Galaxy Gear - Continued Observations

On October 21 and 23 I wrote a review of my experience up to that point with the Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart Watch. I have been pretty much been using the watch most of the time since. For the most part I have enjoyed using the watch but wanted to add the following observations from the past couple of weeks.

#1 - You can't expect too much as this point from wearable technology. Many reviewers and consumers have been a little unfair to this watch. One of the biggest complaints is that the Gear is tied via Bluetooth to the Galaxy Note 2,3 or S3 and S4. It is important to understand and accept that this is the state of this technology at this time. Wearable Technology is in it's infancy so things will improve over time.

#2 - There are two complaints with this watch that I do agree with. The first is that the thing is simply too expensive. $299 is a lot to ask for something that has limited functionality.  The second complaint I have is that the band is too big. This is probably the result of the 1.9 mp camera which is in the band. In fact the watch is almost impossible to wear comfortably when wearing a long sleeve shirt. This is a real problem for professionals.

#3 - One other weird thing. Is it me or does this thing vibrate for no reason or not? From time to time the watch vibrates and there is nothing on the screen. The phone can be set to vibrate when an email or text message is received. But sometimes it just vibrates because it apparently just wants to.

 The camera on the band makes the watch larger then it needs to be.

Darn It! The watch is too big for my long sleeve shirt!

The locking mechanism is also larger then it should be. 

 

 

Will I continuing using this? Other then the little problem with long sleeve shirts, I will. There is a real sense of what I call "smartphone freedom" by not needing to pull out your smartphone every time you want to check or read your email and text messages or just to check the time. When your phone rings - so does your watch so you can quickly see who is calling and even answer the phone without grabbing for your phone.

 

The battery life remains good. The watch needs to be charged about every 2 days which you can simply do while sleeping. The dock which comes with the Gear is efficient and displays the watch nicely.

 

 

This is early technology so there will certainly be issues as real world experiences are reported. So calm down negative reviewers. After all remember that be Apollo 11 landed on the moon, there were 10 previous manned and unmanned Apollo missions as NASA worked through all the challenges of their mission.

 

You can also check out my initial review here.