Samsung Galaxy Gear is the newest smartwatch produced by the Korean company Samsung, he being thought of as a companion for the smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Gear is not the first smartwatch made by the Samsung company, but it is a different one, launched on the market with the idea of offering users an alternative to existing products and this before Apple launches its own product. Samsung's smart watch has generated a lot of controversy around it, but it is only a first attempt by Samsung to conquer the smartwatch market.
For the whole experience with the new Samsung product, I thank the people from Orange Romania, who through the program Orange Smartphone Tester, offers anyone the opportunity to test the newest smartphones launched on the market.
Design and hardware
The first thing you will "meet" at Gear is the design, and in the case of this watch, everything depends on taste. Watches, smart or not, are fashion accessories for many, they are objects that many are proud of and brag about, and the Gear is not that luxury object that looks great on someone's hand. Although it is available in several colors and has a metal structure, the Gear has a rubber strap that does not give you the feeling of a premium product, and the camera implemented in the strap makes you think of an unfinished watch, in which the manufacturer forgot something . For me, Samsung Galaxy Gear it doesn't have a great, attractive design, it's not a premium product, but here it's all about taste.
From the design we move on to the hardware, the watch having a 1.63-inch touch screen with a resolution of 320×320 and 277 pixels per inch, an Exynos 4212 800MHz dual-core processor with a disabled core, 512MB of RAM, 4 GB storage medium, a 315 mAh battery, a 1.9 megapixel camera capable of recording photos with a resolution of 1392 x 1392 pixels and 480p video clips that are only 15 seconds long. Apart from these, the smartwatch has an integrated microphone to give us the possibility to run voice commands that are operated on Samsung Galaxy Note 3, but also a loudspeaker that is placed in the belt clip and allows us to have conversations during phone calls. To all this we add an NFC case that must be mounted on the terminal to allow charging.
Software - functionality and utility
We talked enough about hardware and design, now let's move on to the most interesting part, the software. Samsung Galaxy Gear it works on the basis of a Android 4.2.2 modified by Samsung, the Korean company also developing a series of special applications to work with the small screen of its watch. Controlling Android is done using gestures and the only physical button on the watch, this having the role of a Home button, the side swipes making the passage through the menu icons, while a swipe from top to bottom allows us to exit the applications.
As I told you at the beginning of the article, the Galaxy Gear is only a companion for Samsung Galaxy Note 3, being initially only compatible with this smartphone, but recently those from Samsung decided to allow interconnection with other of its products available on the market. Through Gear you can get from Samsung Galaxy Note 3: notifications about received messages/emails, you can answer/reject calls, initiate calls or send messages, use a fitness pedometer, record photos, write voice memos, control the smartphone's multimedia functions, use S Voice to give voice commands, you can view information about the weather, and with the help of various applications you can expand the functionality.
All the previously mentioned functions are accessible through the applications that you can see in the image above, they give us easy access to almost everything we need. Before reaching them, you will have to unlock the watch, and accessing the device menu can be done by two methods: either press the physical button, or lift the watch, the accelerometer recording a movement of raising the hand and activating the screen after 2-3 seconds in which you will be able to arrange your hair in the reflection you will see in it.
After activating the screen, SmartWatchwill display the main watch chosen by you, the Samsung company having designed several others, they being able to show us information about the time, date, the meetings we have scheduled that day, the steps taken in a jogging session or information about weather condition. All this information must be updated in real time with the Note 3 next to you and this is not done as quickly as you might imagine, especially in the case of email notifications, for example. If you will find out the information about the weather quickly, in the case of emails everything depends on the Android in the phone and for me there was a big, big problem here.
Why am I saying this? Well, because the Galaxy Gear can only display the emails available in Android's native Email application, the Gmail application requiring the unlocking of the smartphone for viewing. Normally, considering the versatility of Android, I would have expected both applications to allow reading emails without any problem, but this does not happen and updating the information is not done that quickly. If you haven't set up a push module to constantly check emails, then you won't receive any notifications for them for long periods of time, and if you have such a profile selected, you'll have to wait a few minutes anyway until the Gear- he will realize that he has an email to display for you. Of course, I'm talking about an idyllic case here, because if you reset the terminal or disconnect it from the Gear, the watch will refuse to receive emails after a little playing with the settings.
