Do you have the right Gear?

Wearables

Hey readers, i know you already know but still i need to repeat myself: Wearables are the next big thing. Trust me on this one. Smartwatches, smart glasses, smart clothing, smart underwear, smart shoes, smart you name it (as long as you can put it on) are the thing to wait for. The future is coming and you know what? You will be wearing it.

Preparing my gear

I have already told you i was eagerly waiting for the Galaxy Gear from the first moment i saw it being presented to the world. (In the weeks following the unpacked event i got rid of my HTC One and purchased a Galaxy S4 instead. My sole purpose was to have the right gear for the Gear.) It truly was love at first sight. It also was the first ever smartwatch attempt from a major player. Till then, there were of course some very good (and many more ranging from pretty bad to total rubbish) options but nothing from a very large manufacturer.

First impressions

So the first day one could buy the watch in Greece, i went to the shops with desire burning a hole in my pocket. It was a Saturday night and it could not get any better. Hands trembling i opened the box and took out the first ever smartwatch that actually looked good. Let me tell you this straight away: The Galaxy Gear screams quality when you see/touch it. The steel case, the sexy (as well as large) OLED screen, the strap with the embedded camera lens, the clasp are all very well put together with the end result being a sturdy device of pleasing appearance. Nothings croaks when you touch/push/caress it, completely unlike the Galaxy S smth phones. It may be the first ever Samsung mobile device that is not plastic and does not feel cheap. Still, Samsung had to destroy the magic moment. Imagine a perfect date with a perfect girl (or whatever suits your needs) that started in a perfect restaurant and continued in a perfect little bar for some (okay, maybe too many) perfect cocktails and then a perfect ride home and at the exact same moment that you have started moving your mug towards her perfect face in order to give the perfect kiss (that her body language has explicitly shown that she wants as much as you do) your stomach growls loudly and within a few (which by the way are more than enough for her pretty face to morph into a mask of perfect disgust) seconds you throw up your perfect (and mostly undigested - these carry sausages actually looked like they would be a little harsh for your stomach (note to self: do not eat my date's leftovers next time)) dinner as well as your perfect drinks. Boom. Was that vivid enough for you? No? Let me try again: It feels like staying in the Four Seasons for one night (that costs half a lifetime's savings) and discovering that the bed linen is stained with smth indeterminable. Get it now? This is how it felt when i saw the charging craddle. It is by far the flimsiest, most impractical and ill thought out, cheap feeling/looking/being piece of plastic that i have ever seen popping out of a 300 EUR worth box. The contrast between the craddle and the watch itself is unimaginable. To make things even worse it even sports the same faux leather back that the Galaxy Note 3 introduced. If anyone from the top management over at Samsung ever sees this, please do your company a big favour and kindly (being kind is not absolutely compulsory) ask the person responsible for this stylistic choice (the abominable faux leather looking cheap plastic thing, i mean) to get out of the company. And never come back. Ever. I am not a specialist in the field (or any field now that i think about it), but please please please dear Sammy consider my advice: If you want to stay out of brushed steel/aluminium/etc. and stick to plastic, DO IT THE NOKIA WAY. Simple as that.

Back to the Gear, then. Oh man, it looks good on the wrist and it feels unbelievably comfortable. The exact opposite from the Casio G-shock BT enabled watch. Just a little smth here that i need to tell you people. The initial reviews were very negative and really unfair. I was closely watching the reviews at the time and i feel that they did not do justice to this rather extraordinary first Sammy smartwatch. In fact, the early reviews were that disheartening that they may had really contributed in preventing the Gear from taking off the selves, if you see what i mean.

The review

The connection

The Gear is connected to the phone through Bluetooth. BLE to be specific. I know you already knew, but i am telling you just in case you are reading the wrong blog.

The must haves

If you want to make the Gear work you must have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or Note 2 or Galaxy S4 or S3 or S4 mini or smth else from a very distinguished and absolutely finite set that includes a handful of Sammy devices with Android ver 4.3 and hardware BLE support. At least this is what Samsungs claims.

Still, you can make do with other (non Samsung) Android BLE equipped handsets and even the evil iPhone. Yeap. Believe me or not, some limited functionality is there even when using the Gear with an iPhone.

