 Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure, and fully private. Click now to learn more. So guys, we're hands-on with the Galaxy Gear, which as you can see, if you were to measure the luxuriousness of a watch by the size compared to the pep- No, I'm just messing with you guys. It's not actually that big. So one of my big complaints about smart devices is often the use of micro-USB, however, I actually love the way Samsung's implemented this with the Galaxy Gear. So it has a little charging cradle that sits around it. So this plugs in via micro-USB, so you can see there's a connector here on the back, so that lives on your nightstand because really the device is good for about 24 hours of battery life, is about what they're quoting. So if you can get through a full day, then great, and if you can get through two days, then so much the better if you're a very light user, but heavy users are expected to get a day out of it. So then once we've actually taken that off, I'll show you guys how you adjust the strap. Now I'm going to draw a few sort of comparisons to the Pebble. I recently got a Pebble, so I would consider this to be more like the Toyota Yaris of the smartwatch sort of world, and I'd expect this to be more like a Cadillac. So we'll start with the basics of what's out there right now. So hardware buttons as opposed to having a touchscreen, very sort of rudimentary look and feel to it. I kind of regret ordering the orange one because to me it feels kind of like the sort of thing a 12-year-old would wear, has kind of a rubber strap that comes with it out of the box, but the good news is you can change it. Now let's go ahead and compare that to the Galaxy Gear. It has a 1.68-inch AMOLED screen, which is touchscreen and supports swiping in from different directions. So this enables a lot of different functionality. So I'm going to go ahead and put it on. Hopefully I've got it at the right size here. That should give you some idea how it looks. I'm personally not a huge fan of the whole rubberized or plasticky watch surface here, and unfortunately, unlike the Pebble, you can't change it, but there's a good reason for that, and that's because there is functionality built into the... Well, then I'm going to move this again because apparently it's still too big. There's functionality built into it. So not only does it have a microphone and speaker that's built into the bottom of the watch, which will allow you to take calls simply by holding your hand next to your head, which I think is sort of debatable whether that's much better than Bluetooth sitting there and just being walking around talking to yourself, talking to an empty hand, but at least you'll be hands-free, technically, if you were driving a car or whatever else. So that's one advantage to it. And then there's also a camera built into it. Does this have the same kind of quality that you might get with, you know, a companion device such as the Note 3? The answer is obviously not, but it does have the advantage of being extremely quick to activate. So you can see the screen turned itself on without me actually pressing that lone button that's on the side, although you can turn it on manually, and a double-click here will launch an application of your choosing depending on what you prefer. So in this case, it is bound to S voice. Other than that, most of the navigation is done by swiping up and down on the screen. So the defaults are swiping down opens up the camera, which allows you to quickly take a picture. There you go. Take a picture of my camera. Tap to record. Tap again to stop recording. So it does support, I think it was 15-second video clips. I'm getting the nod from over there. And then the other main functionality that you can access simply by swiping is the phone functionality. Now, other than that, you might go, okay, well, Linus, that wasn't a whole lot, but you can swipe from side to side, and that actually gives you access to a bunch of different cool stuff. So notifications are one of the big ones. Whenever something comes in, whether it's a text or a phone call or whatever else, it's going to go to your phone, but your phone might be in your pocket or it might be face down on your desk, or whatever else the case may be. This notifications right here, here we go, let's just open that up, allows you to see it, and you can also see archive notifications as well. Now, this particular one isn't configured right now, so we're not going to worry too much about that. S Voice is another thing I really see people using a lot with something like the Galaxy Gear, because obviously, while it does have a touch screen and while it does have a color AMOLED screen, you're not going to be typing text messages on it. That's ridiculous. So if you were to dictate text messages, this is a great way to, once again, it comes down to that driving or on-the-go scenario. It's a great way to be able to use it without actually bringing out the full-size device. Now, let's keep going through here. Now, there's going to be customizable applications. So we'll go ahead, there's Voice Memo, Gallery, Media Controller. This is a big one for me. And while the implementation for me for the Galaxy Gear isn't as effective as the Pebble, because tactile buttons are better. So when I'm riding on my motorbike, I actually have speakers wired up into my helmet, and I've been wishing for a way to skip tracks easily without digging my phone out of my pocket. And touch screen won't work for me when I'm wearing gloves, but the Pebble does. But if you don't have that particular limitation and you're not wearing gloves all the time, having a media controller just to skip songs and pause and play is outstanding. You can check out your contacts, logs, you can go to the camera manually. Settings are in here, but they're mostly going to be configured through the companion application that runs on the Note 3. However, I don't think I have it installed on this particular one right now anyway, so we're not going to worry too much about that. And then there's the apps. So right now, app support is about as limited as phone support. So you're going to be able to use the Galaxy Gear with the Note 2, the Note 3, the S4, and the S3 out of the box. However, Samsung is committing support for additional devices and not even necessarily just Samsung devices. So stay tuned for updates. That is, again, another advantage of something that's more open like the Pebble, where it does work with pretty much anything. But you don't get that tight integration. One of the things that they were demoing at the reveal for the Galaxy Gear as well as the Note 3 was simple things like when you get a notification here and you whip out your phone, it's automatically ready to go on the phone itself. And that type of integration doesn't happen if you aren't using devices from within the same family. So you have to decide. Basically, it's down to your personal preference. Do you want something that's more open but is going to have inherently more limited functionality? Or do you want something that is less open, operates from within a more closed ecosystem or more open moving forward, and gives you enhanced functionality that you otherwise can't get? It's available in, I believe, it's three different colors, black, white, and orange. And it's going to have an MSRP of, this is where it gets tricky again, over $300 here in Canada. But with that said, a little bird told me that at launch or potentially at other times, who knows what's going to happen down the road, you might be able to get bundles with devices such as the Note 3, which is a perfect companion device for it, and save up to maybe even $100, which brings it down into a pricing where I'd go, okay, so compared to the Pebble, I know I'm drawing that comparison a lot, but it's the only smartwatch I have so far, so I'll be able to talk more about it in the future. But compared to something like that, what do you get? You get, well, a faster processor or, well, tangible processing power at all. You get a color screen. You get an ID that is better out of the box but perhaps less customizable. And you get that enhanced functionality with the Galaxy companion devices. I did say app support was a little bit limited, but that doesn't mean it's useless, so there's already Evernote support, and you can change things like the watch faces, although I haven't played much around with this one. In fact, I was going to have a device to take away with me to do a full unboxing and overview, but this is pretty much all the hands-on time I have with it here, so hopefully I'll be able to bring you guys more information about it later. Thanks for checking out this video on the Samsung Galaxy Gear, something I'm particularly excited about because I mean, I don't think there's really any argument to be had about wearables being the future. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and leave a comment if your feelings were somewhere in between.