GearS2 runs the Tizen operating system which works well. The UI is intuitive and vividly displayed on the sAMOLED, touch screen display. I liked using the combination of the rotating bezel and touch to interact with the device; my processscroll using the bezel and select via touch. Pairing is simple. SpesifikasiSamsung Gear S2 smartwatch. Koneksi Bluetooth, layar 1,2 inci, 47g, 250mAh baterai, memori ROM 4GB, IP68 Lihat bagaimana Samsung Gear S2 berhasil mendampingi produk unggul lainnya. Walaupunbelum support 3G, fungsionalitas Gear S2 selamanya mampu sobat andalkan untuk mempermudah komunikasi dan keperluan mobil lainnya. Spesifikasi jam tangan pintar Samsung Gear S2 tergolong tinggi, dan mampu berkompetisi melawan Smartwatch buatan LG dan Motorola. Menariknya, desain Gear S2 terlihat sangat sama bersama dengan jam tangan analog, karena memiliki layar bundar dan tidak terkesan sangat mencolok. cash. Samsung Gear S2 MSRP $ “The Gear S3's release is imminent, but the S2 remains a beautiful piece of industrial design, and a decent smartwatch.” Pros Beautiful round design Elegant, fluid user interface Rotating bezel is a true innovation 2-3 day battery life Cons Barely any usable apps Reactivation Lock is buggy Fitness functions are very limited Smartwatches have gotten better and better looking since the the Gear S2 watch first blew us away at the 2015 IFA trade show. Maybe it was the Berlin goggles, but Samsung’s was the best-looking, easiest-to-use watch we had ever seen, from an interface standpoint. And over time, the watch’s beauty held out. In many ways, the Gear S2 was the best Samsung product in years. Unfortunately, since strapping the final version of the watch on our wrists — and over the months since then –the experience hasn’t been all daisies and daffodils. Samsung has updated the software to address some of the bugs we detected last fall and has released a handful of key apps — including Samsung Pay support for Uber. These improvements to one of the most compelling smartwatches yet are great; the company seems to finally understand why folks might want a watch at all. But concerns about usability remain, and ultimately, there’s no killer app that makes this a must-have device. Updated on 10-03-2016 by Jeremy Kaplan Updated to reflect bug fixes and new apps, and added experiential testing with the S Health app. Beautiful and comfortable The user interface of a watch is important, but an attractive and comfortable design is more important. Watches are fashion statements, and no one wants to wear something crappy or huge just for some notifications. A lot of post-Apple Watch wearables are looking more acceptable on the wrist, but the Gear S2 is one of the best-looking, best-sized smartwatch yet. That said, the competition in recent months has gotten quite stiff. The Huawei Watch is better looking, for example, though the interface is less intuitive and elegant. And the Gear S3, which should be released shortly, promises competition and adds some crucial missing features, though Samsung says it is will not replace the S2. Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends But back to the S2 itself! Perfectly round and sized at a comfortable inches 42mm total case size, it’s an optimal size to fit on a large variety of wrist shapes and sizes. It’s in between the two Apple Watch sizes, and comes in two designs a sporty version and a Classic version. The Classic also has a ribbed watch face and traditional lugs, making it compatible with any 20mm watch band. There are versions of the Sport with added 3G/4G connectivity as well. The Gear S2’s secret weapon is the bezel surrounding its tested the stainless steel I tested the stainless steel Sport version with Bluetooth, which has a brushed metal finish and winged-style straps that make it look a little more elegant on smaller wrists. The strap that comes with it is a rubbery silicone, which feels a lot like the Apple Watch Sport bands. The bands on the Sport are easily removed via a button on the bottom of each, and replaceable with other Samsung-made straps. There are already a number of choices at launch, though if the Gear S2 doesn’t take off, early adopters will have a hard time finding straps in a couple years. Samsung is known for iterating fast and abandoning losing ideas pretty quickly. It calls this cut-and-run philosophy “relentless innovation.” The button layout on the Gear S2 is straightforward and better than any other smartwatch. It has two navigation buttons on its right side. The bottom one acts as a power button and Home button, which brings you back to the home screen, and the top acts as a Back button, bringing you back into the previous menu, like an Android phone. Both buttons are comfortable to press and easy to find, even in the dark. The Gear S2’s secret weapon, however, is the bezel surrounding its screen, which turns and twists like a radial dial of sorts, allowing you to easily select and scroll through onscreen menus. Operating like a tiny little steering wheel, it has a pleasant click to it as you turn, giving light tactile feedback so you