Earlier today, Samsung unveiled their new smart watch called the Galaxy Gear. Samsung is the first of many phone manufacturers to partake in the re-emergence of smart watches. While we weren’t in Berlin for IFA, Samsung invited us out to Times Square to watch the live telecast and demo the devices. Our 1st impression lie below.
I’m glad Samsung made sure to do a bit more w/ their smart watch rather than making it a second screen like the Pebble. I mean it is but there’s more to it than that.
- For starters, the watch isn’t as big as it may appear in pictures. It’s actually pretty lightweight. it actually feels a bit lighter than my G-Shock. The metal face and buckle gives it a premium look to the watch.
- Navigating through the Gear is pretty simple and straightforward: swipe from left-to-right to scroll through items, swipe from top of the bezel down to go back a screen, and use the only button on the right to get to the Home screen. The 800MHz processor inside gives it a snappy response.
- The 1.63inch Super AMOLED display w/ 320 x 320 resolution offers a great display for its uses but not quite the high-end resolution screen Samsung has us used to.
- I thought it was interesting for Samsung to place the camera on the wristband, it makes it a lot easier to take a photo or record video. Decent quality for a 1.9MP shooter that records in 720p.
- The Galaxy gear has a nice Find My Phone as the Note 3 has a Find My Watch feature inside of the Gear’s software. It sends an alert pretty quickly so that it can be found. Since its being connected via Bluetooth, the connection is distance-based.
Even though it ran pretty smoothly, this wasn’t the final software as more improvements & features can be added before the official launch. After demoing the watch, I am really interested in reviewing it when it becomes available.
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