Gadgetory

the follow-up to Samsung's last SmartWatch is basically bigger in a lot of different ways it's Josh of agar from Android Authority what's going on everybody and this is our first look at the Samsung gear s 3 now one thing that needs to be mentioned right off the bat is that the gear s3 is actually not going to be replacing the gear s2 instead it's going to be standing right alongside it and you'll see why in this first look there are two versions of the gear s3 the classic edition and the frontier edition both of which have a few subtle changes in their looks and feel but for the most part have the look of the gear s2 classic with the ridged rotating clicky bezel that still feels really nice to rotate around and it's nice to have a tactile way of doing input aside from just the touch screen to differentiate between the two versions of the gear s3 the classic basically has the look of a typical fashioned metal watch and the gear s3 frontier is supposed to be a little bit more ruggedized it has a matted feel to the metal and has flat buttons on the side as opposed to the ones that pop out on the gear s3 classic as mentioned before the bezel that rotates and has a very audible and very tactile click to it it's still really nice to use but it can also be used for a number of different other functions now when calls come in to the watch and yes you can take and make calls using the gear s3 you would be able to reject or accept the call simply by rotating it clockwise or counterclockwise and the same can be said for other notifications and different parts of the watch where you need to action upon them and this bezel wraps around the 1.3 inch Super AMOLED display that is scratch resistant using Gorilla Glass sr+ now the screen is mostly the reason why this watch is a little bit bigger than the gear s2 it's certainly a large watch so anybody looking for anything that is smaller than this will probably not be looking to the gear s3 as their next SmartWatch purchase even for me it's a little bit bulky on my wrists but the entire body of the gear s3 is IP certified for water and dust resistance with some extra military-grade protection to give it a boost in recognization our demo actually showed the gear s3 frontier in severely cold and severely hot temperatures and it was still performing perfectly in either case and users can use any regular 22 millimeter watch straps in order to change the look of it so there are no proprietary straps that are needed anymore like on the original gear s2 so the main difference between these two devices is that the frontier which is supposed to be geared towards the more outdoorsy type has LTE connectivity so even though the look and feel of the watch bring to mind things like hiking and camping LTE connectivity makes it more of a standalone device so you can actually get your notifications straight to the watch and as we mentioned before you can certainly take calls on this using the speaker and the microphone combo that's built in all of the other connections and sensors are available like the heart rate sensor and also GPS for tracking ones distance and then there are a bunch of other sensors for typical or fitness tracking capabilities there's also a couple of features that come from the gear fit too like streaming Spotify through the Wi-Fi or LTE connections depending on the version you get and of course this music can also be played through bluetooth headsets as long as they are paired to the watch local files can also be put into the storage of the gear s3 SmartWatch so you can have music on the watch always at the ready when you need it so all of this goes on top of the already existing Tizen OS ecosystem there are plenty of applications already there and a lot of new ones were being showcased during our demo and with a growing ecosystem Samsung hopes that it will bolster the experience for both the gear s3 and the gear s2 that came before it so the main addition is Samsung pay Samsung pay on the watch has to be set up on the gear s3 and from there you can hold the back button to bring up Samsung pay select a card and then use either the MST or the mag stripe reader or NFC if it's available at that particular pay station across many retailers being able to pay for items using a watch is pretty cool and Samsung pays a wide support should make the gear s3 pretty appealing to anyone who wants to do this so overall the gear s3 brings a lot of what we all remember from the gear s2 just adds a few things on top but thankfully the gear s 3 is supposed to be in addition to the line rather than replacing the gear s2 after all if anyone's looking for a more accessible size and maybe look to their SmartWatch the gear s2 is still available and doesn't really fall behind in plenty of its capabilities sure having LTE Samsung pay and also the ability to use regular watch straps could make the gear s3 a little bit more appealing but with its size at least the gear s2 is still available even then however we do like what we see with the gear s3 and we'll bring you even more about it here at Android authority as we bring you more from Berlin at Aoife 2016 so make sure you stay tuned because we are your source for all things Android