Review: Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch [Pictures and Details]

With the combination of S Voice and the speakerphone in the strap, placing and answering calls was much easier than a smartphone. I tested it in a noisy setting and had to speak to the Gear more than once to set an alarm in my smartphone or to look up a contact to place a call. But it did work without too much effort. I didn't have the device for long enough to test how well it worked when not very close to the smartphone.



One downside is that the Gear doesn't support a wireless earpiece, so both sides of any conversation can be overheard. (There is a way you can get around that, though: Link the wireless earpiece directly with the phone instead. But the Gear itself can be linked only with one device — the phone.)



The big disappointment for Samsung gadget owners is that the Gear does not work with most of its phones and tablets. The Gear needs the Galaxy Note 3, a smartphone with a giant 5.7-inch screen and a digital pen, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, a tablet computer. Both will go on sale later this month. At a later date, it will be compatible with the Galaxy S4, released earlier this year, and the Galaxy Note II, which came out late last year.

In some countries, mobile carriers will bundle the Gear with the Note III on a two-year contract. In other places, consumers will be able to buy the Gear without a phone contract.

Overall, the Gear gives us more ways to imagine what wearable computing gadgets might do for us in the future. The Gear is smart but in a limited way, as it's essentially a slave to the smartphone it's paired to.

After my brief hands-on experience, I decided the first generation of the Gear was cool but not compelling enough to convince me to ditch my current device, an iPhone.