As a first attempt by Samsung at a smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear is a very impressive and solid first outing by the company and hopefully within the next couple of years we really start to see some improvements which overall make the device accessible to a larger market.
One of the only disadvantage with the Galaxy Gear is that its only compatible other Samsung devices, and only a few of them at that, and it doesn’t look like the Gear or future iterations of their smartwatch’s will work with non Samsung devices (Even though they have supposedly promised it will work eventually) as the company will want to make sure you purchase two of their products, not just the smartwatch and someone else’s phone.
See also: Top 5 Samsung Galaxy Gear apps
If you do happen to have a Nexus 5, some free time and a lot of patience then you’re now able to hook it up with your Galaxy Gear. A member of XDA has come up with a method that enables the Gear to work alongside the Nexus 5, all it requires is the installation of the Gear Manager app and a few other APK’s that are needed in order for the Gear to work.
Despite a few functions not working such as S Voice and Weather, the Gear will do everything it would normally do when connect to a Samsung Smartphone. Its not known whether it works on all devices but hopefully soon we’ll have a full list of compatible devices. So if you want to try and connect your Samsung smartphone to your gear then follow these steps:
- Make a back-up of your Nexus 5
- Install gearmanagerstub.apk onto your phone
- Download Gear Manager 1.6.111801 and rename the APK to ZIP
- Open the ZIP and go to assets/preinstallapks
- Install each of the individual APK files to your device one by one (music and weather will not install)
- Install the full Gear Manager 1.6.111801 APK (the actually APK not the ZIP)
- Pair your Galaxy Gear to the phone (it may take more than a few tries either by NFC or manually)
- Install ATNManager
- Allow ATNManager access via Settings > Security > Notification Access
- Within ATNManager choose what notifications you’d like to receive on your Galaxy Gear
If you successfully completed all those steps then you should be able to start receiving notifications on your Gear via the ATNManager app, some notifications will show you a message while others only give you the option to view on your phone.
Disclaimer: AmongTech can’t be held responsible for any damage done to your devices by trying to make the Galaxy Gear compatible with your Nexus 5 device. This is an unofficial method.
