Samsung Gear S3 Watch

Mod­el	Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier	Apple Watch 3 (38mm)	Apple Watch 3 (42mm)	Sam­sung Gear S2
Dis­play	1.3 inch­es, round, AMOLED, res­o­lu­tion 360×360	1.5″ (38mm), AMOLED, 272×340 res­o­lu­tion	1.65″ (42mm), AMOLED, 312×390 res­o­lu­tion	1.2 inch­es, round, AMOLED, res­o­lu­tion 360×360
Oper­at­ing sys­tem	TizenOS 2.3.2	watchOS 4.0		Tizen OS
RAM	768 MB	768 MB		512 MB
CPU	Sam­sung Exynos 7270, 2 cores, 1 GHz	Apple S3, 2 cores		Sam­sung Exynos 3250, 2 cores, 1 GHz
Bat­tery	380 mAh	279 mAh		250 mAh
Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty	Android, iOS	iOS		Android, iOS
Degree of pro­tec­tion	MIL-810G	only from water (up to 5 atm)		IP68
Con­nec­tion	Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G, NFC, GPS, Blue­tooth, MST	WiFi, Blue­tooth, GPS, LTE, 3G, NFC		WiFi, NFC, 3G, Blue­tooth
Inner mem­o­ry	4 GB	16 GB		4 GB
Weight and dimen­sions	63 g, 49x46x13 mm	42 g, 39x33x11.5 mm	53 g, 42.5x36.5x11.5 mm	47 g, 50x42x11.5 mm

In gen­er­al, we can con­clude that the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier has a more durable bat­tery than oth­er smart­watch­es. I am glad that the gad­get con­nects to all devices. At the same time, the screen res­o­lu­tion is even high­er than that of Apple watch­es. And the pro­tec­tion is bet­ter — the mil­i­tary stan­dard MIL-810G pro­vides pro­tec­tion against water, dust, tem­per­a­ture, vibra­tion, shock, shock and so on. In gen­er­al, it is very dif­fi­cult to kill these watch­es.

But at the same time, the device los­es some­thing to its com­peti­tors. In par­tic­u­lar, it is heav­ier than all the oth­ers — as much as 63 grams ver­sus 53 for Apple and 47 for the pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the Sam­sung Gear S2. The screen size of smart­watch­es is only 1.3 inch­es ver­sus 1.5 and 1.65 for iWatch. And the built-in mem­o­ry is four times less than theirs.

In gen­er­al, we can say that the smart watch from the Kore­an com­pa­ny is cer­tain­ly quite good. And it is prob­lem­at­ic to sin­gle out a leader among com­peti­tors — all mod­els are good in some ways, but not very good in oth­ers.

Equipment

Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier is sold in a black cylin­dri­cal box made of durable plas­tic. All parts of the kit are packed quite tight­ly, so it is almost impos­si­ble to shake some­thing dur­ing trans­porta­tion.

Inside you can find:

• the smart watch itself;
• the dock­ing sta­tion to which the device is mag­ne­tized — it is quite heavy and is equipped with an LED indi­ca­tor that dis­plays charg­ing progress;
• two inter­change­able straps — longer and short­er (the one that is longer is already attached to the watch case);
• Micro-USB cable for dock­ing sta­tion;
• some waste paper in the form of instruc­tions and a war­ran­ty book­let.

The pack­age, as you can see, is quite sim­ple and at the same time com­plete. There is noth­ing super­flu­ous, but the man­u­fac­tur­ers have care­ful­ly packed every­thing you need in a black box. We even thought about the con­ve­nience of peo­ple with a small wrist girth.

Appearance and ergonomics

From a design point of view, every­thing is sim­ple — Sam­sung watch­es, when viewed from afar, look like the most ordi­nary ones. Some­how their appear­ance resem­bles the lead­ing Swiss mod­els. They are clos­er to clas­sic watch­es than smart ones. The watch is quite mas­sive and large. Made from 316L black steel. There are no inscrip­tions or labels on the upper part of the case — just dark mat­te met­al. There are no con­nec­tors either — you can charge the watch only through the dock­ing sta­tion.

There is some tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion on the back cov­er. In par­tic­u­lar, the mod­el and brand of smart watch­es are indi­cat­ed. In the cen­ter is the heart rate mon­i­tor win­dow.