The looks

I have already told you that: The Gear looks good. Too good, actually. Brushed steel casing, big - gorgeous - sexy - deep black OLED screen, sturdy strap seamlessly attached to the case. The camera hump is more obvious than an insect on your glass of milk and it feels to me that Sammy chose to make it protrude as much as it does in order to actively prevent these "basic instict" voyer wannabe moments. That is why the shutter release sound cannot be deactivated (as long as the watch is not tampered with).

The strap comes in a variety of colors ranging from from "wannabe CEO" to "funky is my middle name". If you pay attention you might see the tiny twin mic holes on the case, whereas you can't miss the speakerphone built into the clasp.  The design screams industrial and the four screws further intensify the raw power feeling. Just as a sidenote, there were some early reviewers complaining that the screws were not perfectly aligned (not that this was actually a design prerequisite) for Christ's sake! Get a life, people. And that's me - a gadget addict tech propellerhead nolifer - telling you. All in all, it looks pleasing to the eye and the build quality is good enough to make you think that this product could be an iDevice.

The specs

Connectivity

Bluetooth	Bluetooth® v 4.0

Display

Type	sAMOLED
Size	1.63" (41.4mm)
Resolution	320 x 320

Chipset

CPU Speed	800MHz

Memory

4GB Internal memory ＋ 512MB (RAM)**

Camera

Camera Resolution	1.9MP, BSI Sensor
Auto Focus	Yes

Sensors

Accelerometer / Gyro-sensor

Physical Specification

Dimension (HxWxD)	56.6 x 36.8 x 11.1mm
Weight	73.8g

Battery

Capacity	315mAh
Removable	No
Standby Time	Up to 150 Hours
Typical Usage Time	Up to 25 Hours

Services and Applications

Samsung Services	Samsung Apps, ChatON
Additional Features	Smart Relay, S Voice, Memographer, Voice Memo, Auto Lock, Find My Device, Media Controller, Pedometer, Stopwatch, Timer, Safety Assistance

Audio and Video

Video Playback Format	Codec: H.264 / Format: MP4
Video Recording	720p@30fps
Audio Playback Format	Codec: AAC / Format: M4A

Others

Microphone	2 Microphones (Noise Cancellation)
Speaker	1 Speaker

The battery

Sammy says the Gear can do more than 25 hours on a single charge. The early reviews claimed that it ate through the battery faster than you can say "I am deeply inclined to write a very negative review of the (possibly) best smartwatch so far because i have not spent enough time with it so that to be able to reach a fair and  rather objective conclusion and this may be only half the truth i am admitting to right now...". The Gear (as well as every battery powered gadget's) battery life should be evaluated after a few cycles have been completed. It is directly related to the screen brightness level and amount of notifications / talk time. Assuming you set the brightness to an intermmediate level, use the Gear to make half an hour's worth of phonecalls and have a rather active social (notifications) life AND ARE NOT PLAYING WITH THE CAMERA ALL THE TIME it should last for a whole day with ease. If you disable the wake up gesture (which is a huge battery hog) i have already told you about then you should expect about three days of juice. Easily. If you turn it off at nights it could do 4 or even 5 days, always with the shake to wake thing set to off. Of course, the initial FW version did a little worse but still the early reviews were unfair. All in all, the battery life is quite good. Not "Pebble great" bust still quite good and i am sure it would not actually bother the kind of person who charges his phone and laptop every night and his tablet twice a week.

The do's

What can this thing do, after all? Right out of the box, that is.

