A Face for Every Occasion
One of the best features of the Samsung Gear watch is that you can change out the current watch face to any other watch face within seconds. If you find that you are wearing a white dress shirt with a blue tie, you can simply choose a blue watch face to match your outfit. Want to impress a business client? Change out your watch band for a metal clasp band, enable the “Always On Display,” and wear it with a professional looking watch face. If you were to go hiking, you might want to wear a silicone watch band, and opt for a digital watch face that offers you several options, such as your steps walked, distance traveled, and current heart rate.
You truly can have a completely different look for every occasion by simply changing out your watch face, and it is super easy to do. Simply long press on the watch face to your watch, and swipe left or right to choose the watch face you want to display. It is that simple. If you have several watch faces that you have already accumulated, you can rotate the bezel to display 4 watch faces at a time allowing you to easily navigate the available faces for you to choose from.
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One Face, Multiple Functions
There are literally thousands of watch faces to choose from, most of which are customizable. For example, a customizable analog watch face may allow you to change the background color, the font used, the addition or removal of the second hand, or one of several other options. A digital watch face typically offers more features, allowing you to see your heart rate in real time, stairflights climbed, and steps walked. Additionally, it may provide the day, date, or week of the year.
One nice feature for both analog and digital watch faces (or a combination of both, but more on that later), is that some watch faces allow you to customize the interface so that you can tap on certain parts of the interface to open one of several apps on the watch. For example, by tapping on a specific area of the watch face, you could launch the weather app, the settings app, the texting app, the e-mail app, the phone app or even the music app. Some watch faces even allow you the flexibility of customizing the interface so that you can launch *any* app that resides on the watch by simply tapping on a specific area of the watch face. That is just awesome.
Analog Vs. Digital: Look and Feel
You have to discover what you prefer: an analog interface or digital interface. You are only going to discover what you really prefer by trying different watch faces out. If you like both, you can get both and interchange them whenever you like. It literally only takes seconds to do, just simply long press on the watch interface for 2 seconds and navigate through the available watch faces and tap the one that you like. It is that easy.
Some watch faces offer a collaboration of an analog interface with digital components embedded within the watch face. There are even watch faces that cater to sports, health, art, and others that are interactive or informative. The nice thing about the Samsung Gear Store is that their watch faces are categorized for you so that you do not have to browse endlessly until you find the right look. I love the incredible variety of faces available.
That is one of the great things about Samsung watches; they offer so much flexibility! Take this digital watch face to the right, for example (named, MD87, by Matteo Dini). On this watch face, if offers a combination of both an Analog interface coupled with a digital interface (also referred to as a “Collaboration” watch face). From this interface, you can see all of the following:
- You can see the digital time and analog time
- Your heart rate
- The month (in two formats)
- The day
- The year
- What part of the moon phase you are in
- The week of the year
- The day of the year
- How many steps you have walked
- How many flights of stairs you have climbed
- How many total miles you have walked
- The percent of your daily walk goal reached
- How many calories you have burned
- What time zone you are in
- How much battery life you have left
Additionally, with one tap, you can access your SETTINGS, MESSAGES, PHONE, MUSIC, WEATHER and your CONTACTS. You have access to all of this just by glancing at your watch.
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Do I Have to Pay for Watch Faces?
Though there are free watch faces available, are you really going to hesitate in purchasing a watch face for your $350 dollar Samsung Gear S3 watch? That almost seems as absurd to me as a purchasing a brand-new Ferrari, only to complain that you have to spend $5.00 a week to wash it. Fortunately, watch faces are ridiculously inexpensive. They range from $.79 to $2.99 for the most part, and because they are so inexpensive, you can easily purchase one and try it out to see if you like it or not. Worst case scenario, you are out $2.99. Sometimes you may even find that a watch face is available on a trial basis for two or three days. Once the trial expires you will be prompted to either purchase it or remove it.
Additionally, the watch faces are rated by users in the Samsung community who actually wear the watch. Before I purchase a watch face, I always check the reviews to determine if the developer of that watch face has a good reputation or not. You can even determine the last time the watch face was updated. If it has been a while, the watch face has either reached maturity or the developer gave up developing the watch face altogether. Again, the reviews from the user community will tell you an awful lot. The reviews are just like the kind you find on Amazon.com.
When I first got my Samsung Gear S3 Classic, I constantly checked to see if there were any new watch faces that piqued my interest. I still do. There is just something very appealing about getting a new watch face. When you apply a new watch face, it feels like you just got a new watch all over again. I find that I often pay $.79 to get that new watch feeling.
Make your $350 Samsung Gear watch Look Like a $6,550 Rolex Explorer
Now the purists at heart won’t like this, but for the rest of us who like the idea of having their Gear S3 be mistaken for a $6,550 Rolex, (even if for just a moment), you will enjoy this. There are watch faces that resemble very expensive well known watches, like the Rolex Explorer here to the right. Note that I said, “resemble.”
For example, the “Messa Explorer”, by Yaroslav Lozgachev, is an example of such a watch face. It closely resembles that of the $6,550 Rolex Explorer, but at a fraction of the cost, literally. You can purchase this watch face on the Samsung Gear Store for only $2.50.
This is one of the great things about having a smartwatch. You can change out the interface to anything you like, to match any outfit you might be wearing or mood that you are in, all within a few seconds.
Managing Your Samsung Watch Face
Samsung has done a really great job of providing a great way for you to manage the applications and faces that you download to your Samsung watch. Though you can install and delete watch faces from the watch itself, it is much easier to do so from your cell phone.
You can delete a watch face that you have downloaded on your Samsung Gear watch, simply long pressing on the watch face. This will bring up all of the watches faces currently available to you that have been downloaded to your watch. If you tap the red minus sign at the top right of the watch face in question, you will be asked to confirm your decision to uninstall that watch face or not.
You will first need to download the Samsung Gear app and pair it with your watch. Once that is complete, launch the Gear app on your phone and follow the steps displayed below to manage the watch faces on your Samsung watch.
After launching the GEAR app on your phone, tap the SETTINGS link at the top of the screen. Then tap WATCH FACES, and you will be presented with all of the watch faces that
reside on your Samsung Watch. From here, you can activate the watch face of your choice by selecting it.
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To download watch faces to your Samsung Gear watch, open up the GEAR app on your phone and select the INFO link at the top. Then select GEAR, and then WATCH FACES, and you will see the most downloaded watch faces. From that screen, you can view the top watch faces, or select DIGITAL, ANALOG, COLLABORATIONS, SPORTS/HEALTH, ART, INTERACTIVE, INFORMATIVE or OTHERS to choose the category of watch faces that you would like to view.
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All in all, there are so many watch faces to choose from. I find it very exciting when I come across a new watch face that is unique and different, and something that fits my personality. When I find it, I buy it and wear it like I just got a brand new watch.