If you’ve ever looked at your phone and wished you could transplant it onto your wrist, then Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear Smartwatch has got you covered. The Galaxy Gear Smartwatch can actually perform quite a few functions that you would normally do with your phone, but can it replace your phone, or even compliment in a way that makes it a desirable accessory?
Well, after spending a few days with it constantly on my wrist, I can report back some of my initial impressions of the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch, the first of its kind that I’ve had a chance to test out.
From an ergonomic point of view, the watch was quite comfortable. However, from the moment I put it on there was one function I had an issue with – as an actual watch.
See, the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch does not have its screen on at all times, making it impossible to simply glance at the watch for the time. It seems like a small thing, but given the purpose of a watch is to well, tell the time, this wasn’t a great start.
On the flipside, you can really geek out and use the watch as a phone. The Galaxy Gear Smartwatch has an inbuilt dialler as well as a microphone/speaker on the wristband, and you can bring your hand up with an invisible phone grip and show off the feature to your amazed or… skeptical friends. This is a novelty that quickly wore off, as most times I didn’t want the contents of my conversations leaking out into the public environment.
The big caveat with that feature, and most others on the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch is that it needs to be tethered to your phone in order to work, and it is restricted to a handful of Samsung Galaxy devices.
The biggest function for the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch is as a notifier. You can see SMS messages, emails and other notifications from other apps.
Controlling your music player, taking surreptitious photos from your wrist and replying to your messages are also extended functions of this new device. For all the detail and demonstrations on what you can do on the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch, here’s my interview with, um… myself! Seriously.