Hands-on with Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watch (Video)

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If you haven’t heard by now, Samsung just announced its Galaxy Gear smart watch at its Unpacked 2013 event in Berlin and we were able to get a little bit of hands-on time with the device after the show. We were quite impressed with the build quality of the watch, and we’re hoping Samsung is able to work out some minor kinks with certain touch screen gestures not always behaving as expected. For the most part Samsung has done a great job of simplifying the UI of apps its including on the device, but sometimes that simplicity leaves a little to be desired for those of us used to interacting with our smartphones on a daily basis. We weren’t able to try any of the fitness features of the device in our limited time with the Gear, but the majority of apps we did play with were simple and intuitive. S Voice wasn’t playing nice, but, again, we hope Samsung will put a little bit more polish on some of the included software before it gets in the hands of users.

All in all, it beat out most the Bluetooth smart watches we’ve tried simply based on the hardware and excellent implementation of apps with extremely simplified UIs. It does, however, have the same problems a lot of other bluetooth smart watches have: it’s much bigger than your standard, traditional wrist watch, and that’s a big hurdle for people that might not even wear a regular watch day-to-day in the first place. The Galaxy Gear will launch for $299 later this month and we plan on bringing you a full review soon. Full specs and details here.