On the side face on the right are two wide phys­i­cal but­tons: “Home” and “Back”. They almost do not pro­trude from the body and are gen­er­al­ly made quite nice­ly. The but­tons are cov­ered with a rough mate­r­i­al and are easy to feel with your fin­gers.

The watch is con­trolled by a bezel (a ring around the dis­play), two but­tons to the right of the dial and a touch screen. The bezel is made ser­rat­ed, due to which it is very con­ve­nient to scroll. One step of its course allows you to advance exact­ly one item in the menu — it will be prob­lem­at­ic to “twist” the ring. Some users have com­plained that the bezel is a bit loose. In prac­tice, this does not cause any dis­com­fort and is almost imper­cep­ti­ble when dri­ving.

The strap of the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier is stan­dard, 22 mm wide, made of elas­tomer. There are two options in the box — for thin and wider wrists. An impor­tant fea­ture is that any stan­dard watch straps are suit­able for the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier. The devel­op­ers have made a mount that allows you to use the most com­mon 22 mm belts and bracelets.

The dis­play is round, and its entire sur­face is func­tion­al — no black frames or pieces. The screen is pro­tect­ed by Corn­ing Goril­la Glass SR+. This glass, like the watch itself, is prac­ti­cal­ly inde­struc­tible. On top of the dis­play is cov­ered with a very high-qual­i­ty oleo­pho­bic coat­ing — the glass gets dirty more slow­ly, and it is much eas­i­er to clean it.

Display

The Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier has a 1.3‑inch AMOLED screen with a screen res­o­lu­tion of 360x360. The pix­el den­si­ty is high — 278 per inch. Due to this, the image is incred­i­bly clear — you can still see the pix­els on it, but only if you try very hard. Dis­play col­ors are quite bright and sat­u­rat­ed. In places, over­sat­u­ra­tion can even occur — some shades become unnat­u­ral­ly juicy. But the mag­nif­i­cent depth of black pleas­es — on this watch it is real­ly black, and not dark gray or some oth­er.

Sam­sung’s view­ing angles are quite large — you can look at the watch as you like, and the image will not change much. In addi­tion, the dis­play bright­ness of the clock is cho­sen inde­pen­dent­ly depend­ing on the lev­el of illu­mi­na­tion. The bright­est option is enough to see the image even out­doors on a sun­ny day.

The watch sup­ports the Always On Dis­play func­tion. That is, the screen of the device can burn on an ongo­ing basis. Due to the ener­gy-sav­ing AMOLED tech­nol­o­gy, this is pos­si­ble, and the watch will not be dis­charged in a cou­ple of hours. The devel­op­ers stat­ed that with a con­stant­ly work­ing screen, the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier can work up to two days. In addi­tion, the dis­play can be turned on by turn­ing the wrist towards the face.

It is very pleas­ing that the menu has the abil­i­ty to turn on “increased sen­si­tiv­i­ty”. Due to this func­tion, the watch is able to rec­og­nize the touch of a fin­ger even when wear­ing thick gloves. The cre­ators of smart­phones should learn.

The watch is pre-installed with 14 watch faces for the dis­play. There are many more of them in the store — there you can even find free options in addi­tion to those already down­loaded. But most still have to pay. Judg­ing by cus­tomer reviews, the cho­sen watch face deter­mines how long the watch will work with­out recharg­ing. The more sophis­ti­cat­ed the dial, the faster the bat­tery is dis­charged.

Interface

The main screen of the inter­face is the dial. It dis­plays the select­ed image (you can find the change in the set­tings or buy it in the Sam­sung app store).

By rotat­ing the bezel, you can switch the screen to appli­ca­tions or noti­fi­ca­tions. The first will open if you turn the bezel to the right, and the sec­ond — if you turn it to the left.

At the very end of the “list” of wid­gets, when scrolling, there will be an inscrip­tion “Add wid­get”. You can select any from the list, and then it will be pos­si­ble to use it by scrolling the bezel a lit­tle.

The watch menu can be accessed by press­ing any of the but­tons while on the home screen. The inter­face con­sists of round icons locat­ed at the edges of the dis­play. In the cen­ter there is an inscrip­tion that explains what kind of item this is. Nav­i­gat­ing the menu is sim­ple — select the desired icon with the bezel, and then sim­ply click on any part of the screen.

On top there is also a cur­tain with quick set­tings. Just like in the clas­sic “smart­phone” Android. It is enough to swipe your fin­ger from top to bot­tom.

