Samsung Gear Sport India

The smartwatch market has not grown the way experts predicted it would. People have not adapted to these devices as they did with smartphones. Yet, companies continue to launch smartwatches. 

Samsung, in particular, has been a big proponent of the market, launching multiple devices every year. The Gear S3 last year was a pretty good device, meaning the Gear Sport had big shoes to fill. In essence, this new one is a very slight update to the Gear S3. Samsung has made good smartwatches over time, but that’s only in comparison to a market that has been riddled with lacklustre products in general. 

Does the Gear Sport make sense? Or is it a misstep by Samsung?

Samsung Gear Sport price and release date

At Rs 22,990, the Samsung Gear Sport is expensive. So, those looking for budget-friendly options are going to be disappointed. But it’s still a cheaper smartwatch than the Apple Watch Series 3. Released in India on 29 November last year, the Gear Sport could make a great gift for your better half.

Design and screen

As far as compact devices are concerned, the Gear Sport feels a bit heavy. It’s heavy at 67 grams, but for people who prefer slightly heavier watches, this will not be an issue.

The Gear Sport is smaller and more compact than previous Gear smartwatches. It measures 44.6 x 42.9 x 11.6 mm while maintaining the same rugged build that we like to see from expensive smartwatches.

The Gear Sport is very well-made. The base of the watch is plastic, while the edges and rotating rim are all metal. When you pick it up, you'll know that you’re getting an expensive timepiece, something which is very important when it come to watches more than in any other category. With watches, luxury is a key differentiator.

The watch doesn’t feel too tight against the wrist and also prevents unwanted movement. Surely, that depends on the strap, and you have the option to swap these out for other 20mm standard bands. You can change the watch strap from your local watch maker's store. 

The 1.2-inch Super AMOLED display is vibrant and clear - as can be expected from Samsung. The Gear Sport's default brightness remains at 6, but that's not enough for good outdoor viewing. For that, you will need to crank up the brightness to an 8 or a 9. 

The slimmer design does come at the cost of battery size, but the Samsung Gear Sport is a robust device with a strong exterior, sharp display and durable glass on top. It's a premium smartwatch which is what you’d expect for the price you are putting out. 

Apps

Samsung's watch app store is still in a nascent stage. There are a handful of apps that you can try, along with the watch faces. One thing that the company has made sure of though, is to cover the basics. When tracking fitness, the Samsung Health app comes in handy and is the one-stop shop for all fitness data. Integrated workouts, app notifications from the phone and other alerts are done well.

One can even reply to a WhatsApp text without opening the app or even popping out the phone from your pocket.

There aren't even good watch faces that are free in the store which is an indictment of how understocked the app store is. More customisable and good-looking watch faces exist in the Android and Apple ecosystems because of their strong developer base. For Samsung, it’s going to remain so until it builds a big enough user base that attracts developers to the Gear ecosystem. 

Fitness tracking

The Samsung Gear Sport is your average fitness tracker and there's nothing special about it. The steps and calorie count data are pretty accurate and give you a general idea as to how much you have walked. It essentially translates into information about how active you are every day and synchronises seamlessly with the Samsung Health app.

Samsung Gear Sport also tracks the flight of stairs climbed, for which a user can also set certain goals and track their activities.

The watch detects inactiveness and sends out an alert urging the user to perform a set of stretching movements. It is beneficial for users who have desk jobs. A little motivation in terms of this alert goes a long way to overcome prolonged immobility. 

However, the Gear Sport also promises to be a great companion for tracking your calorie intake - which it’s really not. You can input the number of calories you’re eating during a meal manually but you’re basically just guessing unless you happen to know the amount precisely. 

We feel it’s a gimmick through and through until Samsung plans on having a calorie chart built in the app through which users can manually enter data based on what they are consuming.

You can also input water and caffeine intake records. Water and caffeine intake is also required to be filed in manually which is fallible and defeats the purpose.

Coming to sleep tracking, which is one of the better elements of the Gear Sport, you are served with a notification on waking up and alternatively if you launch the Samsung Health app.

The Health app can make good suggestions to help you sleep better. But you will constantly miss this on days when you charge the watch overnight. 

As mentioned before, Samsung Health is a really good app for tracking everything possible with the Gear Sport and watch graphs of calorie intake, water intake, sleep, fitness etc. There just isn’t much that the Gear Sport does to make the health app more useful.

