Samsung's latest Gear smartwatch is like a smartphone on your wrist

The Samsung Gear S3 is an excellent smartwatch just a few ticks short of perfection. With built-in LTE and GPS it’s more connected than rivals, but noticeably thicker as well.

The device gets off on the right foot by looking and feeling like a watch. Whatever you think of wearables, the more they look like the familiar and the less like technology, the better. Apple splits the difference with its Apple Watch Series 2; it has hints of classic watch design (see the digital crown) but also telegraphs “I’m wearing the future.”

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But where the Apple Watch is smooth and instantly comfortable to wear, the larger, bulkier (46 x 49 x 12.9 mm) and more retro-looking Samsung Gear S3 Frontier takes some getting used to. 

Even my largest analog watch, a self-winding Bulova is smaller than the S3, and I initially chaffed at wearing something that just barely slid inside my shirt-sleeve. However, the functionality, attractive display and surprising power eventually won me over. Plus, the more I wore the S3, the more I forgot I was wearing it.

Image: lili sams/mashable

That design, by the way, maintains one of the Gear S2’s best features: the rotating bezel. In the new S3 Frontier, this rather subtle ring of metal has transformed into something that would be at home on, say, a Rolex. On those watches, the rotating bezel is an analog tool used to set or adjust time markers, or keep track of additional time zones. In the Gear S3, the bezel is a digital navigation device. You can use it to scroll through app icons, access information and even control some apps. Instead of turning smoothly, there are precisely spaced bumps that help you know when you moved from one option or app to the next. I liked the bezel before and find it just as effective now.

The bezel is backed by a pair of wide, rubberized buttons (despite the classic look, there’s no crown on this smartwatch). The lower button gives you instant access to your apps... sort of. A press opens the app circle, but you still have to tap the screen to open an app. Not sure why I couldn’t press the button, rotate to an app and press again to launch. The top button is used to go back to your previous screen and to launch Samsung Pay with a long press.

You can also navigate watch widgets by swiping left or right. Swiping down from the top accesses the watch’s control panel (music, phone, airplane mode, Do Not Disturb, audio and brightness).

More than just a pretty face

Samsung's homegrown Tizen mobile OS makes excellent use of the 360 x 360 circular display. Every pixel of the circular interface is available for watch faces and apps. The faces, which you change by holding your finger down on the screen and then swiping, look excellent and at a distance could be mistaken for physical watch faces (at least some of them could). If you don’t like the watch faces available by default on the Gear S3, there are many, many options in the Samsung Gear app store. In fact, I counted more watch face options than actual apps.

Image: lili sams/mashable

Image: lili sams/mashable

In general, I’m not a big fan of using full-blown apps on tiny smartwatch screens. It’s not comfortable and you look ridiculous doing it. That said, I was generally impressed with what you can do on the S3 screen. For example, I played a very good-looking tiny version of Fruit Ninja on the Gear S3, using my fingers to slice through flying fruit.

Not every app nails it, though. A Rubik’s Cube game filled the screen with the classic cube, but didn’t let me use the bezel to turn the puzzle cube an Asphalt racing game tries to employ the bezel for steering, but it was so sluggish and unresponsive that I gave up.

On the call

There’s good reason the Gear S3 is so big. Samsung stuffed it full of battery life (two days on a charge), GPS (it can track your workout route just like the Apple Watch Series 2) and LTE. 

I don’t entirely understand why having cell services inside a smartwatch is such a wonderful or important thing. If I am out and about, I have my phone on me. It’s connected to the smartwatch and can handle the calls, while the smartwatch does its job and notifies me that people are calling, texting or emailing me. On the other hand, if I did a lot of running (which I don't) and wanted to leave my phone behind, the ability to send and receive calls with just my watch would be pretty cool.

Image: lili sams/mashable

Image: lili sams/mashable

Sending and receiving calls is easy enough on the watch. I especially liked using S Voice to enter the phone number, though the Gear S3 voice assistant sounds like a bad movie imitation of a sentient digital being. Audio quality on calls is fine, but I still felt silly talking into my watch. (Or was I the coolest guy in town? You decide.)

The Gear S3 has an excellent messaging app that lets you send everything from text to emojis, doodles and voice recordings. Even without a Bluetooth-tethered phone, I could send text and emojis. Doodles and voice clips seemed to require the phone.

Work it

The future of smartwatches is clearly intertwined with fitness devices. Millennials, in particular, seem disinterested in smart timekeepers unless they can also track their heart rate and regular trips to the gym. Samsung’s Gear S3 acquits itself nicely in the department. It can track all kinds of workouts (except for strength-training. None of the smartwatches I’ve tried offer push-up or curls as categories). Like the Apple Watch Series 2, it can track my run (or walk) via GPS on the smartwatch and then display the route in the Samsung Gear app on the phone. It’s also smart enough to auto-detect the kind of workout you’re doing.

Image: lili sams/mashable

Image: lili sams/mashable

In one test, I told the watch I was going to take a run, but ended up walking (at a brisk pace); it automatically adjusted and gave me credit for a 15-minute walk.

Samsung also added some water-resistance, 1 meter for 30 minutes. I dunked it in water for a minute or so without issue, but Samsung is not recommending you take it for a swim. The new Apple Watch can, by contrast, handle submersion in water up to 50 meters and swimming is now part of the Workout app.

Like the Apple Watch, the Gear S3 is often prodding me to get moving or praising me for simply walking (yay, I did 6,000 steps today). I don’t know if I need this, but I do think the Samsung admonitions are a little more friendly and offer more information up front. Apple’s slavish adherence to the multi-colored activity circles means I never know, at least at a glance, exactly what goal I’ve achieved. The Gear S3 tends to spell things out

Wrist wallet

The Gear S3 integrates Samsung Pay so I took the watch to McDonalds where I used it to buy a coffee and a muffin top. Unlike the Apple Watch, the Gear S3 and Samsung Pay supports both NFC readers and magnetic strip readers. In both cases, you just hold the watch near the reader to pay. 

At McDonalds, I didn’t even consider the type of reader, I just held down the top button on the watch, selected the credit card I wanted to use, hit Pay and then held the Gear S3 over the reader. The McDonalds cashier glanced at the watch and then gave me a knowing smile that either meant, “show-off” or “niiiice.”

Image: lili sams/mashable

Battery life on the Gear S3 is awesome. I got a solid two days on a single charge. When I switched to “always on” mode, which keeps the watch face turned on (more dimly) even when you don’t raise your wrist, I lost about a half-day of battery life.

The $349 Samsung Gear S3 will appeal to a certain kind of watch aficionado who is also of a certain size. My wrist is barely large enough to hold it, and one co-worker told me that although he appreciates the classic design, he knows it would overwhelm his relatively small wrist.

This is the smartwatch for someone who wants the world to know he’s wearing a smartwatch. At least it's a good one. The Tizen OS remains my second-favorite wearable interface: It’s fast, intelligent, bright and easy to navigate. Better yet, Samsung has paired it with stellar hardware, including an excellent screen, fast components, useful sensors and full-blown communication capabilities. This is a smartphone on your wrist that happens to look like a large, fashionable watch.

Samsung Gear S3 Frontier

The Good

Good design • Great screen • Built in LTE • 2-day battery life

The Bad

Large and bulky

The Bottom Line

If you like a large watch, you won’t find a better, or more connected, wearable than the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier.