We're nearly ready to bring you our in-depth Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch review - in the meantime, enjoy our extended hands on photography.
We've been waiting for ages for smartwatches to come to the fore, and it seems that time might finally be upon us with the debut of the Galaxy Gear.
We're not saying this is the first to ever appear – the Pebble and the rather nifty Sony Smartwatch 2 have already made some significant strides – but when a name like Samsung gets involved people will sit up and take notice.
So, what's the Gear all about? As you may have guessed by the name, it looks like it was dreamt up in a boardroom of South Korean executives, it's meant to be a blend of technology and fashion.
With six different colours to choose from, it certainly has aspirations in the latter category.
The whole thing feels well made the second you pick it up – it had better do, as the price of £299 / $299 (around AUS$325) means it's going to be pricier than a lot of mid-range smartphones out there.
The mix of stainless steel and rubber doesn't make you feel like you're buying a premium watch though – it's more a sports option that's been through a refining process. It doesn't feel cheap, but we're willing to bet it's going to be tough to convince a number of consumers to shell out for this new device.
It's not going to be a lot of use in the short term, unless you want to fork out for a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or the new Note 10.1 as well, as these are the only devices that the little beast works with for now.
However, with Android 4.3 coming our way soon for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S3 the Galaxy Gear will play nice with these as well, extending the pool of compatibility.
That said, there's a lot of exciting technology packed in that show that Samsung is at least trying to push the boat out. For instance, there's a real security boon with an auto-locking feature that will shut the lockscreen on your phone or tablet should you move more than 1.5m from your device while wearing the smartwatch.
And we really like Smart Relay, which lets you preview you emails on your Galaxy Gear before whipping out your connected smartphone, with the whole message popping up before your very eyes.
Samsung has clearly put a lot of thought into its new smartwatch, designing in a microphone and speaker that allows you to speak to whoever is calling you on the phone by raising your wrist next to your head.
However, that thought didn't extend to the possibility that anyone doing this would look like they were talking on a pretend phone… it's not immediately obvious that you're talking on a smartwatch.
Samsung claims that this looks more normal than speaking to a Bluetooth headset, but we'd have to disagree there.
But what about how the smartwatch could actually integrate into your day to day life? After all, it's something that's got a built-in pedometer, a music player, a 1.9MP camera (called a Memographer, for some reason) and reams of apps from the outset that mean you will severely cut down on having to pull your phone out of your pocket.
Been outbid on eBay? Got an important meeting coming up? Need to dial a number? The functionality is all there on your wrist, and the touch-sensitive screen (a Super AMOLED option with a 320 x 320 resolution) seems able to handle the above with aplomb.
But the first problem our test unit encountered was that, well, without a smartphone attached it's pretty useless. The S Health app still fired up, which shows that this can still function as a fitness companion, but other than that it's a device that's devoid of its own identity.
The camera isn't too bad – while getting a shot nicely framed is always going to be difficult given the angle you're shooting from, the result could definitely be worse.
Opening up the camera isn't too hard either, with a swift swipe from the top bezel launching it and a tap on the screen starting and finishing the process of taking a photo or video.
The display is nicely visible as well - we can see users liking the stark contrast of the AMOLED technology that displays your chosen timepiece. The downside is that the battery will only last 25 hours – fine if you're using a smartphone, not as much fun when you've got to charge your watch every day.
Samsung needs to make something that more resembles a watch here in more than just style to be taken seriously as a real wristpiece – and that's before we've got onto the real issue.
You see, for all the above, the 800MHz processor just cannot keep up with the prods and pokes we wanted it to. Just swiping left and right to get through the categories resulted in the Gear melting down and freezing, and the display ended up splitting in two, showing two different apps.
This could very well be an issue with early software - and anecdotal evidence suggests it performs a lot better when it's connected to a phone (which ours couldn't be) - but at nearly £300, this device needs to be perfect before it hits the shelves on September 25.
Early verdict
Samsung has got some things really right on the Galaxy Gear: the styling is great and the interface is nifty. We like the way the camera works (although we're not sure you'd want it, even for the likes of Vine or Instagram) and the idea of Smart Relay appeals to our geekier nature.
But we were a little shocked at how laggy and slow the interface was on the watch – it instantly felt like every other sub-par smartwatch we'd encountered in the past.
Samsung could still turn this one around, but there needs to be a big step forward to make the Galaxy Gear worth anywhere near the money that's likely to be asked.
Source : techradar[dot]com
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