• First of all it tells the time. Kind of. I mean that the screen is normally off (you can select how much time it stays on after waking up - smth between 7 seconds and 5 minutes) and you can turn it on either by pressing the single button or by doing what you would normally do if you actually wanted to check the time on your wristwatch (the quite obvious movement of turning your wrist and bringing your hand towards your face). Magic, ladies and gentlemen. Beware though, magic always comes at a cost. The catch here is that enabling this gesture is quite a battery hog. More on this later.
• It shows notifications and vibrates accordingly. The vibration motor is strong and you adjust the level of intensity. Notifications include everything that your Galaxy phone considers to be a notification, including calls, SMSs, social network notifications and whatever else your alarmingly high number of installed apps can provide. That has not always been the case, though. Early adopters (such as me) had to make do with the orginal Gear frimware that could only notify you about a handful of events. However, even back then the community was trying to address the problem and eventually Sammy released the MK7 firmaware version that solved the issue (while at the sametime shutting the early reviewers mouths for good). Facebook, Twitter, Instagram notifications are a joy to dismiss on the watch. This actually is the what the whole smartwatch concept is all about, after all. A complimentary second screen that you can access with minimum hassle that saves time and provides some added value.
• Caller ID is there and caller photos as well. Your Galaxy's contacts are synced over to the watch. SMSs also and you can read the whole text on the watch without fetching your (too big) phone from your pocket or purse or wherever you tend to forget it. 
• Count your steps towards the future with the builtin pedometer and even display their number on the watch face screen.
• Record voice memos of up to 5 mins and auto transfers them to your Galaxy device.
• Auto lock your Galaxy phone, if the two are not within two meters of each other. It simply is the most ingenious locking mechanism for your smartphone ever conceived, although it does require a smartphone and a smartwatch. If you have it within your grasp then you do not have to unlock it, otherwise you do. Simple. Effective. Elegant. Does not require the collection of sensitive personal biometric data (are you watching this, Apple?).
• S-Voice functionality. Yes your childhood Knight Rider turbocharged dreams of speaking to your watch and commanding it to do something have finally come true. You can ask about the weather, ask it to call someone, ask it a question (we have had quite some fun at the office with one particular question...) even reply to an incoming SMS without ever touching the phone, among others. 
• Run a number of dedicated apps that can be easily downloaded from Samsung that extend the Gear's capabilities. Last time i checked there were about 75 of them including Runkeeper, EverNote, eBay and many more.

The love

There are a few things you cannot but fall in love with:

• The handsfree functionality is a great idea. I know you are not convinced. Especially those unlucky few among you who have had the misfortune to try to justify the money you wasted on the i'mwatch. I know i was really skeptic towards the whole "put a speaker and two mic holes on the watch" thing, but let me assure you. It just works. Unlike the i'mwatch the voice quality is very good unless you crank it all the way up. Other people hear you loud and clear as well. What? You don't wanna look like a dork speaking to your wrist? Totally agree. This should only happen when nobody sees you, like when you are at home doing the dishes. For all other occasions that require a minimum of socially acceptable behaviour, all you have to do is set the speaker volume to one or two (out of six) and raise your wrist to speak. Imagine raising your hand to speak to the phone, only there is no phone. The whole "talk to the hand" idea just got a tad more literal. This way only you can hear the other side and the whole gesture is absolutely normal, even though it puts some strain on your arm because you lift it a little higher than what you would do if you were  indeed holding a phone.
• The smart relay functionality is again a splendid idea. Assuming you have a compatible Galaxy phone, let's say you receive an email and the Gear vibrates to let you know. You look at the watch and see the subject of the email as well as a few words of the body and then you decide you just wanna read this on the phone itself. All you have to do is get it out of your pocket and it automatically fires up the mail client and opens that particular email you have started reading on the Gear. Thank you Samsung for this "make my miserable life a little bit better" gimmick.
• The charging time is approximately one hour and this while totally expected (the battery is 350 mAh after all) remains a very good thing.
• The Gear feels very comfortable on the wrist. My (rather smallish) wrist at least. Although i would consider it rather heavy at 74 grams it is perfect when i wear it. Having tried quite a lot smart watches so far, i can guarantee that it is the best fit i have ever experienced.

The "i wanna marry you"

The camera is FANTASTIC. Again: The camera is unbelievably good. Both stills and videos rock. Even low light photos taken with the Gear BSI camera sensor look quite good and far better than you would expect. Another bonus is the fact that the placement of the camera on your wrist facing outwards provides the opportunity for some very interesting and quite unique angles. All in all, i am amazed at how good this camera is. It may only be 1.9 megapixel but you already know that the pixel count is not the most important aspect when assessing the quality of a sensor. Uhm, almost forgot: It is by far the fastest/easiest camera you have ever used. You just activate the screen by doing the wrist gesture and then swipe down and then tap as many times as you want photos. May sound like much, but the total time needed is less than half of what Flash himself would need in order to pull the phone out of his pocket, fumble with the screen trying to unlock it, open the camera app and press the shutter onscreen button. Of course, the photos and videos are automatically transferred via BT to your Galaxy smartphone gallery for further use.

