Just last week, Samsung pushed out a firmware update to the Galaxy Gear, which wasn’t anything too exciting. But what is exciting is the update to Gear Manager that was pushed out today. For those that don’t know, Gear Manager is the app that manages all your settings, clock faces, apps, and more for the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. What’s so important about this update? Well the fact that it allows you to receive all notifications on your Galaxy Gear.
Let’s explain this a bit. When the Galaxy Gear was in my hands to review, I actually quite liked it. Except for one thing. When I get a Gmail or a message on Whatsapp, I tap on it to check it and it tells me I have to pick up the Galaxy Note 3 to view it. Um, why? It almost makes the smart part of the smart watch a waste. Luckily, with today’s update, you can choose to have the full notification show up on your Galaxy Gear or not. Which is the way, I think, it should have been when it launched last month.
When I reviewed the Galaxy Gear last month, this was the one thing I really didn’t like about the Gear. Since I get a ton of emails everyday, it would have been great to read the emails on my watch, without pulling out my phone. However, since I’m a heavy Gmail user, that was not possible, unfortunately. But I’m glad to see that it is possible now.
I still can’t say, that with this update the Galaxy Gear is worth the $300. But it’s getting there, definitely. I’d still tell everyone to wait for a fire sale, or wait for the next iteration of this device. It’s solidly built, but the feature set is just not there yet. I’m excited for other OEMs to release theirs and see how well or not so well theirs do. How many of you bought a Galaxy Gear? How are you liking it?