Hasta La Gadget!

At its Unpacked event yesterday, Samsung finally announced the much rumored Galaxy Gear smartwatch. At this point in time it can only work with the Galaxy Note 3, which was announced yesterday as well. However, the firmware update for Galaxy S4 that releases in October will make the smartwatch compatible with it too. Samsung has promised over 70 apps for Galaxy Gear initially, more will come in the future. It hasn’t revealed the names of all of the apps as yet though.

Pocket, Path and eBay are some of the apps that have been confirmed for the smartwatch at launch. RunKepper, MyFitnessPal and Tripit apps have also been confirmed. There’s also an app that allows users to take a picture of a wine bottle with their smartwatch and see relevant information about it, the app is called Vivino Wine Scanner. Might come in handy if you’re ever in the mood to boast about your extensive knowledge of wines. Evernote will make its way to Galaxy Gear as well, though it hasn’t been revealed as yet what the app will be capable of doing. While the smartwatch is capable of displaying notifications from the full Android apps of Facebook and Twitter, it isn’t known right now if the two social networks will be making native apps for Samsung’s new smartwatch.

Over 70 Apps Promised For Samsung Galaxy Gear original content from Ubergizmo.

Verizon Wireless is one of the four major US carriers who have jumped off the blocks to introduce the recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy Note 3 as well as Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and they have gone ahead of the competition by announcing that they will be accepting pre-orders for both devices this coming Friday, September 6th, from 9am onwards. While we do not have any idea as to how much the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will cost from Verizon Wireless, at least we have additional intelligence concerning the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch that will retail for $299 a pop.

This particular smartwatch will hook up to your smartphone using Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, which means carriers will most probably skip on offering a data plan for the timekeeping device. Expect the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch to roll out sometime later this month in select markets, before arriving in the US and Japan later next month. As for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, we do know that it will roll out in 140 countries this coming September 25th, followed by a debut later this year (at an unknown date at the moment) in the U.S. via Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular. Will you pick up the Galaxy Gear smartwatch when it arrives?

Verizon Offers Galaxy Note 3 And Galaxy Gear Smartwatch original content from Ubergizmo.

The first time I caught wind of the Galaxy Gear, I laughed heartily. Of course Samsung was trying to make a smartwatch — what haven’t they tried to make over the past few years? It didn’t help that some preliminary reports may have done more harm than good for the Gear’s early reputation. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much.

But now, after spending a little time with one on my wrist, I’m convinced. I was wrong… but not entirely.

Credit where credit is due, Samsung knows how to put a gadget together. I was initially wary of the size, mostly because those leaked images from this weekend pointed to a totally gargantuan device that didn’t actually seem fit for human consumption. But, between the plastic wristband and a surprisingly light main body, I could easily imagine myself forgetting I was even wearing a Gear. It’s definitely heavier than my Pebble, but not nearly enough for me to complain about the difference. Rest easy, folks, your wrists will be well-tended to.

Still, the Gear is hardly the sleekest thing you’ll see on store shelves — its aesthetics have more in common with those bulky sports watches than something you’d wear to a nice dinner, a sense of style that only gets reinforced by the built-in pedometer and readily available fitness apps (but more on them later). It’s also worth noting that the camera jutting out of the Gear’s band looks ridiculous on certain colored devices, but it’s just a fashion risk you’re going to have to take if you want to be able to boss your phone around from your wrist.

And that 1.63-inch AMOLED screen is no slouch, either. It’s sufficiently readable under harsh event lighting, and that 300×300 panel is perfectly serviceable. Speaking of serviceable, the 1.9-megapixel camera seemed to work just fine — you snap commemorative shots by tapping the screen — but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for quality once you get them off the Gear.

There’s still the whole battery thing to worry about, too, though. Samsung says people can get about a day’s worth of “regular use” out of the thing, but no one I’ve spoken to has been able to give me a firm idea of what “regular use” actually means, and I spotted at least one dead Gear during that post-event scrum. Hopefully Samsung had the forethought to under-promise and over-deliver on that front or else this font of positivity will dry up real quick.

But, as always, hardware is only a part of the equation. Right now, the Galaxy Gear’s software is simultaneously its biggest liability and its greatest advantage.

For one, it’s sort of difficult to use. Navigating the Gear is all based around swipes and taps, and the units I messed around with didn’t always seem capable of keeping up with my commands. Transitions between pages could be sluggish and jerky unless you made it a point to move really slowly. S Voice too was similarly jerky, though in fairness we were in a crowded room full of gadget nerds clamoring for a turn with the thing. And, perhaps most troubling, the Gear didn’t always fire up that screen when I lifted my arm to peer at it.

I was ready to completely dismiss the Galaxy Gear as a fool’s errand

So yes, Samsung still has plenty of fine-tuning to do, and I’m willing to forgive some pre-release hiccups as long as they get sorted out before launch. So why the praise then? Because Samsung managed to coax more than a few developers into creating simplified versions of their apps for the Gear. There are the usual suspects like RunKeeper (which keeps a running tally of your time, among other things), and more curious fare like Path (which lets you create new moments for your feed instantly) and Vivino (I wish I had a wine bottle around to scan).

Samsung says it’ll have about 70 such apps ready in time for the Gear’s launch, but prolonged developer support is what’s ultimately going to make or break the Gear as a platform. But wouldn’t you know it, there’s a caveat there, too. You can only have 10 apps loaded onto the Gear at any one time, which is much more of a hassle than it seems.

I was ready to completely dismiss the Galaxy Gear as a fool’s errand, a knee-jerk reaction to some persistent rumors made by a company that sometimes seems to have more money than sense. And even now, I’m not completely convinced that Samsung is on the right track. Limiting compatibility to a single device (even one that’s probably going to sell in ridiculous quantities) seems awfully problematic given Samsung’s generally slow record for software updates.

But having said all that, I really think Samsung is onto something here. For the briefest of moments while playing with the Gear, I felt a pang of jealousy. My Pebble is pretty damned basic by smartwatch standards, and I thought what limited functionality it brought to the table was plenty for me. But now I can have a package that does much, much, much more for a negligible increase in weight. How is a strident dork like me supposed to pass that up? I probably can’t.

The bigger question is whether regular people latch onto this thing the way Samsung is hoping it does. For a gadget that, in exchange for $299, lets them accomplish a fraction of what they could if they had just pulled their phones out of their pockets? We’ll see.

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Earlier today during IFA 2013 in Berlin, Samsung unveiled both the Galaxy Note 3 and the Galaxy Gear smart watch (be sure to check out our hands-on review for a brief idea of what to expect), and the good news is that if you were looking forward to getting your hands on either device, T-Mobile has announced that they will be offering both devices on their network. Unfortunately T-Mobile did not mention as to when either device will be made available or how much it would cost, but the carrier has launched a pre-registration pagewhere those interested can leave their particulars and be notified when more details are made available.

However with both the Galaxy Note 3 and the Galaxy Gear pegged for a release on the 25^th of September and is expected to be shipped to more than 140 countries around the world, we would expect T-Mobile to make either device available around that time frame as well, if not slightly later. The Galaxy Note 3 is the successor to the Galaxy Note 2 from 2012 and sports upgraded hardware and a redesign. The Galaxy Gear is Samsung’s smart watch effort although we’re thinking Qualcomm’s Toq could give it some competition.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 And Galaxy Gear Will Arrive On T-Mobile original content from Ubergizmo.

Samsung’s smartwatch is really real. And really awkward. We got some hands on time with the brand new ticker—called Galaxy Gear—and these are our first impressions.

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