Samsung is offering anyone who purchases the Galaxy S7 an opportunity to pick up an exclusive Gear VR content package.
This includes a collection of games such as Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, Darknet, Drift, and Starchart, along with an unspecified discount on purchasing the Gear VR itself.
"The smartphone is already so fundamental to our lives," said David Lowes, chief marketing officer at Samsung Electronics Europe, "but connecting it with a product like the Gear VR opens up incredible new experiences that are often as emotional as they are immersive."
"With this new incentive, we're encouraging broader VR adoption so that more people can experience this amazing new technology for themselves."
The news follows the announcement of a first-party Google competitor to the Samsung Gear VR, known as Daydream.
Rather than a fully standalone headset with its own screen (as was rumoured), Daydream will be a housing allowing users to use any high-end Android handset for mobile VR, rather than just Samsung flagships.
If 2016 will be remembered for one thing, it will be the year we embarked into the world of virtual reality. After nearly five years of hype and development, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are finally available to buy and Sony's PlayStation VR will be bringing up the rear in October.
However, these headsets not only cost in excess of £350 – the Vive is almost double that – but Oculus and HTC's headsets also require a monumentally powerful PC in order to run, limiting their initial appeal to hardcore PC enthusiasts only.
Samsung, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. Following in the mobile-based footsteps instigated by Google's do-it-yourself Cardboard initiative, Samsung's Gear VR headset costs just £80 inc VAT (£67 ex VAT) and only requires that you have a compatible Samsung smartphone, which in the UK extends to the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+,S7 and S7 Edge.
You'll need to install the Oculus app and create an account before you get started, but the rest of the setup process is simple. Just pop off the headset's plastic cover, slot in your phone, adjust the velcro straps and turn the wheel on top of the headset to bring your new world into focus.
It's a quick, easy way to impress your friends, family and co-workers, and there's no denying the initial wow factor of suddenly being whisked away to a floating apartment in the sky as you sit back and browse the Gear's menu of offerings. It’s surprisingly convincing, and after a couple of minutes, you’ll barely even notice the headset's there, as its meagre weight of around 500g (depending on which phone you use) never felt like it was putting any undue pressure on our head.
The straps are very secure, and the padding around your eyes and nose is comfortable. The cushioning could do a better job at blocking out external light, but for the most part the Gear VR feels just as good to wear as the Vive and Oculus Rift. You can also remove the head strap altogether and simply hold it up to your face, but you’ll probably only want to do this when you’re passing it around to other users.
We tested the Gear VR with a Galaxy S7. This is arguably the best choice when it comes to delivering a smooth virtual reality experience, as it not only has more powerful components than any of Samsung’s S6 phones, but its 5.1in, 2560x1440 screen resolution will also, in theory, provide the sharpest picture, as it has a higher pixel density than the 5.5in S7 Edge.
In practice, you can still see the screen's individual pixels no matter what you’re looking at, but this is a problem we've encountered on the high-end headsets as well, so it's certainly not unique to the Gear. The edges of our black-rimmed porthole were also never quite as sharp as objects in the centre of the display, but again this is something we've noticed elsewhere, too. If anything, it's impressive that Samsung has managed to come this close to other VR headsets, which in some cases cost almost ten times the price.
However, the Gear's mobile origins start to become clear as soon as you start moving your head, as the phone's 60Hz refresh rate can occasionally produce a noticeable amount of ghosting. The worst culprit is the menu crosshair showing your line of sight, as this can quite often leave a prominent trail of pixels behind as you move your head. It's not bad enough to immediately make you grasp for the sick bucket, but it can be off-putting, particularly when it's accompanied by regular drops in framerate.
Of course, how much you’ll be bothered by these technical hitches will depend on the kind of content you’re using. The Gear’s most obvious attraction is its virtual reality games. Most can be controlled by simply moving your head, but many require the use of the headset's four-way directional touchpad as well. This is found on the side of the headset, and can be tapped in the middle or used to swipe up and down or left to right. Considering its lack of haptic feedback, it's surprisingly responsive, and we were never left wondering whether we'd tapped or swiped it correctly.
Holding your hand to the side of your head can get tiring pretty quickly, though, so you may want to pair the headset with an optional Bluetooth controller instead if the game supports it. In fact, apps such as the Oculus Arcade won't load without one, so you may need to invest in an additional gamepad if you're absolutely desperate to have the original Sonic the Hedgehog writ large in front of your eyeballs.
However, beyond the type of retro classics you'll find in Oculus Arcade, the vast majority of the Gear's free gaming titles are pretty throwaway. Some are quite impressive, such as the endless flight game Polyrunner, but most, like In Cell or Cerevrum, aren't any more compelling than the average mobile game you'd play to while the time away on your phone.
No one's going to sit down for half an hour to play Temple Run VR, for example, and the games that solely relied on head-tracking made us feel quite nauseous, forcing us to quit after just a few minutes of play.
It’s only when you venture into paid VR games that you begin to see where the Gear’s magic lies. Puzzle game Esper 2 was particularly brilliant, and it’s clear that titles like this have been designed with VR in the mind right from the ground up rather than simply had it tacked on in a quick port.
The 360-degree video experiences are a bit hit and miss, too. For instance, as much as we love the idea of sitting right in the middle of the Saturday Night Live studio, complete with its live audience behind us, the resolution of the video footage in the VRSE video app is so poor and grainy that you can barely see the actors in front of you.
The same goes for some of the sports videos inside the NextVR app as well. It's a great idea putting viewers right in the middle of the Youth Olympics ski jumping, but when each jumper quickly descends into a mere blur of grainy pixels, the awe and wonder of the experience becomes disappointingly underwhelming.
There's also Netflix to enjoy if someone else is using the TV. Here, you're placed in a virtual living room, and watching films on its virtual big screen really does make it feel more impressive than bending over a real-life phone or tablet. That said, our eyes got quite tired after a while, and we found that 30 minutes was about all we could take before we had to take a break.
All this poses some big problems for the Gear VR. As with any new platform, more (and hopefully better) content is undoubtedly on its way, but the sheer number of problems we experienced does call into question the headset's overall longevity.
For instance, outside of its entertainment possibilities, the Gear could be a useful tool for virtual meetings or professional simulation and training experiences, such as medical procedures or military situations. But unless the footage resolution becomes a lot sharper, we're not sure it will provide any more benefit than traditional videos and demonstrations
