Smart Watches are a rare thing in tech when it comes to Nepal. But still, we have few options available in the market. Their rise to popularity, obviously, has been hindered by their price tag, as they do not come any cheap. But if the price is not the concern and if you have to pick one, then the Galaxy S3 Frontier is the option you’d want to go for. Let’s find out what you can get out of a Rs.40,000 smartwatch.
Build and Design
The Galaxy S3 Frontier is aesthetically pleasing and feels sturdy. It comes with a 1.3inch Super AMOLED display which is really sharp and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass SR. The watch as a whole is IP68 water and dust resistance so you have nothing to worry about. It feels really solid and even with few drops and strikes here and there, I couldn’t find any physical damage on the watch. The fair and simple design of the watch makes it look like any other normal watch. The back of the watch comes with stainless steel and on the right side, it comes with two physical buttons. The upper button is used as a back button and the lower button is the home button which can be programmed for double tap feature. You can use the double tap to show the recent apps, enable S Voice, start S Health and so on.
One of the most pleasing aspects of the watch is the circular dial which makes navigating around the watch much faster and easier. You can spend hours just playing with the dialer. There are also few games on the Samsung App Store which you can play on this watch with the help of the dial. The watch is 12.9mm thick but doesn’t feel that big and the straps are 22m wide which felt pretty comfortable during my daily use.
Software
The watch is running on Samsung’s Tizen OS with 768MB RAM and 4GB storage. I noticed no lag during my usage even with loads of watch faces installed and apps running in the background. You need a companion Gear App and other Samsung Apps installed on your phone to connect it to the watch. All of your notifications and calendar events are synced to Gear seamlessly. You can also sync music and pictures. You can make a call, send SMS, reply to various app from the watch itself. There’s T9 keyboard on the watch for typing, or you can use the circular dialer to choose the default replies or just use the emojis.
You have plenty of watch faces to choose from, on the Samsung App store you can find all sorts of watch faces that suit your mood and style. It feels like wearing a new watch every single time changing the watch face.
Health Tracking
The watch proves to be more useful when used for fitness tracking. With the Samsung’s S Health app, the Gear can track pretty much everything you’re doing and provide insights on that. If you are working out, playing Golf, climbing stairs, running, walking, or sitting idle for too long, the watch will give you insights on all of your activities which you can check both on your watch and the S Health app on your phone. You also have heart rate sensor which seems to be pretty accurate. Apart from that, you have Altimeter, Barometer, and GPS.
The 380mAh battery seems to be pretty solid as it gave two to three days of battery backup depending on the usage and with the use of dark watch face. It takes two hours to fully charge the watch.
Verdict
With very few app support, the Tizen OS proves to be a drawback. With Android Wear 2.0 you could have a plenty of android apps right on your wrist but that’s not the same with Tizen OS. There are only a handful of useful apps on Samsung App Store and it feels like a restriction from using your watch to its full potential.
The goal of wearable is obviously to sync your notifications and track your health, and S3 frontier just does that in the best way possible. If you can live with limited apps on your wrist and if you just want a solid smartwatch that can last for days and track your health in the most detailed way possible. Then this is worth the buy. It’s definitely not cheap but it can help you in your daily tasks in a great way.