The inter­face is very fine­ly tuned — you can change lit­er­al­ly every­thing, from the font to the back­ground for wid­gets. There­fore, each user will be able to make their smart­watch tru­ly unique.

I am glad that the inter­face is made very high qual­i­ty and elab­o­rat­ed. Every­thing is clear in it. Man­age and switch from point to point quick­ly and eas­i­ly. In addi­tion to gen­er­al con­ve­nience, it is very good that the watch reacts instant­ly to any desire of the user. Due to good opti­miza­tion, there is not a sin­gle brake or freeze, and the bat­tery is dis­charged much more slow­ly — thanks to Sam­sung’s pro­pri­etary Tizen OS.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is also a draw­back with its own oper­at­ing sys­tem. Many users in the reviews note that the app store is rather poor. Devel­op­ers pre­fer to build apps for more main­stream Android Wear watch­es. How­ev­er, it is grad­u­al­ly replen­ished with new use­ful appli­ca­tions, which pleas­es.

Functionality

Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier is posi­tioned by man­u­fac­tur­ers as a device for active peo­ple. Thanks to this, it is equipped with a bunch of dif­fer­ent sports appli­ca­tions, sen­sors and dis­plays that will dis­play sta­tis­tics in real time.

There are quite a lot of appli­ca­tions already installed in the watch out of the box. In par­tic­u­lar, using the gad­get it is easy to see the date, time, weath­er, set a reminder or an alarm clock, read and reply to a mes­sage or mes­sen­ger, switch between time zones, and so on. But you can install new ones from the Galaxy Apps store. In the store you can find any kind of appli­ca­tions for smart watch­es, up to call­ing a taxi. In sports, the watch is able to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor dif­fer­ent types of activ­i­ty and then issue sta­tis­tics on it.

In addi­tion to many use­ful appli­ca­tions, the device has a bunch of sen­sors and meters that sports fans will real­ly like:

• heart rate mon­i­tor;
• pedome­ter;
• speedome­ter;
• offline GPS to track the user’s move­ments with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a smart­phone or tablet;
• atmos­pher­ic pres­sure sen­sor;
• altime­ter;
• barom­e­ter;
• not to men­tion the stan­dard light sen­sors, accelerom­e­ter and so on.

Why ama­teurs? Because the accu­ra­cy of these sen­sors will be insuf­fi­cient for pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes. The heart rate mon­i­tor does not work in a con­stant mode, due to which it is impos­si­ble to track the work of the heart dur­ing exer­cise. In addi­tion, in some cas­es he frankly lies, some­times over­es­ti­mat­ing or under­es­ti­mat­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny.

The South Kore­an ver­sion of the watch allowed you to attach an elec­tron­ic SIM card to it and use the device as a smart­phone. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this func­tion is not sup­port­ed in EU. But you can still talk on the clock — just con­nect it to your phone via Blue­tooth.

It is con­ve­nient that you can down­load pic­tures and music to the mem­o­ry of the watch. To lis­ten to the lat­est, for exam­ple, while jog­ging, it is easy to con­nect Blue­tooth head­phones direct­ly to the device. And then you do not have to car­ry a smart­phone with you.

Since 2017, Sam­sung Pay has been estab­lished in EU, which was pre­vi­ous­ly lim­it­ed. Now you can link a bank card to the watch and pay for pur­chas­es with it.

Smartphone compatibility

Man­u­fac­tur­ers aim to cov­er as many seg­ments of the mar­ket where they sell their smart­watch­es as pos­si­ble. As a result, Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier, unlike a sim­i­lar Apple gad­get, works not only with oth­er com­pa­ny devices.

The device allows you to con­nect it to all more or less mod­ern smart­phones:

1. Sam­sung smart­phones — the con­nec­tion is most sta­ble with them, and the watch works in the most cor­rect way.
2. Devices run­ning Android3 and above — the smart­watch can work with smart­phones not made by Sam­sung, but run­ning Android OS.
3. Smart­phones on iOS 9 and new­er — Sam­sung Gear 3 Fron­tier can even be con­nect­ed to devices from a direct com­peti­tor of the man­u­fac­tur­er.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the Sam­sung web­site only lists com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with Sam­sung and Apple gad­gets. But in fact, the watch works qui­et­ly with most smart­phones and some Android tablets. Before buy­ing, try to check the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with your device.