know how fast you’re wheeling around. Finally, there is a heart-rate monitor on the bottom of the watch which is pretty common these days. It also tracks steps at all times. Operating system Samsung’s Tizen interface is brilliant — the best around — blending Apple’s best innovations with smart, thought-out designs. All of the menus are built with a round screen in mind, and using the rotating bezel to scroll through menus, or swipe around as you would on a phone, is incredibly intuitive. Seriously, there are almost no apps for this Samsung’s best innovation is simplicity. It’s a button click or swipe to get to the radial apps menu, a swipe down to access the battery life and connectivity menu, a swipe right to check notifications, and a simple swipe left to see your widgets. And, of course, you can do all of this with the rotating bezel as well, which clears up valuable screen space that your fingers take up when swiping. Every menu and app is designed to perfectly fit this easy, round design philosophy, with the exception of the square calendar app. Samsung definitely stole a note from Apple with its watch customization menu. It looks and operates identically to the Apple Watch, but we can’t complain a ton, because it works. An added bonus Samsung watch faces can be interactive. Several baked-in faces animate to show if you’re meeting your fitness goals, and companies like CNN have created special watch faces with their headlines scrolling past. You would never know, but this entire watch runs on Samsung’s own Tizen operating system, which is in its new smart TVs but absent from its Android-powered phones. It wasn’t fun to use on the original Galaxy Gear, but six watches later, the Gear S2 shows that maybe Samsung can do its own thing. Except for one major problem There are no apps. Really. When we first reviewed this watch in late 2015, we complained about the dearth of useful apps. And now, fully a year later, there are still almost no apps for this watch. For example, let’s take a spin through the travel apps available for Apple Watch. There are apps for every major airline United, Delta, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, apps to buy tickets and read reviews Priceline, TripAdvisor, Expedia, taxi apps Uber, Lyft apps for lodging Starwood, AirBnB, and apps to tell you what to do when you arrive Yelp, Foursquare. Not a single one of those is available for the Gear. Correction two are. Sort of. Samsung has its own app store, and claims that there are thousands of apps, but aside from the Flappy Bird clone, Yelp, Nokia Here Navigator, ESPN, Bloomberg, and CNN, there’s nothing you’ll want to use. Samsung’s apps are fantastic, especially its fitness app, but there just isn’t anything else. Samsung touted the release of a few high profile apps, notably the Uber app the other item from that list of Apple apps is Yelp. Adding Uber was great for Samsung phone owners, not so much for everyone else. You see, the company offers two separate and distinct app stores. Read that again, because it’s total madness. If you own a Galaxy phone, you have access to the Uber app. If you use a phone by a different maker, you won’t see it. This is unacceptable, a clear effort to replicate Apple’s walled garden, which we also find maddeningly restrictive. Likewise, Samsung rolled out Samsung Pay over the last few months; you can download a “beta” of the app — how is it a beta if it’s released to the public? — and pay for products with a wave of your wrist. The app works great, in my testing, but again, it’s only available through the Samsung Gear app store, not the Android Gear app store. Samsung argues that the Knox security features in its phones are required for the app. Oh, really? Hmm. If Samsung wants to keep running a store independent of the Android Wear app market, it desperately needs to attract more developers to its platform. Massive connectivity bugs and lag, fixed at last As much as we love wearing and using the Gear S2, it was for a while one of the most frustrating products we had ever reviewed. In testing the device paired with a Nexus 5X and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus in November of 2015, we encountered tremendous issues connecting to our phones — issues that have subsequently been fixed. Here’s the scoop. The setup process for the Gear S2 is fairly straightforward when it works. You download the Android app the Gear S2 is Android-only, for now, though the company recently launched a long overdue beta test for iOS support in Korea, find the watch, and then hit Yes on both devices. This will probably work the first time you set up your Gear. If the Gear S2 runs out of battery, it will never reconnect to your phone again. We uncovered a massive bug with the Gear S2 last fall, however If you wear it until it runs out of battery, it will never reconnect to your phone again. The only solution is a factory reset, where you lose all your data and apps. I’ve had to do this three times now. Other users and reviewers have reported similar issues. This bug makes the watch nearly unusable. I don’t know