TL;DR
- A Redditor modified a mechanical watch body to fit the electronics from a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.
- The 40mm Watch 4 was supposedly the only one small enough to fit in the case, which appears to be from a Panerai Luminor watch.
- Even the crown button is reportedly functional.
What’s the most customizable device you own? Plenty of us dress up our phones with a case intended to help it stand out, but we might argue that smartwatches place an even higher priority on customization. Alternate bands offer as much variety as cases on phones do, and are much more visible, always out on display. Add to that a nice custom watch face, and you’re well on your way to a one-of-a-kind combo. But even our best strap-and-face combo is feeling a little inadequate, as we check out what one Redditor pulled off.
Over on Reddit’s Galaxy Watch sub, user Signal-Impression-97 shares images of a modified Galaxy Watch 4 that’s been tucked into the case of a high-end mechanical watch.
According to the poster, they contacted a watchmaker to help them transform their vision into a reality. Although they don’t specifically reveal the donor watch in the post, Google Lens tells us this appears to be a Panerai Luminor, with that distinctive protected crown.
That crown is even functional, with Signal-Impression-97 confirming that it works for inputs. Apparently they went with this particular Galaxy Watch model due to size concerns, starting with a 40mm edition and dremeling down the body to begin with — not something we’d recommend anyone casually attempting. Confusingly, they repeatedly refer to this as the “Classic” edition, even though that was only available in 42mm and 46mm sizes, and there doesn’t seem to have been any attempt here to preserve the rotating bezel — that’s presumably a misstatement where they meant to communicate that they chose the “basic” model.
The big problem with which smartwatch to start with is reportedly size, and our poster claims that it’s hard to find good mechanical watch donor bodies that are big enough to fit Samsung’s larger Galaxy Watch entries. That sounds reasonable enough, and we imagine it was already quite tricky coming up with a combination that works as well as the pairing we see here.
Do you have a favorite traditional watch that you’d love to see Frankensteined up with the guts of a modern smartwatch? Share your idea down in the comments.