Even if in the case of displaying emails, one of the most important functions of a smartwatch, the Gear did not impress me, the good part is that it quickly displays the messages received in the Note 3 and allows rejecting phone calls, initiating them or answering one being received. Accepting a call is done by simply pulling a virtual button and the possibility of talking directly to the watch is great in situations where you are driving and you cannot bring the terminal to your ear, the quality of the calls being very good, the interlocutors hearing you very well if you have your hand near the mouth. Rejecting calls is done in the same way, except that you will also have the possibility to quickly send a message to apologize for not being able to answer, that message being standard introduced by Samsung. The Galaxy Gear also has a dialer that allows us to quickly call any person we want, but unfortunately it does not have a module for sending text messages, although it displays the ones received on the Note 3.
Well, we talked about the imported functions, now let's talk about what's left. The Galaxy Gear allows us to run some voice commands for calling contacts, sending messages, finding out the time in various cities around the world or searching for information from the daily agenda, but you won't be able to do Google searches or other complex things. A Voice Memo application allows you to quickly record voice memos as long as they are a maximum of 5 minutes long, and then if you wish you can transfer them to the terminal. Next, we have a Media Controller that allows us to control multimedia applications from the Note 3, but also a pedometer that measures the steps taken during a jogging session. Finally, I leave an interesting function, which I liked, it makes the watch and the smartphone vibrate when they disconnect from each other, and through an application in Gear, called Find My Device, you can quickly find the Note through home, it playing an intermittent sound on the terminal when you use it.
Although at first glance the functionality of the Gear seems complex, it will be more difficult to get used to the gestures of exiting the menus than anything else.
Camera
As I told you at the beginning of the article, the Galaxy Gear has a camera mounted in its belt, which is capable of recording photos in 1392 x 1392 pixel format and 720p video clips of only 10 seconds in length. The camera quality is not great, as expected, but its attachment is not great either, as you will have to get used to a different way of positioning the camera, the screen being essential in recording multimedia content, otherwise you will not be able to capture in frames exactly what is needed.
All pictures and movies are accessible in the terminal through a Gallery application, they can be transferred to Note 3 to be viewed or shared wherever you want. I didn't understand from the very beginning why the Galaxy Gear has a camera implemented in the strap, I still don't understand the reasoning behind Samsung's decision and I firmly believe that a smartwatch only needs, possibly, a camera front in case someone wants to make video calls.
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Autonomy, customization, applications
The Samsung Galaxy Gear has a battery of only 315 mAh, and this helps it work for about a day, a day and a few hours, without requiring a recharge. Extremely many people complained about the battery autonomy and it is much weaker than Pebble, for example, but the periods of use depend mainly on how you use the watch. If you receive a lot of notifications/calls/messages and you also use it to record pictures or voice memos, then you won't get more than a day out of it.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear can be controlled directly from Galaxy Note 3 using a special application, it being automatically installed when the Note is touched by the smartwatch case. Through this application you can control the notifications sent to the terminal, the unlock function, special gestures, the main clocks displayed on the screen, but you can also install the few applications available in the Samsung ecosystem. Using these applications you can customize your main clocks, or you can receive notifications from applications that are not compatible with your Gear, most of them offering only customization functions.
The ecosystem designed by Samsung for its Gear is small, but in development and it is normal that there are not many applications available now, but in the future I think that users could have additional functionality, if there is a community of developers to support the product.
conclusions
Samsung Galaxy Gear represents an attempt by those from Samsung to come out in front Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), with a product in an emerging category, but unfortunately their first effort cannot be called a success. The Samsung Galaxy Gear wants to be a smartwatch, but unfortunately it doesn't have all the necessary qualities to be a "must-have" device. Although notifications regarding calls/messages arrive immediately on the terminal, notifications regarding emails arrive with difficulty, or not at all, and a partial S Voice is not really that useful.
In most cases, even the ability to talk on the strap is not really that useful, and the camera placed in the strap does nothing but spoil the design of the device, because the idea of recording multimedia content with it is ill-conceived. The battery autonomy is not really that great, and overall we are talking about a "opener" for Samsung, the terminal being burdened by the shortcomings of a device that is part of this category.
Having said that, I thank those from Orange Romania for the opportunity to test the new Samsung product, and if you are interested in it, you will find it on this page.
