Damn my infernal pants pockets. The salesmen at the store said they would be useful for storing small personal items—car keys, loose change, lint—but he didn't warn me that they'd be a crappy place to keep my smartphone. Somehow, some way, whenever I need my phone the most, it's lodged deep in my front pocket, entrenched and inaccessible.
Sound familiar? Indeed. So a smartwatch like the Samsung's Galaxy Gear would seem to solve a lot of problems. In theory, it puts a bunch of critical smartphone functions directly on your wrist, saving you the trouble of extricating your phone from your pocket to make a phone call, snap a photo, or run a few apps.
Well, that's the promise at least. In practice, the Galaxy Gear hints and teases at what a great smartwatch could be, but never really nails any single function. It's packed with potential, and even includes support for third-party apps. But it's a challenge to use at nearly every turn, and at $300, it feels like an expensive experiment.
image: mike homnickIt's not a very encouraging leaflet to discover as soon as you unpack your new smartwatch.
Niche, nerdy, and not so cute
The Gear is not a standalone product—it requires a Bluetooth connection with your smartphone to execute almost all tasks. And it doesn't just work with any old smartphone. At launch, the Gear only works with a single phone, the philosophically polarizing, 5.7-inch behemoth that is the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (though conventional wisdom says support for Samsung's S III, S4 and Note 2 is coming).
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