Gadgetory

it's a device that's no stranger to our labs but the Samsung Galaxy gear has recently received a rather extensive update from its manufacturer and we're here to take you through it I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is your guided tour of the mk7 update for the Samsung Galaxy gear before we get started I want to mention that yes we know the update came out a long while ago for some markets but here in the US we had to wait quite a bit longer that plus CES 2014 pushed this video back some in the queue but we think this is still worth taking a look at because of the enormity of the update in a few specific areas the first of those notifications as we mentioned in our after the buzz video for the Galaxy Note 3 the gear well it finally earns the title of SmartWatch when it launched it did not when you received a message on your phone your gear only told you to check your phone which was stupid you couldn't get any more message details unless it was a message received through the stock Samsung messaging apps and you know who wants to use those thankfully with software version mk7 you can finally get the body of emails text messages via third-party apps and Facebook notifications and so on and it actually works quite well given the gears display which is just as big and beautiful as ever the only hang-up comes when multiple notifications come in at once you still can't parse them individually and all the subject lines kind of run together obviously that's not ideal when we're looking forward to that being fixed in a future update but this was our number one complaint about the gear with its release software and we're very happy to see it's been fixed our second biggest complaint was also addressed with this update battery life and that's a good thing because not only is it inconvenient to you know charge your watch all the time but the gears charging cradle is bulky and it's not something you want to carry around when you're traveling the gear still can't match the performance of devices with less power-hungry displays like the pebble but its current endurance of about two and a half to three days between charges even with moderate to heavy message traffic means it's come quite a distance from the first software versions 25 hours speak in a distance you can now use your gear further from the note three than you could before thanks to improvements to the Bluetooth connectivity whereas before going into the next room put you at it like a fifty percent chance of disconnecting now it takes a walk of about fifty to sixty feet in my recent test I had to go outside to finally shake the connection again a welcome improvement at this point I know this video basically seems like a commercial for this update well that's because the improvements are also welcome that it's hard not to praise them and they deserve praise but two things one all this should have been present at launch there's no question in my mind that the Galaxy gear was prematurely released and to the last bullet point in samsung's release notes s voice improvements well it's supposed to be faster and well it's just not is this indeed faster you're shifting the blame you to be clear s voice is still handy on the Galaxy gear for little things like voice dialing or calling up the weather but it's not detective Lee faster in my experience after the update our advice stands if you're expecting s voice to WoW you ever well stop expecting that because it won't but those are two small blights on an otherwise excellent update while the gear is still pricy and far from perfect with this software package it's become one of the better smartwatches out there especially if you have a Samsung smartphone I'm still struggling to find much use for the camera and I'd really like to see some additions to the stalled app ecosystem but the Galaxy gear running mk7 is now right up there with the pebble as one of my favorite smartphone accessories you know the drill folks if you want to see our existing coverage of the Galaxy gear including five awesome things five awful things our initial hands on and a bunch more coverage you can view it here on YouTube or at pocketnow.com for more in-depth analysis before you go anywhere please drop us a like if you enjoyed this video leave a comment down below and be sure to stay tuned for much more coverage on the Galaxy gear including some next week until next time this has been michael fisher with PocketNow thank you for joining me and we'll see you next time