Review Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch

Samsung Galaxy Gear keeps you updated with glance notifications, so you can keep up with calls, texts and emails.

Compatible with Galaxy Note 3 and other Galaxy smartphones

1.63 inch Super AMOLED screen and 1.9 Megapixel camera

Place calls and answer them directly from your Galaxy Gear

Enjoy the S Voice personal assistant right on your wrist

Includes Samsung Galaxy Gear, wall charger, charging cradle, quick start guide

I am using this watch with the Note 3. The phone comes in packaging of the same style as the Note 3. In the box you'll find the watch, a Micro USB charger, the charging "cradle", and some manuals. Before being able to make use of the watch it is going to need to be charged; it had just enough power to tell me to charge it.

I let the watch charge to 100% and installed the application "Gear Manager" from the Samsung app store. Since Bluetooth and NFC were already enabled on my phone once the application was installed all I needed to do was tap the phone to the back of the charger. The devices discovered each other and I only had to click on OK on the phone and watch to complete the pairing.

As soon as the watch was paired I got to see alerts coming up on the phone and the watch; an incoming text message shows up on both. It's possible to select the notifications that will show up on the phone (SMS, E-Mail, Facebook, Google Hangouts, phone calls, and more). With setup complete I started using the watch. While you can have notifications show for almost any application one could divide the notifications into two groups. There are the notifications from the applications that Gear Manager recognize which let you see information on the notification (ex: the name of a person that send an instant message along with the content of the message) or those that contain no information other than the name of the application that is trying to notify you (ex:For a Facebook notification the watch will tell you to look at your device for details).

The watch has a single multi-purpose button on the right side and a touch screen. The button when double-pressed by default will cause the watch to start listening for a voice command. It can be changed as a short-cut for some other action. If you've already used S-voice on your phone then you already have an idea the commands that can be issued to it. "Call Jenny", "Text Jim", "What's the weather like?", "When's my next appointment." The command set that can be used is a subset of the S-voice command set. I've found that some commands (such as those centered on street navigation) can't be issued through the watch.

Any time I lift my arm to look at the watch it automatically detects this motion and turns on the screen. While this is generally just what I need it to do there are times when it turns on when I don't need to see the display, such as when I am driving. In general I take off the watch when I am driving and put it on its charger. It general recharges at a rate of slightly faster than 1% per minute.

There's an option to have the watch unlock the phone. With this option enabled once you walk more than several feet from your watch the screen automatically locks. When you come close to your watch it automatically unlocks.