The watch can also be con­trolled via a smart­phone. For this, there are spe­cial mobile appli­ca­tions that allow you to fine-tune the inter­face and func­tion­al­i­ty of the watch:

1. sam­sung gear. Avail­able for all Android devices.
2. Sam­sung Galaxy Watch (Gear S). Watch appli­ca­tion for iOS.

In some cas­es, you will need to addi­tion­al­ly install Gear S Plu­g­in and Sam­sung Acces­so­ry Ser­vice. These two appli­ca­tions may be need­ed to con­nect the watch to Android devices. You will also have to cre­ate a Sam­sung Account in order to down­load the nec­es­sary appli­ca­tions.

In gen­er­al, con­nect­ing to non-Sam­sung Android smart­phones is fea­si­ble. But it takes a lot of time and requires sev­er­al appli­ca­tions at once. In addi­tion, some users com­plain that they con­stant­ly need to re-login to their account in order to con­nect the clock or install some­thing.

autonomy

The Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier is pow­ered by a 380 mAh bat­tery. For such watch­es, this is quite a lot — among the com­peti­tors high­light­ed at the begin­ning of the review, this is the best indi­ca­tor.

Accord­ing to reviews and mea­sure­ments, Sam­sung smart watch­es are capa­ble of deliv­er­ing the fol­low­ing auton­o­my:

• 4 days — in nor­mal mode, autonomous­ly from a smart­phone and with­out a con­stant­ly on screen;
• 2–3 days — with bat­tery life in Always On Dis­play mode;
• 2 days — with the watch con­stant­ly con­nect­ed to a smart­phone and Always On Dis­play, Wi-Fi, GPS, Blue­tooth, and so on.

In gen­er­al, we can say that auton­o­my is accept­able. Here, only the buy­er can decide whether it is con­ve­nient for him to con­stant­ly charge the watch, as he does with a smart­phone or oth­er gad­gets. But in favor of the watch, we can say that charg­ing them is sim­ple to dis­grace — just throw the watch on the dock­ing sta­tion after remov­ing it.

By the way, from the dock­ing sta­tion they are charged 100% from scratch in two hours. Pret­ty fast, so even if they sud­den­ly turned off, then recharg­ing the watch is not such a big prob­lem.

Reviews

The Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier has gar­nered quite a few pos­i­tive reviews. Accord­ing to Wal­mart, 84% of users rec­om­mend buy­ing a prod­uct.

Most often, buy­ers respond pos­i­tive­ly to almost all the fea­tures of the watch: auton­o­my, design, inter­face and its oper­a­tion, ease of man­age­ment, and so on. In gen­er­al, the device is char­ac­ter­ized as high-qual­i­ty and com­fort­able to use.

But users still found some short­com­ings of the reviewed smart­watch­es. Many peo­ple do not like that the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier works with­out recharg­ing for only two days. They also speak neg­a­tive­ly about the heart rate mon­i­tor (we wrote that it may not work cor­rect­ly). But this is the scourge of almost all non-pro­fes­sion­al wrist gad­gets.

Some users rec­om­mend imme­di­ate­ly replac­ing the stan­dard elas­tomer strap with some­thing “breath­able”. Oth­er­wise, there is a risk that irri­ta­tion will appear on the skin.

Conclusion

Sum­ming up the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier, we can safe­ly say that the watch is quite suc­cess­ful. They are pro­duc­tive, made in the chic design of a “real” watch (only the phys­i­cal dial is miss­ing) and feel good on the hand. The func­tion­al­i­ty is quite exten­sive and allows you to active­ly use the watch even with­out a con­stant con­nec­tion with a smart­phone.

In gen­er­al, there are sev­er­al main advan­tages of the Sam­sung Gear S3 Fron­tier:

• sol­id appear­ance of Swiss watch­es;
• many sen­sors and appli­ca­tions out of the box;
• active­ly devel­op­ing appli­ca­tion store;
• reli­a­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty;
• con­nec­tion with Sam­sung Pay.

But, like all things in the world, watch­es are not per­fect. The main dis­ad­van­tages include:

• low auton­o­my — you will have to charge the watch every two days on aver­age;
• a heart rate mon­i­tor that does not always work cor­rect­ly — it is clear­ly not suit­able for pro­fes­sion­als;
• the strap can cause irri­ta­tion and aller­gies — for­tu­nate­ly, it can be eas­i­ly changed to a new one.

But you should under­stand that smart watch­es are a rather spe­cif­ic gad­get. And it is use­less to demand the capa­bil­i­ties of a smart­phone from them.