Testing the Samsung Galaxy Gear

Galaxy Gear is the smart watch (smartwatch) the latest and one of the latest creations of Samsung in the field of mobile gadgets. Rival Sony Smartwatch 2, the Samsung Galaxy Gear is a companion to smartphones and tablets Samsung Galaxy and has a touch screen of 1.63 inches.

With its onboard camera and its ability to make and receive calls directly from your wrist, the Samsung Galaxy Gear tries to satisfy many needs. But is that enough to justify its price turns around 300 euros?

The Design

With the Galaxy Gear, the design team at Samsung has managed to create a device to design both attractive and worthy of a high-end device. With its case and stainless steel buckle, the Samsung Galaxy Gear actually looks like a high-end object. The plastic strap is easily adjustable and buckle trust. No chance she retires once tightened. The shows has a massive appearance compared to a traditional watch, but is forgotten once the wrist.

With a weight of only 73.8 grams, it is not particularly heavy and not an issue of comfort after a day of use. On top of that, with a thickness of 11.1 mm, the watch is barely thicker than your phone.

Stainless steel Samsung Galax Gear gives it a solid look. Unfortunately, after a week of use, the loop is covered with scrapes and scratches that detract from the overall appearance. What is worrying is that the damage was caused by the friction of the loop against a desk. It is expected more resistance than that when a device you pay 300 euros.

Scratches apart problems, Samsung Galaxy Gear has a very sleek design. The only spark of the watch button gives it a sophisticated look ... and all fairly standard amount for a watch. With a pair of microphones noise attenuators incorporated gracefully in the loop, the only major problem with the Galaxy Gear in terms of design comes from his camera. The bump formed by it and swear bother with otherwise fine and elegant look of the watch.

In a revealing momentum desire Samsung devices out more fashionable in design, the manufacturer has decided to propose Gear in several colors. The watch is available in black and gray, orange, pink, lime green and beige.

The screen

Galaxy Gear happens when the size of smartphone screens is increasing. And as expected, the watch has a relatively compact display. The 1.63 inch screen Gear brings a breath of freshness in the world of giants Smartphones and did exactly what we asked. Although the resolution is 320 x 320 pixels, which is more than enough to give the small Super AMOLED screen is sharp and detailed picture. The density of 275 PPI (pixels per inch) is actually similar to that of a 7-inch tablet in full HD.

Although small, the Galaxy Gear has all the touch controls smartphone which it is connected. The interface type "touch and drag" (swipe) is fast and can easily navigate it. It is also possible to use two fingers to zoom in the photo gallery. The ability to watch closer pictures directly from the watch highlights the potential of the smartwatch as additional an apparatus of a smartphone, but still independent.

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy Gear offers bright colors, but a little low contrast. The lack of subtlety and shades are very similar. The screen is still more detailed than the Sony Smartwatch 2 and 220 x 176 pixels.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear honored reputation of Samsung screens and the screen has good viewing angles, which is very useful for a mobile device.

Features and performance

The Samsung Galaxy Gear uses a single-core 800MHz processor, which is more than enough to handle the tasks of the watch. Backed by 512 MB of RAM memory, the interface is smooth although some applications (contacts and call log for example) take longer to start than we would like.

Unlike Sony Smartwatch 2, the Samsung Galaxy Gear is only compatible with Samsung phones. Worse, at the time these lines are written, it only works with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 ( Find our test on Galaxy Note 3 ). However Samsung has confirmed that the watch will work with all mobiles that come with Android 4.3 at least, remains to be seen how it will be done.

Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, some of the leading features of the Samsung Galaxy Gear lack of fluidity and ease.

Although it is possible to receive notifications when an E-mail receipt or a tweet, it is impossible to read the entire message on the watch. Instead, the watch offers to open the message on the smartphone or tablet using the Smart Relay technology. It is useful to be aware of an e-mail or receipt of a message on the social networks, but the lack of detail makes the watch much less useful. It is possible to play against the SMS directly on the Gear.

Another disappointment is the Voice Command Voice S incorporated into the Samsung Galaxy Gear. In theory, it allows you to call and dictate text messages, but in practice the system is difficult to understand what is being asked. The most common answer is fairly boring, we did not understand ... ". This is far from an option that saves time and try to use S Voice often takes more time than doing the task at hand.

