When
Samsung, the largest smartphone manufacturer launched its debut smartwatch in the market last October, techies all over the world stood and took notice. The
Galaxy Gear was the technology giant’s entry into the wearable technology market, which still at its infancy has been filled with capable but mostly incomplete offerings.
Although packed with more functions than its contemporaries, the minor loopholes that it fails to cover makes the Galaxy Gear yet another imperfect smartwatch. The major drawback with the Gear is its inability to function with any other devices except a few Samsung devices. Right now, the Gear only works if you have a Galaxy Note III, Galaxy S4, Galaxy Note 10.1 (2013 edition), and Galaxy SIII. But if you are a proud owner of one of these Samsung products and an early adopter, then you wouldn’t mind strapping on this gear.
The Gear is certainly an attractive device, the combination of brushed metal and black rubber strap lends the Gear a premium feel. It has a 1.6-inch Super AMOLED 320 pixels x 320 pixels screen, while also packing in a 1.9MP camera on the top strap. At 200gms it doesn’t feel too heavy on the wrist.
Taking and making calls using the Gear is extremely convenient, and checking texts is also a breeze. The Gear has no SIM card or data connection of its own; instead it links to your phone via Bluetooth. The smartwatch is also NFC-enabled, allowing for easy one-touch pairing with your Galaxy smartphone. Battery lasts for a full day of fairly intense use but charging can become a problem. To charge your gear, you need to first strap the watch into a plastic charging case and then plug a standard micro USB cable into the back of it. So, there is no more relying on a friend’s spare charger.
There is only a single button on the watch itself, which acts to power up the display, or fires up Samsung’s voice recognition ‘S Voice‘ software with a double-click. The device itself is powered by a single-core 800 MHz ARM processor and 512 MB of RAM, and also packs 4GB of storage space. Navigating around the watch is seamless, and is done using the touch-enabled display, while the interface is simple and uncluttered.
The Gear is a decent companion device for your Galaxy range of smartphones, but is slightly let down foremostly by the fact that it cannot be currently used with any other Android smartphones. Sadly, email support on the Gear is also currently missing, and the number of apps available for the Gear is also limited, which makes the approx. NPR 30K price tag a tad too high.
Yantrik’s Verdict: The Galaxy Gear is definitely not a “must have” device. If you haven’t bought one yet, it might be better to wait for the Gear 2 which will be out this spring.