Samsung Galaxy Gear Unboxing & Overview - Shot on Black Magic Cinema 2.5K Camera
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,819 words · ~9 min read
0:00
Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure,
0:03
and fully private. Click now to learn
0:11
more. So guys, we're hands-on with the Galaxy Gear, which as you can see, if
0:16
you were to measure the uh luxuriousness of a watch by the size compared to the P
0:21
No, I'm just messing with you guys. It's not actually that big. So, one of my big
0:25
complaints about smart devices is often the use of micro USB. However, I
0:29
actually love the way Samsung's implemented this with the Galaxy Gear.
0:33
So, it has a little charging cradle that sits around it. So, this plugs in via
0:37
micro USB. So, you can see there's a connector here on the back. So, that lives on your nightstand because really
0:42
the device is good for about 24 hours of
0:46
battery life is about what they're quoting. So, if you can get through a
0:49
full day, then great. And if you can get through two days, then so much the
0:53
better if you're a very light user. But heavy users are expected to get a day
0:56
out of it. So then once we've actually taken that off, I'll show you guys how
1:00
you adjust the strap. Now I'm going to draw a few sort of comparisons to the
1:04
Pebble. I recently got a Pebble, so I would consider this to be more like the
1:08
Toyota Yarus of the smartwatch sort of world, and I'd expect this to be more
1:12
like more like a Cadillac. So we'll start with the the basics of what's out
1:17
there right now. So hardware buttons as opposed to uh having a touchcreen. Uh
1:22
very sort of, you know, rudimentary look and feel to it. I I kind of regret
1:26
ordering the orange one because to me it feels kind of like uh the sort of thing
1:29
you a 12-year-old would wear. Has kind of a rubber strap that comes with it out
1:33
of the box, but the good news is you can change it. Now, let's go ahead and
1:36
compare that to the Galaxy Gear. So, it has a 1.68 in AMOLED screen, which is
1:42
touchscreen and supports swiping in from different directions. So, this enables a
1:46
lot of different functionality. So, I'm going to go ahead and put it on. Hopefully, I've got it at the right size
1:50
here. That should give you some idea how it looks. I'm personally not a huge fan
1:54
of the whole rubberized or or plasticky
1:57
watch surface here. And unfortunately, unlike the Pebble, you can't change it.
2:02
But there's a good reason for that. And that's because there is functionality
2:06
built into the Hold on. I'm going to move this again cuz apparently it's
2:10
still too big. There's functionality built into it. So, not only does it have
2:14
a microphone and speaker that's built into the bottom of the watch, which will
2:18
allow you to take calls simply by holding your hand next to your head, which I think is sort of debatable
2:23
whether that's much better than Bluetooth sitting there and just being
2:26
walking around talking to yourself, talking to an empty hand, but at least
2:30
you'll have um at least you'll be hands-free technically if you were
2:33
driving a car or whatever else. So, that's one advantage to it. And then
2:36
there's also a camera built into it. Does this have the same kind of quality
2:39
that you might get with, you know, a companion device such as the Note 3? The
2:43
answer is obviously not, but it does have the advantage of being extremely
2:48
quick to activate. So, you can see the screen turned itself on without me actually pressing that loan button
2:52
that's on the side, although you can turn it on manually. And a double click
2:56
here will launch an application of your choosing depending on what you prefer.
