A Note about Heating Issues:

I published a blog last week reviewing the Gear VR for Galaxy S6.  I have since returned the device.  Bummer!  Right?!?  Here’s the reason that my time with the Gear VR was so short.  It simply heats up the smartphone too quickly.  The device has a safety feature that stops allowing VR use when the phone is too hot.  I noticed it right away but I thought I’d solved the issue by running a fan directly in the face of the person wearing the headset.  But then one weekend nothing seemed to help with the rapid heat issue.  I was getting five minutes of use and then heat warnings.  I was cooling the phone down with ice packs and trying again, and BOOM, the phone was 100 degrees in five minutes.  And that simply cuts the “fun factor” down to zero for me.  I see great potential.  I don’t take anything back that I’ve written thus far about how amazing this technology is.  But part of what is amazing is tied to its weakness.  Oculus Rift uses a full computer to power it and manage the software.  The Gear VR is trying to do all of that same work with a small smartphone operating system (without an internal fan!).  So the tech has some work to do before it’s consumer ready.  I’m confident they’ll solve that puzzle, it’s just not there yet.  So save your cash for now.