It could have been so much more insightful if it could read the data in a more efficient way but if checking how many steps you took on a certain day or the number of levels you climbed is what you are looking for, this is where you will find that.

Samsung hasn't done anything new with the Gear Sport which is a bummer. Considering the number of resources it has, the company can become a dominating force in the wearable segment. 

A hint or suggestion at the right time by learning from user's data can go a long way to help Samsung increase its adoption ratio.

Interface

The interface of the Gear Sport is simple, but it becomes complicated because raise to wake is choppy. The screen often doesn’t turn on when you raise your wrist which is an indication of how bad the sensor is. You can leave the screen on, but that drops the battery life far too much.

Case in point - when you try to see the time. You raise your wrist and nothing happens. It’s even worse when you start noticing it because it happens more than often. What’s worse is that tapping the screen won't wake it. This is something we think Samsung should look into. The workaround is to rotate the bezel or press a button even if you want to see the time.

The idea of spinning the bezel is unique but it feels awkward if you’re just going about the interface. The reason behind this, we feel, is the fact that there are just too many screens to interact with if one keeps rotating the bezel and has to spin it in the opposite direction if they need to go back to the previous screen. Often your hand also gets in the way of seeing what you want.

A case when the rotating bezel makes sense is when reading through lists as the screen is too small to swipe up. But for selecting apps, it doesn’t make it easy as we often tapped on the wrong app which is unintuitive to the process. It's something you might get used to, but it didn't feel like the cleanest way of doing things.

Functionalities like the pull-down shade from the top of the watch's screen opening a set of quick action buttons are nice, and being able to rearrange them is really useful.

There are two buttons on the side of the Gear Sport - the top button serves as the back key and can also pause workouts. The bottom button is supposed to open apps and head back to the home screen.

For some inexplicable reason, Samsung’s own voice assistant, Bixby didn’t make it to the watch yet. Instead, it comes with 'S Voice', the company’s rudimentary method of giving voice commands which isn't accurate enough.

Battery Life

The Samsung Gear S3 had a pretty solid track record when it came to battery life, often lasting for up to four days, which was one of the things we loved about it.

The Gear Sport has a smaller battery which is why the duration is down to about two and a half days after which it needs to be put on charge.

Samsung supplies a wireless charging dock which connects via microUSB. If you regularly put it on the charger every two or three days it will rarely run out of juice.

However, things like sleep tracking are missed as most people are habitual of putting their devices on charge overnight. All of this would have been manageable if the battery lasted for at least four to five days.

It would have been nice to see Samsung not compromising on fundamentals with the Gear Sport.

Verdict

While the Samsung Gear Sport manages to do the basics just fine like getting the step count data to tracking that odd run well, to all manner of notifications; there are so many tiny bits throughout the device that really spoil the experience. 

From lower battery life in comparison to previous Gear smartwatches to the somewhat awkward rotating bezel and the non-existant voice assistant, it's hard to see what Samsung has brought here.

For the most part, the Gear Sport is a dumb tracker which only pushes you to do better depending on how you did last day. What fitness bands need right now is to get smart and become better at understanding all the data so as to present users with appropriate ways of keeping themselves fit.

Who's it for?

The Gear Sport is essentially a fitness tracker that also has the advantage of having some smartwatch capabilities and hence is designed for those who are a bit more active and want to keep an eye on their fitness. The additional swim tracking system with its sheer range of workouts it can guide you through is amazing.

If you're thinking about buying this watch we'd suggest you have a Samsung phone to go alongside as other models and operating systems won't pack the full range of features.

You are getting a vibrant OLED screen, easy-to-see notifications and a smartwatch that's easier to use than ever. That’s a lot to go on and the Gear Sport does all of those things that entice most smartwatch fans.

Should you buy it?

While the Samsung Gear Sport is the best smartwatch Samsung has to offer, it’s not much different from the Gear S3.

Agreed that the Sport is sleek, has more functionalities than all other Gear watches and is backed by an advanced OS. If only it had the same three to four-day battery backup as the Gear S3, it would have been a no-brainer to buy the Gear Sport.

But that battery life is a real issue, and the Gear S3 isn’t that much larger on the wrist and is still a bit cheaper to buy.

If you want the latest Samsung has to offer regardless of price, and design along with a little compromise on battery life, then the Gear Sport is the way to go, but if you don't want to make that compromise, the Gear S3 will do just fine.