Samsung pushes its Gear smartwatch with three ads in one weekend

By Trevor Mogg October 7, 2013

samsung galaxy gear smartwatch review media controller — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Check out our review of the Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch.

Now the Galaxy Gear smartwatch has landed in the US – following launches in over 140 other countries at the end of last month – Samsung is starting to push its new wearable tech with several ads rolled out over the weekend.

While two follow the same theme of becoming one of the first companies to deliver a gadget we’ve supposedly all been waiting for, the third (below) shows a guy – comedian Max Silvestri – wandering the streets of New York trying to convince passers-by that it’s a really cool piece of kit.

Silvestri runs through the watch’s various features – “it pairs with the phone in your pocket” (as long as it’s a Note 3), “if you get a text, it shows up on here”, “using S Voice I can actually send a text without taking anything out of my pocket” – and manages to elicit responses from those on the street along the lines of “what a snazzy little gadget this is”, although no one appears to actually utter the words, “I want one”.

The other two ads (below), rolled out Sunday, remind us how “futuristic” wrist-based gadgets have been used in TV shows and movies since way back. Dick Tracy (1946), The Jetsons (1962), Star Trek (1979), Knight Rider (1982), and Predator (1987) all get a mention.

“After all these years, it’s finally real,” Samsung says at the end of one of the ads. Trouble is, the Korean tech giant’s new watch appears to have left many reviewers feeling a little underwhelmed, with cons listed as limited compatibility (currently only two devices), a less-than-stellar camera, and a lack of apps.

The New York Times’ David Pogue called the watch “ambitious, impressive, even amazing” before adding that it’s also “a human-interface train wreck”. “Nobody will buy this watch, and nobody should,” Pogue says.

The $300 Galaxy Gear comes with a 1.63-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 800MHz processor, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, 1.9-megapixel camera, two microphones with noise cancelation and a speaker. The device can alert the wearer to incoming messages, place calls, capture videos as well as stills, and, as already mentioned, operates a number of apps, too.

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