2:59
So, in this case, it is bound to SVoice. Other than that, most of the navigation
3:04
is done by swiping up and down on the screen. So, the defaults are swiping
3:08
down opens up the camera, which allows you to quickly take a picture. There we
3:11
go. Take a picture of my camera. Tap to record. Tap again to stop recording. So,
3:14
it does support, I think it was 15-second video clips. I'm getting the
3:18
nod from over there. And then the other main functionality that you can access
3:21
simply by swiping is the phone functionality. Now, other than that, you
3:25
might go, "Okay, well, Lus, that wasn't a whole lot." But you can swipe from side to side, and that actually gives
3:29
you access to a bunch of different cool stuff. So, notifications are one of the
3:33
big ones. Whenever something comes in, whether it's a text or a phone call or
3:37
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
3:41
desk or whatever else the case may be. This notifications right here, here we
3:46
go. Let's just open that up. Allows you to see it. And you can also see archive
3:50
notifications as well. Now, this particular one isn't configured right now, so we're not going to worry too
3:54
much about that. SVoice is another thing I really see people using a lot with
3:57
something like the Galaxy Gear because obviously while it does have a
4:01
touchcreen and while it does have a color AMOLED screen, you're not going to
4:05
be typing text messages on it. That's ridiculous. So, if you were to dictate
4:08
text messages, this is a great way to once again it comes down to that uh
4:12
driving or on the- go scenario. It's a great way to be able to use it without
4:16
actually bringing out the full-size device. Now, let's keep going through
4:19
here. Now, there's going to be customizable applications. Uh so, we'll
4:23
go ahead. There's voice memo, gallery, media controller, this is a big one for
4:27
me. And while um while the
4:30
implementation for me for the Galaxy Gear isn't as effective as the Pebble
4:34
because tactile buttons are better. So when I'm riding on my motorbike, I
4:38
actually have speakers wired up into my helmet and I've been wishing for a way
4:41
to skip tracks easily without digging my phone out of my pocket. And touchscreen
4:45
won't work for me when I'm wearing gloves, but the Pebble does. But if you don't have that particular limitation
4:49
and you're not wearing gloves all the time, having a media controller just to
4:52
skip songs and pause and play is outstanding. You can check out your
4:56
contacts logs, you can go to the camera manually. Settings are in here, but
5:01
they're mostly going to be configured through the companion application that
5:04
runs on the Note 3. However, I don't think I have it installed on this
5:07
particular one right now anyway, so we're not going to worry too much about that. And then there's the apps. So,
5:12
right now, app support is about as limited as phone support. So, you're
5:17
going to be able to use the Galaxy Gear with the Note 2, the Note 3, the S4, and
5:24
the S3 out of the box. However, Samsung is committing support for additional
5:28
devices and not even necessarily just Samsung devices. So, stay tuned for
5:32
updates. Um, that is again another advantage of something that's more open
5:36
like the Pebble where it does work with pretty much anything, but you don't get
5:40
that uh you don't get that tight integration. One of the things that they were demoing at the reveal for the for
5:45
the Galaxy Gear as well as the Note 3 was simple things like when you get a
5:49
notification here and you whip out your phone, it's automatically ready to go on
5:53
the phone itself. And that type of integration doesn't happen if you aren't using devices from within the same
5:58
family. So, you have to decide. Basically, it's down to your personal preference. Do you want something that's
6:02
more open but is going to have inherently more limited functionality or
6:05
do you want something that is less open, operates from within a more closed ecosystem or more open moving forward
6:11
and gives you enhanced functionality that you otherwise can't get. It's
6:15
available in I believe it's three different colors, black, white, and orange. And it's going to be have an
6:20
MSRP of this is where it gets tricky again over $300 here in Canada. With
6:25
that said, a little bird told me that at launch or potentially at other times,
6:30
who knows what's going to happen down the road, you might be able to get bundles with devices such as the Note 3,
6:35
which is a perfect companion device for it, and save, you know, up to maybe even
6:39
$100, which brings it down into a pricing where I'd go, okay, so compared
6:43
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
6:47
able to talk more about it in the future. But compared to something like that, what do you get? You get well a
6:52
faster processor or well tangible processing power at all. You get a color
6:56
screen. You get an ID that is better out
6:59
of the box but perhaps less customizable. And you get that enhanced
7:03
functionality with the Galaxy companion
7:07
devices. I did say app support was a little bit limited, but that doesn't
7:10
mean it's useless. So, there's already Evernote support and you can change
7:14
things like the watch faces. Although, I haven't played much around with this
7:17
one. In fact, I was going to have a device to take away with me to do a full
7:20
unboxing and overview, but this is pretty much all the hands-on time I have
7:23
with it here. So, hopefully I'll be able to bring you guys more information about it later. Thanks for checking out this
7:27
video on the Samsung Galaxy Gear, something I'm particularly excited about
7:31
because I mean, I don't think there's really any argument to be had about
7:34
wearables being the future. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
7:38
unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and leave
7:42
a comment if your feelings were somewhere in between.