Despite what the naysayers might say, the Galaxy Gear is a solid first attempt at a smartwatch by Samsung, but one of its biggest disadvantages is that it is only compatible with Samsung devices, and only a handful few at that. While Samsung has hinted at future iterations of its smartwatch being compatible with non-Samsung devices, we all know that's never going to happen, as the company wants to create its own ecosystem around its products. But if you're rocking a Nexus 5 and have a strong will and some free time, you can pair up your Galaxy Gear with it right now.
An XDA member has cooked up a method to make the Gear work with the Nexus 5 – it requires installing the Gear Manager app and a few other APKs that are required for the Gear to work, and apart from a few functions not working, such as S Voice and Weather, the smartwatch will be doing almost everything that it would do when connected to a Samsung smartphone (like the Galaxy Note 3, S4, and others.) It's not known whether the method works on other devices, though we're in the process of trying it out on a Nexus 7 and will update this post once we're done.
Of course, this method is mostly useful for those that have both a Nexus 5 and a Samsung phone, as no one without the latter would buy the Galaxy Gear in the first place. But if you do fall into that camp (or can borrow your friend or relative's Gear), then you can hit the source link below for more details, or head to this link for a step-by-step guide on how to set up your Gear with the Nexus 5.
Update: We tried to connect it with a Nexus 7 and the two devices did try to pair, and would like to point out that you'll have to reset your Galaxy Gear to factory settings if it's already connected to a Samsung device before you try to connect it with your Nexus 5/7.
