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If a company could have a New Year's resolution, Samsung Mobile's would probably be to stay more focused.

Samsung has often been criticized for being gimmicky and loading as many features on its gadgets as it can. But Samsung's new flagship smartphone and new smart watch, both announced Monday at a media event in Barcelona, Spain, focus on being good at just a few things.

Samsung highlighted the improved camera and battery life for its new smartphone, the Galaxy S5. For its new watch, the Gear Fit, Samsung focused on health monitoring features.

Samsung said it spent a lot of time making the Galaxy S5's camera software smarter. It streamlined the photo-editing tools to make it easier to tweak a photo after it has been taken. Samsung also made some improvements to both hardware and software to capture richer and more vivid colors.

To expand battery life for the Galaxy S5, Samsung developed a power-saving mode, in which the screen shows in only black and white and can run only a few apps that the user chooses, like e-mail and Internet browsing. Samsung says this mode cuts power consumption in half.

The phone also supports a new cellular data technology called carrier aggregation. It essentially allows the phone to download data from multiple radio channels simultaneously, instead of from just one channel, which can increase the speed of data transfer significantly.

Samsung said it also designed the new phone to be waterproof in up to a meter of water, protecting the device from a waterlogged fate that has prematurely ruined many cellphones of all stripes. Rubber seals embedded inside the case help protect the vital parts of the phone, like the battery and SIM card.

Samsung's more focused approach with the Galaxy S5 represents a sharp departure from what it did with the Galaxy S4. The S4 was jam-packed with all kinds of new software features, like the ability to answer the phone by waving a hand above it, or the ability for the user to scroll down a screen by tilting his head. Critics panned many of the features, calling them technology for technology's sake.

An even better example of focus is the new watch Samsung announced on Monday, the Galaxy Fit. It has even fewer features than its predecessor, Galaxy Gear. It has a small, 1.84-inch curved touch screen. Like the exercise bands made by Nike and Fitbit, it can count a person's steps. It also has a heart rate sensor - an infrared light flashes on the user's wrist to show when his or her blood vessels contract as the heart beats.

The Fit lacks a camera, and does not run Google's Android software system. Instead, it runs a bare-bones operating system that Samsung does not even have a name for yet. Because the software is so lightweight, the watch is able to get battery life of at least three days, according to Samsung, about triple the battery life of the Galaxy Gear.

The watch can also synchronize with some Samsung phones to receive text message and e-mail notifications on the screen.

Samsung has not announced prices for either product yet. But past Galaxy S phones have sold for at least $200 with a contract. They will be released around April.

Samsung will most likely market the Galaxy S5 aggressively - its Galaxy S smartphones have been its best sellers. But the last phone, the Galaxy S4, did not sell as well as Samsung had expected, while its rival, Apple, has regained ground at the high end of the smartphone market in recent months.

It is unclear whether the disappointing performance of Samsung's Galaxy S4 results from a highly saturated high-end smartphone market, a fading Galaxy S brand, or both.

While the Galaxy S phones are crucial for Samsung, the company firmly maintains its lead as the largest handset maker in the world. That is because it sells many different types of phones at different prices for various markets, from the low end to the high end.

By contrast, Apple's iPhones are positioned as midtier and high-end phones. That is why even though Apple sells significantly fewer phones than Samsung, it rakes in the most profit. In the last quarter, Apple took more than three-quarters of all of the mobile industry's profit, while Samsung took the rest, according to analysts.

Samsung has told analysts it would tighten the belt on marketing for its mobile products this year. Samsung's low-key introduction of these products, and two other smart watches that it announced through a news release, is a reflection of that lower spending.

Any earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to the new smartwatch Samsung introduced on Monday. It is the Gear Fit, not the Galaxy Fit.