if every Gear S2 has this problem, but several other reviewers — AndroidPit, GreenBot, AndroidHeadlines — have struggled with the exact same problem. The problem, fortunately, has been rectified, but for a time, it was pretty hairy. Switching the phone you use it with is another ordeal. It will require a factory reset, but if you had a different Samsung/Android account connected to the Gear S2 on one phone, factory reset it, but enabled the Reactivation Lock feature, you’re in trouble. This feature is meant to prevent a thief from stealing your watch, factory resetting it, and reselling it, but Samsung has not worked out the kinks. The Reactivation Lock is a nightmare if you are the person trying to switch phones or users. DT Mobile Editor Malarie Gokey and I swapped the Gear S2 between us a family might try to do this as well, but even though she factory reset it, it would not connect to my Galaxy S6 Edge Plus because she had turned on the Reactivation Lock. There were no good on-screen prompts for how to proceed — a hard reset and debug menu didn’t help, either. In the end, I had to log in as Malarie on my phone to make it work. It was a colossal pain in the ass. Don’t ever factory reset a Gear S2 before you disable the Reactivation Lock. Notifications seemed to never arrive on the Gear, or came slowly, when we first reviewed it. This issue too seems to have been resolved. Finally, we never encountered much lag in the OS, but if you scroll quickly, it will fail to keep up. More annoyingly, if you have an app that sends multiple notifications, such as a chat app, Samsung’s swipe-up-to-delete gesture will fail to work. Instead, it will just scroll through the notifications. Eventually, if you press hard enough or get lucky, these notifications will vanish, but they do so in an ugly, laggy way. Using it as a fitness band Given the near total absence of smartwatch apps here, I tend to use the Gear S2 as a fitness tracker more than anything else. So how does it perform in this capacity? It does … okay. The Gear S2 has S Health, a very full-featured suite of tools to track your activity. We’ve ran hundreds of miles with the watch, and biked just as many. We’ve tried golfing with the Gear S2, cross-trained, hit spinning class, and more. Across those activities, the watch appears to track step counts reasonably well, though no fitness band seems to count the same number of steps nor log the same distance. For example, we recently ran miles on a treadmill in the gym; the Gear S2 recorded the distance as miles. What happened to that last half mile? Examining that run after the fact on the app yields an abundance of data heart rate over time, calories burned 615! Woo hoo!, average speed and pace, and so on. However, as a fitness band, the Gear S2 is limited by the absence of GPS functionality. Unless you carry your phone with you on that run, you’ll have no way to know exact distances or to track your path. We’re glad to see Samsung adding this feature into the S3. Also, while the watch charges quickly enough, it has died in the middle of several runs for us, meaning all data is simply eliminated. Additionally, the app makes it easy to select the last used activity but doesn’t make it easy to change it. If you recently went for a run, just scroll the dial right to get to the Start Workout widget and quickly start another run. Want to go cycling instead? Scroll right once, push apps, select S Health, scroll right to the green screen, push the arrow at the bottom of the screen, and select a different workout type. Whew! There are only eight types of activity, unfortunately, another limitation of the app. Cross training? What to select? Solid specs The Gear S2 has a gorgeous 360 × 360 pixel Super AMOLED screen that couldn’t look nicer. It’s covered by Gorilla Glass 3, runs Samsung’s Tizen OS, and has a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8x26 processor, 4GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth NFC, a heart-rate monitor, an accelerometer, a barometer, and a 250mAh battery. The NFC connectivity allow it to work with Samsung Pay, though that payment platform is still in beta, as we noted earlier. It still doesn’t work on Android Pay, and we have little expectation that Samsung will add this support. Bountiful battery life The Gear S2 kicks ass when it comes to battery life. The 250mAh battery in the S2 doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve gotten about – 3 days out of every charge. I did experience a lot of connectivity issues, which may have improved battery life, but even when it was connecting regularly, the battery killed it. Most watches seem to average about 1 to days, including the Apple Watch, so it’s nice to see Samsung excel in this regard. Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends The Gear’s charging cradle is also well thought out. Instead of a hunk of magnetic plastic that awkwardly slaps onto the back of the device, like the Apple Watch, this has a full stand that props the watch up like it’s on a pedestal, with a little indicator light that tells you if it’s charged or charging. One-year warranty Samsung’s standard manufacturer warranty is normal for a mobile device. A Gear S2 is covered for 1 year after the day of purchase for defects that occur under normal use, though Samsung determines “normal use,” so it can deny any claim it wishes. Don’t expect a repair or replacement if you get the Gear S2 wet or drop it, but if the battery gets very bad before a year is out, Samsung may replace it. You can find full details on Samsung warranties here. Conclusion Even though the Gear S3’s release is imminent, the Gear S2 remains a beautiful piece of industrial design, and a decent smartwatch. Updates to the software have come steadily, patching the serious connectivity bugs we identified in our initial review and adding some neat features, notably support for Samsung Pay. But without the enormous app market seen on the Apple Watch, it’s hard to say the Gear is a better product. Buy one and you’ll invariably find yourself wishing you could do more with it. That’s a shame, because Samsung has made a watch with possibly the best battery life, clearly the best interface to date, and one of the best designs we’ve seen. Looking for an alternative? There’s the Apple Watch, of course. Keep in mind that it requires an iPhone — and if you’re in the market for a Gear, you probably own a Galaxy or Android phone. Given the jaw-droppingly frustrating app store experience on other Android phones, we heartily discourage non-Galaxy owners from buying the Gear S2. Android Wear watches are getting better, but they still aren’t great. If you want to explore that route, try one of the new Moto 360s or the Huawei Watch, or keep your eyes out for the Gear S2’s big brother, the Gear S3. The Gear S2 retails for about $300 and most other watches hover around that price. Alternatively, you could choose to go low tech. We like the simple Withings Activite and Activite Pop, though they’re made for slender wrists. Highs Beautiful round design Elegant, fluid user interface Rotating bezel is a true innovation 2-3 day battery life Lows Barely any usable apps Reactivation lock is buggy Fitness functions are very limited Editors' Recommendations Google Pixel Watch 2 rumored price, release date, news, and more Apple AirPods Pro 2 vs. Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 4’s sleek design teased in detailed leak Samsung Galaxy Watch Active vs. Samsung Galaxy Watch Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 vs. Watch Active Spec comparison Farwell, Android Wear. Hello, Tizen. Samsung's latest smartwatch abandons the Android Wear OS in favor of the company's homegrown Tizen OS, which proves to be a smart choice indeed. The Samsung Gear S2 $ has a user-friendly interface that's worlds easier to use than Android Wear. And the watch itself has a great design that combines the round face and stainless steel case of a traditional timepiece with a futuristic, rotating bezel that makes navigation even easier. But there's still some room for Tizen to grow, as a dearth of apps and weak voice recognition keep the Gear S2 from nabbing a higher score. Pricing and Design The Samsung Gear S2 comes in two flavors There's the regular Gear S2 for $ and the $ Gear S2 classic. The regular Gear S2 comes with a black or white silicone wristband, while the classic model has black leather strap. No matter which version you choose, the watch face is made of matte stainless steel. We reviewed the $ model, with a white band and a silver face. You Can Trust Our Reviews There are also 3G versions of each watch available with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon service. Pricing and availability will vary according to carrier; T-Mobile, for instance, offers the option to add the watch to your plan for $5 per month. Similar Products The standard Gear S2 model is extremely comfortable and light on the wrist, with a simple clasp and an adjustable buckle to stay in place. No matter which model you choose, you're sure to be happy with the watch's most distinguishing feature, a rotating bezel. Similar to the digital crown on the side of the Apple Watch $ at eBayOpens in a new window , you physically turn the bezel around the watch face like a dial in order to make selections. It's precise, quick, and feels very satisfying to use thanks to the little clicks it makes. The watch also has a Back button in the two o'clock position, and a Home button in the four o'clock position. The Home button brings you to the default watch face or to your main app library if you're already at your home watch face. The Back button brings you back one step in whatever app you're in. Of course, you can also tap your way through the interface without bothering with the bezel. I'll discuss navigation more in a bit, but the Gear S2 is the most easily navigable smartwatch I've tested. Left to right Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2, Moto 360 The Gear S2's round watch face measures inches around, inches thick, and weighs ounces. The Huawei Watch at AmazonOpens in a new window , by comparison, is slightly larger at inches wide, inches