The dont's

• The Gear is supposed to sport an IP 55 rating regrding it's resistance to water and dust. As Samsung puts it: "IP55 rating means that device is protected against penetration of dust in quantity to interfere satisfactory operation and harmful ingress of water under test condition of spraying the enclosure from any direction with a stream of water from a standard 6.3mm diameter test nozzle for up to 3 minutes. According to accredited test results by Korea Labouratory Accreditation Scheme, individual results may vary." Let me make it clear for the non lawyers among you, dear readers. You cannot swim or have a shower or walk/dance in the rain with the watch on your wrist. You (of course) cannot submerge it. You cannot do the dishes if you are even a tiny little careless. You cannot put it on and work out, unless you do not sweat at all - which means that either you are not really working out or you have superhuman powers. If you do have this kind of power please ff us to November 2014 so that we can buy the iWatch and then die peacefully. You cannot live a normal life when wearing the Gear. When i say you cannot i don't actually mean that. Of course you can, but chances are the Gear will be a dead Gear pretty soon. There is no but here, Mr Pranav Mistry. It can be done and it has been done before more times than a mutant with five pairs of hands could count using all his fingers. All the latest Xperias are 100% water resistant. A smartwatch HAS TO BE water resistant. Please do not forget about it next time.
• The battery should be better. I know it is not easy at all, but someone has to do it. And that someone has to be one of the big players out there. A week's worth of juice even with heavy usage is the target. We are close to being there. A form of wireless charging would also be nice to have, provided it will not result in a thicker case. 
• A front facing camera would be nice to have. It does not have to be a great camera, mind you. Just a little something to enable video calling from your wrist. Dick Tracy wannabes will certainly appreciate that. Used to have that on the LG GD910 watch phone and it was a real head turning attraction and a great conversation opener. Sadly only male geeks like me were interested.
• What? No GPS on board? I know Samsung is saving it for the next generation, but it should have been included. It could provide some real added value for fitness enthusiasts. Besides it would be nice if we could use a navigation app offline without having to carry a smartphone as well?

The worst

• The charging/sync cradle is rubbish. I can't say if it is more impractical than ugly or the opposite. Either way it is quite feat in itself that this thing ever got through quality control over at Sammy's headquarters. It makes me wonder: Didn't anyone see it before it was put into mass production? It is badly made, makes you think that it will break any second, feels cheap and is looking ugly. Want more? In the early days it was quite difficult to find another one in case you lost or broke the original one. Which pretty much left you with a 300 Eur 74 grams paperweight in the shape of a watch. The truly unbelievable thing is that all they had to do was look at the Pebble ingenious charger cable, which in turn reminds me a lot of Macbook magsafe connectors. But no, they had to use something with a faux leather texture which we so much loved (and this is a joke ladies and gentlemen) on the latest Galaxy Note.
• The Gear is basically really compatible with five Samsung smartphones and this is about it. I understand that Sammy is basically trying to intrench and enhance it's ecosystem, but still it is shame that other Android (okay, BLE capable) devices cannot fully utilise the watch through the Gear manager. Furthermore, why not make it iPhone compatible? I know more than a few iPhone users (myself included) that would love to use the Gear, but not so much so that to exchange their phones for Galaxy S smth phones.

The hows

You interact with the Gear through it's gorgeous 1,6 inch 320*320 pixel multitouch square screen by tapping or swiping with your finger(s). There is also a hardware button on the side that can wake the watch and pressing it multiple times may lead to a predefined (by you) action. The whole menu system is quite intuitive and not as frustrating as it could have been, considering the screen size. Just in case you are sausage fingered, the kind of person who can pull single fingered chord magic when playing the piano, i would suggest that you try it out first. But if that is the case, i can guarantee you are going to have trouble with most smartwatches out there. Still, i guess that most geeks (like me) will be more than able to pinpoint the exact pixel they want with their bony little fingers. It seems to me that the ability to fiddle with tiny on screen controls has been genetically imprinted on the latest generation's DNA and things are getting better (worse) all the time. Give it enough time and we will see kids with a multitude of extremely thin tendril looking frail fingers mercilessly tapping on touchscreens from the first minute they are born. Okay, let's stop the nightmare here. It takes a few minutes to remember the finger gestures that you need but after that you certainly feel at home navigating the Gear menu. End of story.

The community

Fot those of you who haven't figured out yet, the Galaxy Gear with the official FW is a beast on a leash. Imagine a huge and extremely powerful dog that his master has scared to death with an electric collar turning it from the proud wild carnivorous uncontrollable beast it was supposed to be to a tiny weeny mousy miserable creature that whines like a little kid that did not receive the latest iPod for Christmas whereas his cousins already have it.

