Initial Impressions of Galaxy Gear

Unfortunately over the christmas period my trusty Note N7000 met near death and in trying to resolve the issue I left the phone shop with a Note 3 and a Galaxy Gear. Note 3 I'll likely write about in future, probably as an overall ode to the Note line and form factor. For now this is a look at the Galaxy Gear it came bundled with. I've had it for shy of two weeks at the moment, I wanted to give it a spin in my usual day to day life first before I started giving an impressions on the smartwatch. Since my current watch is a Casio Waveceptor I'm going to be comparing it to that as my frame of reference.  Which means on battery life the Gear does suck considerably given the 2-3 day long battery on the Gear and the roughly 5 billion year solar power source of my Casio. Though so far I've been fine with charging up the Gear so no problems at the moment, though if I was to accidentally find myself in the 18th century then the Casio will certainly work out best in the long run. As a day to day watch, since really of all tasks that's where it should at least be fine in, if not excel, it performs admirably well. There's a variety of clock faces to choose from including traditional analog styles, and digital world clocks. My clock face of choice is the shortcut clock which I'll delve into more on later. It's actually not much larger than a regular watch, though we found my housemate can't wear it due to it being larger than his ridiculously thin wrists. So if you find you've got to choose your watches with care then I'd avoid the Gear due to ill-fit. As a smartwatch I'm warming up to it's capabilities but there's certainly many frustrations. So far it's primary "smart" function has been as a secondary screen for my notifications. Though for the most part all you can do is read the notification, you still need to check your phone to act upon most of them. The other two major smart functions I use are the media player controller, which is pretty handy to not need to take your phone out of pocket to change tracks, but I do miss having the playlist to check ahead with. It's pretty much just skip and volume buttons with album art in the background. The touch actions are simple, making them both easy to learn yet limited in functionality. You tap to open, and swipe from the top to go back. On the homescreen you can swipe from the top to quickly access the camera, more on that later, or swipe from the bottom to access the phone keypad. Unfortunately while the Gear companion app can allow you to customise a fair few features these two shortcuts are hard coded. Which sucks because while it's nice to have access to the camera on the fly,  there's rarely even been a reason to use the phone keypad on my mobile let alone watch. Pretty much anyone I care to call is a name and picture in my contacts. The Gear is also an abysmal replacement for your mobile. Having tested it out a few times there's distinct distortion in voices and it's just plain awkward to speak into your wrist.  And certainly nothing I'd do in public. In fact it's use in public is pretty much it's biggest con. While it's fine to use as a watch and you're not going to get much odd looks for that, the camera is a bit of an awkward feature. Both in a camera "snap" sound that has no option to be disabled (all other noises can be disabled), and the fact you look like you're out of some childrens spy movie. The lens is not a well integrated component. The watch in general looks fucking fantastic and then there's this big old "no I'm not here on behalf of the NSA, what were you saying?" camera lens stuck on the wrist strap. It's hardly noticeable in promotional images., but once you have it in your hand it's a massive black blister on your wrist. I imagine the black strap model it would be less noticeable, but the brown and beige models it's pretty obvious.