The Samsung Gear S3 Watch – Your Wristband Assistant

Samsung recently came out with their latest watch, the Samsung Gear S3.  This is their third rendition of their watch and we’ve owned and used all three of them.  

After years of living without a watch and using my phone for the time, I was amazed at how quickly I re-adapted to wearing a watch again.

Why?  Simply for the convenience of seeing what time it is without having to dig out my phone from my purse or back pocket. But the Samsung Gear S3 watch does so much more than tells the time.

Your Wristband Assistant

So just how can the Samsung Gear S3 make life easier for you?

1.   You can receive notifications from your phone showing texts, emails, and social media channels
2.   Call or text family members and friends straight from your watch, it has a built-in microphone and speaker
3.   It can automatically take your heart rate and store it for you in the Samsung Health app
4.   Comes with built-in GPS to help you know where you are in Maps
5.   Allows you to hail a car with the Uber app
6.   Make dinner reservations on the Yelp app
7.   Warm up your home with the Nest app
8.   Control music from your phone via Bluetooth
9.   Record your workouts in Samsung’s S Health app
10.   Use one of the flashlight apps to look for things in the dark (great for searching your seats in movie theaters!)
11.   Bored waiting in line? Play Fruit Ninja, rubikcube, ask the Magic 8 ball questions, and more
12.   Tracks your steps and the number of stairs you’ve climbed
13.   Know the weather in the morning before you get dressed
14.   Keeps you up-to-date on your daily calendar
15.   Calculate sale prices on purchases or tip percentage at a restaurant with its calculator
16.   Record a voice memo to remind you to do something later
17.   Use the stopwatch to time your run
18.   Use the Find My Car feature to find your call after shopping at a mall
19.   Keep dual time clocks when traveling – where you are and where home is
20.   Wear the Gear S3 to bed to track your sleep and movements and use the alarm to wake you up gently when you’re not in a dead sleep
21.   Send your spouse/friend a SOS in an emergency by pressing the Home key 3 times
22.   Use the S Voice to remind me to do things 
23.   You can even pay for your groceries from your watch!

Some of my everyday apps are…

Samsung Pay

Perhaps you’ve heard of Samsung Pay before.  You can use your phone to swipe it over a credit card terminal and pay for your purchases.  It’s incredibly easy, you just have to take your phone out of your pocket or purse and swipe it. 

But the Samsung Gear S3 makes it even easier.  Just press the back button on the Gear S3 twice and Samsung Pay pops up.  Indicate that you want to pay and hover your watch over the credit card terminal.  It’s pretty instantaneous and boom! Your payment is made.  No signature needed because you have already pre-signed in the Samsung Pay app, when you loaded in your credit card information.

I love the simplicity of the process…and the coolness of it!  I’ve used it at a number of different stores and it works great.  The only store it hasn’t worked on so far is Dollar Tree.

One time I went into Aldi’s to get some Valentine candy for my son and realized that I forgot my wallet in the car!  Ugh.  There was a long line behind us.  Then I remembered I was wearing my watch.  No sweat!  I used Samsung Pay on my watch and we were out in seconds!  Phew!

The one downfall of Samsung Pay is that you need to put a passcode on your watch in order to protect your credit card information.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a great way to secure your information, but if you want to do anything on your watch, other than look at the time, you need to unlock it every time, this can get tedious.

Sleep Watcher

I accidentally wore my watch to bed one night and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Gear S3 had tracked the quality of my sleep, complete with a bar chart.  In the past when I’ve used sleep trackers, you always have to remember to turn them on before you go to bed.  Not so with the Gear S3.

I was also surprised to see that the battery lasted the whole day and the whole night.  In fact, when I put it on the charger, it had only used 15% of the battery!  Wow!  Admittedly, the Samsung Gear S3 has a rather large watch face and with its metal casing, I would have thought it would be too much or too heavy to wear to bed.  I was wrong.  I did not notice it while I slept.

One Heartbeat At A Time

I have always enjoyed the heart sensors in Samsung’s watches.  When I’m bored, while waiting for a doctor or waiting in line, I often find myself checking my heart rate.  I can track my heart rate over time in the S Health app.

But the heart rate sensor serves a greater purpose.  It helps you identify your resting rate and how hard you are working out when exercising.  For the best results, you want to push your heart rate up to 50-85% to obtain your target heart rate.  Your target heart rate depends upon your age.  To find out yours simply subtract your age from 220.  

Remind Me To…

I’ve been enjoying the S-Voice feature, built into the Gear S3.  You can open S-Voice by pressing the Home button twice.  Then simply speak something like “add a reminder to pick up the dog from the groomer at 6pm,” and it will remind you.  Pretty slick, huh?  No fumbling for your phone or writing a note to remind you, your watch will!

You can also ask basic questions like, “what’s my schedule today,” or “what is today’s temperature?”  S-Voice is very handy.

Features

• 1.3-inch Super AMOLED touch display 
• Built-in GPS
• Military-grade durability – resists water, dust, extreme temperatures
• Made with Corning Gorilla Glass SR_ to protect against scratches
• Battery lasts up to 3 days on a single charge
• Uses a wireless charger for ease of charging
• Easily rotate the bezel around the glass to access up to thousands of apps
• Watch frame face is made of sturdy stainless steel
• Tons of watch faces available to suit your mood (many of them free)
• 4GB of internal memory to store music to listen to your tunes without your phone (WiFi needed for non-LTE S3 version)
• Watchband is compatible with any standard 22 mm bands
• And of course, all of the apps and features mentioned earlier

The Samsung Gear S3 is available in two styles, the Gear S3 Classic for a more classic, sleek design or the more rugged Gear S3 Frontier.  The Gear S3 and the  Gear S3 Frontier are on sale right now from Samsung for $299.99 and available in both WiFi or LTE versions.

*I was given a Samsung Gear S3 for purposes of review.  All opinions are my own.