My 12 day experience using a Gear S with Google Voice and a Moto 360 within reach

[jlczl]

OK, being the gadget addict I am, I decided to buy the Gear S even though my 360 works very well. I was intrigued by the idea of leaving my phone behind while at the gym or on a run. Over the next few days I'm going to be relating my experiences with the S, the learning curve, the letdowns, and the OMG moments. I picked it up two days ago in the afternoon so my first full day of use was yesterday.

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[jlczl]

Why 12 days you may ask? Because I want to have the option to return it if it doesn't fit my usage habits. T-Mobile is crazy with their $75 restocking fee though! Oh well, that gives me a good reason to give the S as thorough a try as possible.

Day 1: Biggest letdown is finding out that I can't delete emails (only dismiss them). It is really annoying me to have to interact with notifications twice FOR EVERYTHING. (email, texts, app notifications).

Biggest OMG moment is finding out I can receive text messages and phone calls to my watch AND I can make calls and send text messages with my watch even if I'm not connected to my phone. The OMG part is that they're from my own number, not the Gear's number. I can do this because of my long standing use of Google Voice.

That being said, I did this when I went to the gym in the evening (6pm). I had 30% battery left when I got there and my battery died about 45 minutes into my workout (I was streaming Milk Music). Disappointing.

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[cellmt]

How do you make outgoing calls showing people as your GV number?

 

[jlczl]

How do you make outgoing calls showing people as your GV number?

I call them to the alias number Google assigned them when they first texted me to my GV number. I've added that Google alias number to all my frequent contacts (they each get a unique number assigned to them when they text you and it stays the same indefinitely....so far at least).

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[dorrien12]

Why 12 days you may ask? Because I want to have the option to return it if it doesn't fit my usage habits. T-Mobile is crazy with their $75 restocking fee though! Oh well, that gives me a good reason to give the S as thorough a try as possible.

Day 1: Biggest letdown is finding out that I can't delete emails (only dismiss them). It is really annoying me to have to interact with notifications twice FOR EVERYTHING. (email, texts, app notifications).

Biggest OMG moment is finding out I can receive text messages and phone calls to my watch AND I can make calls and send text messages with my watch even if I'm not connected to my phone. The OMG part is that they're from my own number, not the Gear's number. I can do this because of my long standing use of Google Voice.

That being said, I did this when I went to the gym in the evening (6pm). I had 30% battery left when I got there and my battery died about 45 minutes into my workout (I was streaming Milk Music). Disappointing.

Posted via the Android Central App

For Email:
with the next update 4.4.4, you can now reply from the Gear S & you can now delete emails on the Gear S but it only deletes them on the Gear. However if you delete them on the phone, it deletes it from the gear as well... that's progress!

 

[rellim]

Yeah, I had a similar experience in the gym and streaming Milk...my battery drained from 75% to 35% in 1 1/12 hours. So I loaded my top 30 workout tunes directly to my Gear S and listen via bluetooth. Consequently, my battery use was reduced by over 60% compared to 3g streaming.

 

[jlczl]

Well yesterday was my second full day with the S. In the afternoon I got so frustrated (tons of notifications backlogged on my phone because I only dealt with them on my watch). I took it off and put my 360 back on. All went back to normal soon thereafter.

It was a breath of fresh air to receive an email, read it in its entirety and then delete it.....never seeing it on my phone thereafter.

I received a GroupMe notification, "liked" it, replied and then dismissed it.

I received a hangouts message, and you guessed it, I swiped and tapped to reply, and voice dictated my message without a hitch.

I proceeded to delete all my S apps because I had decided I would just take the $75 hit and return it already.........2 hours later I changed my mind. I saw the Gear and it's awesome screen and decided to try again.

I was a little disheartened when the Gear app I reinstalled proceeded to hard reset my Gear S in preparation for use but oh well, I set everything back up and I'm trying a little longer.

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[jlczl]

My 3rd complete day with the S started with a morning workout. Left the Note 4 at home, streamed Milk Music (sound quality and volume are excellent going to my Jaybird Bluebud X headphones), and made one phone call while at the gym. Was at 60% battery when I left the gym and began the rest of my day. On Sundays I don't usually get as many notifications so for the rest of the day I took some notifications on my watch but for the most part just glanced at it to check the time. At bedtime I had 2% left. BTW, I decided to be remotely connected all day instead of tethered via Bluetooth. In this scenario I can see how some people would like the S more than other smart watches on the market.

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[tech_fan]

Well yesterday was my second full day with the S. In the afternoon I got so frustrated (tons of notifications backlogged on my phone because I only dealt with them on my watch). I took it off and put my 360 back on. All went back to normal soon thereafter.

It was a breath of fresh air to receive an email, read it in its entirety and then delete it.....never seeing it on my phone thereafter.

I received a GroupMe notification, "liked" it, replied and then dismissed it.

I received a hangouts message, and you guessed it, I swiped and tapped to reply, and voice dictated my message without a hitch.

I proceeded to delete all my S apps because I had decided I would just take the $75 hit and return it already.........2 hours later I changed my mind. I saw the Gear and it's awesome screen and decided to try again.

I was a little disheartened when the Gear app I reinstalled proceeded to hard reset my Gear S in preparation for use but oh well, I set everything back up and I'm trying a little longer.

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You might want to consider using the text swipe feature when u use the keyboard to respond to email and such. One of the managers at the Verizon store suggested I do that and the swipe works wonderfully.

 

[jlczl]

You might want to consider using the text swipe feature when u use the keyboard to respond to email and such. One of the managers at the Verizon store suggested I do that and the swipe works wonderfully.