Thank God for the XDA developers, then. The devs over there got real crazy with the Gear from the first minute they had it in their hands. Back then the notifications were severely limited and there was no way to load non Samsung apps onto the Gear.  These were the first things to tackle, as well as the camera shutter sound.

Pretty soon we could side load apps/files via ADB commands (Sammy gave the developer menu option on the watch - go to Settings > Gear Info > and Tap Software Version 10 times and then enable USB Debugging) on both PC/Mac as well as through Wondershare MobileGo for those who are afraid of white text on a black background. Then there were two different attempts to enable Gear notifications from all phone apps. Then of course they managed to root the Gear.  For all who have been desperate to make the shutter sound go away so that to indulge into their fantasies without the risk of getting caught let me tell you it has also been done. (Creeps all over the world still celebrate that day.)

The revolution

All the above achievements made geeks more than happy, but it wasn't until the first custom ROM that tech heads the world over wept with joy. It was thanks to null ROM that the beast broke it's chains and was allowed to reach it's full potential. The Gear packs very powerful hardware and Android ver. 4.2.2  in a watch form factor. We are talking about a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU with half a gig of RAM. It may not sound like a lot compared to the latest Android super smartphones, but you can bet it is more than enough for a watch.

XDA member fOmey is the man to thank for transforming your watch to a full fledged Android jellybean mean machine. Yes, that great man has produced 25 or so revisions of his ROM and is still pumping out ROMs faster than most of us can manage to keep up with. Before ver. 11 one had to flash through Odin whereas the later ones were Custom Recovery compatible. So what?

After flashing the null ROM you have complete control over your smartwatch. You can install every app your heart desires, provided the square low res - for a smartphone that is - screen does not mess with the app's graphics. Let me make this clear here and now. With the official firmware the Gear relies one hundred percent on the Gear Manager app that should be running on your compatible Samsung smartphone for all it's communication needs with the outer world.

With null ROM you can:

• BT tether it to your smartphone and allow it to run apps that require an active internet connection.
• Install and use the whole Google Apps suite, including PlayStore and Google Now.
• Intall any keyboard you want, including Fleksy.
• Get rid of the Samsung interface and use instead a full launcher like Nova.
• Pass the GPS signal from your Android phone to the Gear via BT and run Google Maps and navigate (with voice) from your wrist (any cyclists out there?).
• Connect the Gear with non Samsung BLE capable Android phones and even with iPhones > 4s!
• Of course the functionality you get when using it with an iPhone is severely limited, but still you get:
• Basic handsfree calling with Caller ID (just number, no names & photos unfortunately).
• BT tethering of the watch to the iPhone so that all Gear natively installed apps run perfectly, e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Gmail and many many more.

You can find out more about fOmey's Gear related work in his personal website. What i can tell you is that the guy is a genius and if it was within my powers i would nominate him Sir for his contribution.

The evolution

A custom kernel for the Gear, called Triangulum, has been presented by XDA dev lilstevie who among others managed to enable the second processor core. You may now boast that your watch is burning through it's battery life (like a dehydrated man left for a couple of days on the desert would go through his favourite chilled energy drink) while running on it's full capacity of 1.6 GHz!

Other devs have created solutions for initiating canned SMSs directly from the watch, changing the background colour or having a notifier widget on the watch screen that informs the user about unread notifications.

The verdict

Is it the best smartwatch out there? That would be a definite yes, if not for the Pebble (my review here) and especially the Pebble Steel. The Pebble and the Gear are two different faces of the smartwatch coin and not directly comparable, but still they are your best options while waiting for the iWatch. If you prefer the handsfree functionality, the camera, the S-voice/Google Now and the extremely powerful fully fledged Android OS over the always on screen, the 10-day battery life, guaranteed water resistance and Android/iOS full compatibility is something that you dear reader should decide upon.

Whatever you choose though, let me tell you that the Gear is a wonderful device that really shows the way to the future. Of course it is a gen. one device and the second Gear is on it's way but there are some wonderful opportunities to grab it for half the original price! If you own a compatible Galaxy device i would definitely encourage you to search for a good bargain and catch that train to wearable's Heaven.

If not, the Pebble could be your best bet. If you want to play it safe, i think you should wait for the iWatch and the Gear 2 and then choose depending on your smartphone of choice.

The Gallery

Sunset

Interesting angle #1

Interesting angle #2

Night shot - Hilton Hotel

Night shot - Academy Buliding