth.”
ESA scientist Melanie Heil elucidated that despite orbiting the same star, the Sun, the planets in the solar system revolve around it and rotate on their own axes at varying speeds compared to Earth. Consequently, the concept of days, hours, and seconds differs significantly for each of the other seven planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Samsung utilized ESA’s data on the rotation speed and orbit of the eight planets around the Sun to develop the Galaxy Time watch faces. The displayed time is not necessarily the exact time of these planets but rather their representation relative to Earth’s time. Alongside time, the watch faces offer intriguing insights into the solar system, such as the distance of neighboring planets from the Sun and Earth, the number of moons they possess, their precise position at any given moment, and the planetary seasons.
The concept for the watch face originated from the creative agency Leo Burnett Germany, while the creative brand consultancy Metadesign in Berlin spearheaded the development of Galaxy Time. These watch faces are compatible with all Galaxy Watch devices running on Wear OS, which includes Galaxy Watch 4 or later.
