Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure,
and fully private. Click now to learn
more. So guys, we're hands-on with the Galaxy Gear, which as you can see, if
you were to measure the uh luxuriousness of a watch by the size compared to the P
No, I'm just messing with you guys. It's not actually that big. So, one of my big
complaints about smart devices is often the use of micro USB. However, I
actually love the way Samsung's implemented this with the Galaxy Gear.
So, it has a little charging cradle that sits around it. So, this plugs in via
micro USB. So, you can see there's a connector here on the back. So, that lives on your nightstand because really
the device is good for about 24 hours of
battery life is about what they're quoting. So, if you can get through a
full day, then great. And if you can get through two days, then so much the
better if you're a very light user. But heavy users are expected to get a day
out of it. So then once we've actually taken that off, I'll show you guys how
you adjust the strap. Now I'm going to draw a few sort of comparisons to the
Pebble. I recently got a Pebble, so I would consider this to be more like the
Toyota Yarus of the smartwatch sort of world, and I'd expect this to be more
like more like a Cadillac. So we'll start with the the basics of what's out
there right now. So hardware buttons as opposed to uh having a touchcreen. Uh
very sort of, you know, rudimentary look and feel to it. I I kind of regret
ordering the orange one because to me it feels kind of like uh the sort of thing
you a 12-year-old would wear. Has kind of a rubber strap that comes with it out
of the box, but the good news is you can change it. Now, let's go ahead and
compare that to the Galaxy Gear. So, it has a 1.68 in AMOLED screen, which is
touchscreen and supports swiping in from different directions. So, this enables a
lot of different functionality. So, I'm going to go ahead and put it on. Hopefully, I've got it at the right size
here. That should give you some idea how it looks. I'm personally not a huge fan
of the whole rubberized or or plasticky
watch surface here. And unfortunately, unlike the Pebble, you can't change it.
But there's a good reason for that. And that's because there is functionality
built into the Hold on. I'm going to move this again cuz apparently it's
still too big. There's functionality built into it. So, not only does it have
a microphone and speaker that's built into the bottom of the watch, which will
allow you to take calls simply by holding your hand next to your head, which I think is sort of debatable
whether that's much better than Bluetooth sitting there and just being
walking around talking to yourself, talking to an empty hand, but at least
you'll have um at least you'll be hands-free technically if you were
driving a car or whatever else. So, that's one advantage to it. And then
there's also a camera built into it. Does this have the same kind of quality
that you might get with, you know, a companion device such as the Note 3? The
answer is obviously not, but it does have the advantage of being extremely
quick to activate. So, you can see the screen turned itself on without me actually pressing that loan button
that's on the side, although you can turn it on manually. And a double click
here will launch an application of your choosing depending on what you prefer.
So, in this case, it is bound to SVoice. Other than that, most of the navigation
is done by swiping up and down on the screen. So, the defaults are swiping
down opens up the camera, which allows you to quickly take a picture. There we
go. Take a picture of my camera. Tap to record. Tap again to stop recording. So,
it does support, I think it was 15-second video clips. I'm getting the
nod from over there. And then the other main functionality that you can access
simply by swiping is the phone functionality. Now, other than that, you
might go, "Okay, well, Lus, that wasn't a whole lot." But you can swipe from side to side, and that actually gives
you access to a bunch of different cool stuff. So, notifications are one of the
big ones. Whenever something comes in, whether it's a text or a phone call or
whatever else, it's going to go to your phone, but your phone might be in your pocket or it might be face down on your
desk or whatever else the case may be. This notifications right here, here we
go. Let's just open that up. Allows you to see it. And you can also see archive
notifications as well. Now, this particular one isn't configured right now, so we're not going to worry too
much about that. SVoice is another thing I really see people using a lot with
something like the Galaxy Gear because obviously while it does have a
touchcreen and while it does have a color AMOLED screen, you're not going to
be typing text messages on it. That's ridiculous. So, if you were to dictate
text messages, this is a great way to once again it comes down to that uh
driving or on the- go scenario. It's a great way to be able to use it without
actually bringing out the full-size device. Now, let's keep going through
here. Now, there's going to be customizable applications. Uh so, we'll
go ahead. There's voice memo, gallery, media controller, this is a big one for
me. And while um while the
implementation for me for the Galaxy Gear isn't as effective as the Pebble
because tactile buttons are better. So when I'm riding on my motorbike, I
actually have speakers wired up into my helmet and I've been wishing for a way
to skip tracks easily without digging my phone out of my pocket. And touchscreen
won't work for me when I'm wearing gloves, but the Pebble does. But if you don't have that particular limitation
and you're not wearing gloves all the time, having a media controller just to
skip songs and pause and play is outstanding. You can check out your
contacts logs, you can go to the camera manually. Settings are in here, but
they're mostly going to be configured through the companion application that
runs on the Note 3. However, I don't think I have it installed on this
particular one right now anyway, so we're not going to worry too much about that. And then there's the apps. So,
right now, app support is about as limited as phone support. So, you're
going to be able to use the Galaxy Gear with the Note 2, the Note 3, the S4, and
the S3 out of the box. However, Samsung is committing support for additional
devices and not even necessarily just Samsung devices. So, stay tuned for
updates. Um, that is again another advantage of something that's more open
like the Pebble where it does work with pretty much anything, but you don't get
that uh you don't get that tight integration. One of the things that they were demoing at the reveal for the for
the Galaxy Gear as well as the Note 3 was simple things like when you get a
notification here and you whip out your phone, it's automatically ready to go on
the phone itself. And that type of integration doesn't happen if you aren't using devices from within the same
family. So, you have to decide. Basically, it's down to your personal preference. Do you want something that's
more open but is going to have inherently more limited functionality or
do you want something that is less open, operates from within a more closed ecosystem or more open moving forward
and gives you enhanced functionality that you otherwise can't get. It's
available in I believe it's three different colors, black, white, and orange. And it's going to be have an
MSRP of this is where it gets tricky again over $300 here in Canada. With
that said, a little bird told me that at launch or potentially at other times,
who knows what's going to happen down the road, you might be able to get bundles with devices such as the Note 3,
which is a perfect companion device for it, and save, you know, up to maybe even
$100, which brings it down into a pricing where I'd go, okay, so compared
to the Pebble, I know I'm drawing that comparison a lot, but it's the only smartwatch I have so far, so I'll be
able to talk more about it in the future. But compared to something like that, what do you get? You get well a
faster processor or well tangible processing power at all. You get a color
screen. You get an ID that is better out
of the box but perhaps less customizable. And you get that enhanced
functionality with the Galaxy companion
devices. I did say app support was a little bit limited, but that doesn't
mean it's useless. So, there's already Evernote support and you can change
things like the watch faces. Although, I haven't played much around with this
one. In fact, I was going to have a device to take away with me to do a full
unboxing and overview, but this is pretty much all the hands-on time I have
with it here. So, hopefully I'll be able to bring you guys more information about it later. Thanks for checking out this
video on the Samsung Galaxy Gear, something I'm particularly excited about
because I mean, I don't think there's really any argument to be had about
wearables being the future. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and leave
a comment if your feelings were somewhere in between.