I've never been a swipe typer but I'll give it a try.

As a side note, my S didn't fully charge overnight completely for some reason. I started the day with 74% and battery was dead by 3:30 pm. Just received notifications all day and made about 30 minutes of phone calls.

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[tech_fan]

I've never been a swipe typer but I'll give it a try.

As a side note, my S didn't fully charge overnight completely for some reason. I started the day with 74% and battery was dead by 3:30 pm. Just received notifications all day and made about 30 minutes of phone calls.

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Hmm...I took mine off at 7:30 this morning. I am at 59%. Something is not right with yours. I have my data on Auto Switch which seems to help.

For me, I have never been a swipe text fan either. But it seems to work well for that tiny keyboard.

 

[aitt]

I've never been a swipe typer but I'll give it a try.

As a side note, my S didn't fully charge overnight completely for some reason. I started the day with 74% and battery was dead by 3:30 pm. Just received notifications all day and made about 30 minutes of phone calls.

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Use Gear QWERTY setting

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[jlczl]

Yesterday was a weird day. For some reason my S was not fully charged when I woke up in the morning (It was at about 74%). Whatever, I figured I'd still make it thru my regular workday. I was wrong. By early afternoon the battery was dead. Not promising.

I've made some adjustments to my settings in hopes of getting better battery results today. We'll see how that goes.

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[Charles Le]

Are you having any issues with not getting text or calls forwarded to your gear? Mine was working fine then I must have changed some setting because now I'm not getting text and I'm only getting calls when I connect via bluetooth. Your battery issues doesn't seem normal. I get about a day and a half with mine.

 

[jlczl]

Are you having any issues with not getting text or calls forwarded to your gear? Mine was working fine then I must have changed some setting because now I'm not getting text and I'm only getting calls when I connect via bluetooth. Your battery issues doesn't seem normal. I get about a day and a half with mine.

No issues receiving calls or texts.

Yesterday was my 5th (?) full day with the S and the battery was back to normal. I worked out in the morning streaming music and lost about 33% battery in 45 minutes. Par for the course when away from my phone and using data. This time I dropped it in the charger for 30 minutes when I got back home while I got ready for work.

I'm getting used to not relying on the S in the same way as I do the 360. I'm basically receiving notifications for email and hangouts and I've stopped receiving notifications for my other apps since I can't do anything with them anyway.

At the end of the day I was at 50% battery life so I'm going to switch the clock back to always on because I didn't like to have to click the home button every time I wanted to see the time.

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[jlczl]

You might want to consider using the text swipe feature when u use the keyboard to respond to email and such. One of the managers at the Verizon store suggested I do that and the swipe works wonderfully.

I tried this and wasn't really successful with this input method. I went back to voice recognition. Even though it's a little slower than the 360 it's still faster than typing everything out for me.

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[tech_fan]

No issues receiving calls or texts.

Yesterday was my 5th (?) full day with the S and the battery was back to normal. I worked out in the morning streaming music and lost about 33% battery in 45 minutes. Par for the course when away from my phone and using data. This time I dropped it in the charger for 30 minutes when I got back home while I got ready for work.

I'm getting used to not relying on the S in the same way as I do the 360. I'm basically receiving notifications for email and hangouts and I've stopped receiving notifications for my other apps since I can't do anything with them anyway.

At the end of the day I was at 50% battery life so I'm going to switch the clock back to always on because I didn't like to have to click the home button every time I wanted to see the time.

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Yeah that part was annoying with my prior GG watches. The shake your wrist to turn the phone on never really worked although, this model seems to work more reliably.

Btw, there is a Notification widget app on the Playstore. I believe its called the Galaxy Gear notification.....it allows you to interact with most notifications you can get on your phone.

 

[jlczl]

Yeah that part was annoying with my prior GG watches. The shake your wrist to turn the phone on never really worked although, this model seems to work more reliably.

Btw, there is a Notification widget app on the Playstore. I believe its called the Galaxy Gear notification.....it allows you to interact with most notifications you can get on your phone.

I have that app. It allows me to reply to hangouts messages which I really needed. I still can't "like" or reply to other notifications like GroupMe or FB, twitter etc. I get notifications for slickdeals and instagram but if I dismiss them on my watch I still have to diamiss them on my phone so I opted to just not get them on the watch anymore and just deal with them on my phone. I just receive emails and hangouts now.

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[tech_fan]

I have that app. It allows me to reply to hangouts messages which I really needed. I still can't "like" or reply to other notifications like GroupMe or FB, twitter etc. I get notifications for slickdeals and instagram but if I dismiss them on my watch I still have to diamiss them on my phone so I opted to just not get them on the watch anymore and just deal with them on my phone. I just receive emails and hangouts now.

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Not to go off on a tangent but, I heard that Motorola is doing a Cyber Monday deal. They are discounting the Moto X by $140. So that means a non-contract 32gb phone would be 399 and then they are giving 30% off on accessories. Kind of puts things in perspective considering the Galaxy Gear S was 399 from Verizon for off contract pricing.

 

[jlczl]

Not to go off on a tangent but, I heard that Motorola is doing a Cyber Monday deal. They are discounting the Moto X by $140. So that means a non-contract 32gb phone would be 399 and then they are giving 30% off on accessories. Kind of puts things in perspective considering the Galaxy Gear S was 399 from Verizon for off contract pricing.

Yup, that X looks tempting to gadget addicts like us. Since my Note 4 is so new though, I'm not going to jump.

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