When the Samsung Galaxy Gear was unveiled in September, the realization that it would only work with one smartphone, the Note 3, out of the box, was a disappointment. When other Galaxy devices, like the Note II, S3 and S4 were updated to support the smartwatch, users were still frustrated: why limit the potential audience, even if the the experience is optimized for Samsung devices?
As happens so often with the Android community, someone fixed the problem by going around it. Since the Galaxy Gear uses the Bluetooth LE stack built into Android 4.3 and above, most newer devices are theoretically capable of communicating with the smartwatch, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to make them talk.
An Italian XDA Developers member by the name of pcelli did just that, and while the procedure is slightly daunting and somewhat frustrating, the end results are a nearly-perfect pairing. The hack only works with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 running Android 4.4.2 at the moment, but we’re hoping that changes soon. Only two major features, S Voice and Weather, don’t work, likely due different frameworks, but otherwise notifications, camera and gallery access, call logs and others work just fine. That Samsung left the Gear’s software open just wide enough to communicate with the Nexus indicates there may be hope for wider cross-OEM compatibility in the future, too.
[source]XDA Developers[/source]
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