Gadgetory

the age of the SmartWatch has arrived now according to Samsung if you don't believe it turn on your TV to see the company's nostalgic ads pushing its new Galaxy gear which looks suspiciously similar to another company's ads Hawking another product a half decade ago well we've been using the gear for about a week and we found a lot to like about Samsung's take on the future of wearable computing see our companion video 5 awesome things about the Galaxy gear for those in this installment though we're going to take a look at the new watches less desirable features i'm michael fisher with pocket now here's 5 awful things about the Samsung Galaxy gear one of the great things about wristwatches is their utility pocket watches fell out of vogue for a few reasons of course unfortunately and one of the big reasons was simply the added practicality of a timepiece you could wear on your wrist instead of withdraw from a pocket Samsung goes a long way toward replicating that practicality in the age of the smartphone but falls short of making the gear waterproof now the gear is rated to ip55 for splash resistance and mild dust exposure but it won't take the kind of prolonged submersion that many standard wristwatches can we at least like to have seen Samsung maker of the Galaxy s4 active match the immersion and ingress ratings of some of its competitors ok we opened with a softball you might not care about water resistance but odds are you're gonna care about battery life especially when you start charging your gear every night because you're going to have to sure you can eke out one and a half to two days even if you're not the type to get a lot of notifications and you're very very judicious with your screen on time but that's still three times a week you need to charge your watch in addition to your smartphone in addition to your tablet in addition to your Fitbit or whatever other accessories you carry around it gets tiresome and no matter how good Samsung's made its charging cradle look it's still a cumbersome little charger that's a pain to carry along on overnight trips away from home but you can get past that odds are if you're considering a SmartWatch you're willing to accept some compromise in exchange for the core convenience of carrying such a device the notifications on your wrist and yes the gear does a nice job of letting you view and dismiss things like inbound calls and calendar appointments and you can even preview texts and emails provided they come in via the stock Samsung Apps for SMS and email but woe be unto the person who uses an alternate mailbox application like the far superior Gmail app for email or the more flexible Google Voice app for SMS the gear won't show messages received through those instead it'll make you view them on the phone and that goes for Facebook as well and Twitter and Instagram and basically anything that's not a stock Samsung messaging application and that sucks because those Samsung Apps kind of suck when even if they didn't it's confining to be forced to use any custom app just to get notifications sent to an accessory not every watch requires this after all speaking of compatibility the gear is not compatible with almost anything almost everyone who's noticed my gear in public has asked if it will work with his or her phone my reply is always the same question do you have a recent Samsung Galaxy device if yes then the answer is maybe eventually if not then the answer is no the long and short of it is you can only use the Galaxy gear with a Samsung device that's a list that's growing steadily by the day yes and it makes all the business sense in the world for Samsung to continue developing its own exclusive ecosystem it's just disappointing because you shouldn't need to put up with TouchWiz on your phone to experience awesomeness on your wrist and finally you also shouldn't have to shell out 300 bones for the privilege yes the gear is well made and feature packed and a desirable gadget in a lot of ways but it's also got all the hallmarks of a first generation product with all the pitfalls that come along with that description we don't generally recommend first generation products from any manufacturer and we think Samsung is asking a bit much given the gears current state it's a very cool gadget but it's not $300 cool not yet and once again folks if you want the brighter perspective on all this hop on over to our companion video 5 awesome things about the Samsung Galaxy gear and if you bought a gear of your own drop a comment down below let us know how the experience has been for you and feel free to toss us a few questions you need answered and we'll try and get around to those also hop on over to our comparison video where we compare the Galaxy gear with the pebble smartwatch and stay tuned for a lot more from pocket now in the days ahead follow us on social media so you don't miss any of it but most importantly thank you very much for watching this has been michael fisher with PocketNow we'll see you soon you