The ability to make and receive calls from the Gear is welcome and impressive audio quality. The touch screen makes it easy task and call options Gear work perfectly. What is less attractive, however, is the idiot that you can have when you talk to your wrist like a spy TV series of the 1980s. During testing, we often (too) embarrassed to answer calls in the presence of others.

If there is one area where the Samsung Galaxy Gear does wonders is as physical activity tracker, thanks to the accelerometer and gyro sensor can use the watch as a pedometer. By communicating with the connected device using the Samsung Application S Health, the watch allows you to track your daily number of steps, set goals and select training sessions already registered. This makes a good substitute Gear Nike Fuelband, but it is not enough to make us forget all the negative aspects of the Gear.

Regarding overall performance, the Samsung Galaxy Gear made some achievements, but often proves too slow. Receive alerts when receiving an e-mail or a message on twitter would be more useful if it was possible to read them. Although it is possible to read SMS messages in their entirety, an option to respond since the wrist would be welcome in the future.

Applications

At the time this article is written, the list of applications available for the Samsung Galaxy Gear passed the shop Windows Phone application packed. Less than 100 applications are available, and unfortunately it is not, there is a case where quality prevails over quantity. Most applications are useless, so mini-games to roll the dice for example.

Evernote is one of the few jewelry present on the application of the Galaxy Gear shop. The application provides access to the shopping lists and notes from the show. But useful applications like evernote are the exception rather than the rule and do not really justify the high price of the watch. Basically, the Galaxy Gear does nothing transcendent.

The Camera

The camera is already a prerequisite on smartphones and tablets. Samsung has decided that holders of shows also need to take pictures quickly. Galaxy Gear therefore has a 1.9 megapixel camera built into the strap

From the point of view of image quality, the Samsung Galaxy Gear is comparable to the front camera found on the Galaxy S4. In good lighting conditions, the images are of sufficient quality to twitter or instagram, but that's about it. The camera, however, encounter difficulties in low light conditions, or whenever we try to take detailed pictures. Color management also leaves much to be desired, with dull and dark images. The shutter speed is itself incredibly slow.

Although Gear can shoot in 720p HD at 30 frames per second, video can not be longer than 15 seconds. The only other option is the "shoot and sound" that lets you shoot while adding audio.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear has 4 GB of internal storage. However, this ability a bit limited keeps a few dozen images, even when no smartphone is connected to the watch.

The camera of the Samsung Galaxy Gear is more luxury than necessity and can not help thinking that his presence greatly inflated the price of the watch to little end. On top of that, if the watch has less than 15% of battery, the camera can not be used.

Here are some pictures that were taken by our colleagues DigitalTrends from Galaxy Gear

  

Autonomy and connectivity

The battery life is another downside of the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Unlike a classic watch that will 90 years (so to speak, of course) without charging the battery, the Gear must be recharged every night. Although Samsung claims that the 315mAh battery supports 25 hours of continuous use, it is much too ambitious in our tests.

Despite the use of a Bluetooth 4.0 low energy consumption to connect the smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Gear consumes a lot (too much for my taste) energy. Given its limited autonomy recharge regularly Gear is essential, but not necessarily easy. To promote the design, Samsung has omitted the MicroUSB port, and instead chose to join the watch to a separate dock.

This means that to charge the Gear, you need to take the dock with you, or charge the watch at night. Good news however, the Gear loads quickly, and passes a critical battery level to a full battery in less than an hour.

Despite a range not necessarily at the top, connectivity is perfect and we never lost the signal connecting the Bluetooth watch and Smartphone during the test. The signal range is satisfactory since it still works when the watch and the smartphone are 30 meters apart.

Should You Buy the Samsung Galaxy Gear?

Frankly, no, not this first generation anyway. The Samsung Galaxy Gear is a base from which to create from Samsung is a real Smartwatch, but it is not a recommended item in the state. In a recent interview, Samsung executives have even said "it lacked something special" to the watch.

As the original Smartwatch it is, the novelty wears off quickly. Although you can make and receive calls, but also take pictures with the Gear, you'll look like an idiot or a show-off in the making. After all depends on where you live.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Gear could be the device that has made ​​known to the public smart watches, but it is certainly not one that will convince the majority of consumers. The Gear has few applications, far too expensive and looks like a shoddy device, created for the sole purpose of taking the speed competition and fails to exploit its potential.

To conclude, I would say we liked: the intuitive interface, the camera is good quality (although it would have been better), and the ability to receive calls and SMS from your visit your wrist. We disliked: The inability to read alerts when new e-mail, the price is very high and the low battery.