thick, and ounches. The Motorola Moto 360 , meanwhile, meastures inches wide, inches thick, and ounces. The variations might seem slight on paper, but you can really feel a difference on your wrist. The watch is rated IP68 for water-resistance, which means it can withstand splashes at the sink, but you shouldn't take it to the beach or in the shower. DisplayThe Gear S2 has a circular Super AMOLED display with a 360-by-360-pixel resolution that works out to a sharp 302 pixels per inch. It doesn't get quite as bright as the Huawei Watch, but I was always able to see it outside, even with the brightness set to low. The screen is not always-on by default, but there is an option to do so if you wish. Without it on, the screen still activates quickly when you life your wrist, and it never accidentally turned on in my testing, which is very helpful for conserving battery. The screen turns off fast, though—after about five seconds—which can get a little annoying when you're trying to read an email, text, or CNN headline. However, a quick tap or turn of the bezel keeps the screen activated. Samsung uses an ambient light sensor to adjust brightness depending on surroundings, without the "flat tire" effect that cuts off the Moto 360's circular display in a horizontal line at the bottom. It's also easy to adjust the brightness on your own just swipe down on the display and tap the Brightness setting. I didn't detect any prismatic screen aberration here like I did on the Moto 360, unless you count some very slight reflections of light around the edge of the bezel. The watch can be paired with Bluetooth devices, including headesets or speakers for music playback, or mobile devices that run Android or later. Unlike Pebble or Android Wear devices, there is no iOS support. To start the pairing process, you need to download the free Samsung Gear Manager app on your Android device and follow the simple on-screen instructions. I easily paired the Gear S2 with a Samsung Galaxy S6 $ at AmazonOpens in a new window . Once connected, you have a number of options at your command, like customizing the watch face, managing apps and notifications, and sending music files to the watch, which comes with 4GB of internal storage. Features, Performance, and TizenThe Gear S2 has an accelerometer, a barometer, a gyroscope, proximity sensors, and a heart rate sensor. Unlike the Sony SmartWatch 3 $ at AmazonOpens in a new window , there is no GPS, but there is Wi-Fi, which extends the range of the watch when connected to a wireless network. The heart rate sensor here works better than the one in the Huawei Watch or the Moto 360 by automatically measuring your heart rate throughout the day. By default it checks in about five times per day, though you can adjust it to check more or less frequently. You can also check manually, and it lets you know whether your heart rate is average when you're resting, in a state before exercise, or after exercise. The watch reported resting numbers in the low-to-mid sixties while sitting in a relaxed state, which is on par with measurements taken by the Huawei Watch. The watch counts steps and detects when you're exercising or resting for too long, similar to the Apple Watch. You can also keep track of the amount of water or caffeine you've been drinking. And you can install the Nike+ running app for more detailed fitness analysis. However, like I usually advise, you probably want to go with a dedicated fitness tracker rather than a smartwatch if fitness is your primary concern. The Misfit Flash Link $ at AmazonOpens in a new window is great if you're on a budget, while the Fitbit Charge HR $ at AmazonOpens in a new window is worth the splurge. Powered by a dual-core 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, the Gear S2 uses Samsung's proprietary operating system, Tizen. It has the best user interface for a smartwatch yet, though it does have one annoying flaw. For some reason, the Gear S2 doesn't go back to the app you were previously using after it goes to sleep. Instead, it goes back to the default watch face every time it wakes up. That can be frustrating if you want to keep reading a story, or reply to a text when suddenly the screen shuts off from inactivity. Thakfully, the watch keeps images and headlines loaded in news apps when you finally return to them. The strength of Tizen lies in its layout, which is a pleasure to navigate. Turning the bezel or swiping to the left brings up any notifications, which you can tap to open or swipe up to dismiss. Swiping or turning the bezel to the right brings up the main menu for Apps, a list of favorite contacts, Settings, or the S Voice assistant. Keep swiping or rotating the bezel and you can see a whole collection of apps around the perimeter of the screen, as if they were numbers on a watch face, including the calendar, heart rate monitor, music playback control, pedometer, or whatever other apps you want to include. It beats swiping through endless vertical lists and cards like in Android Wear. However, you still have to tap on the touch screen to make selections. It would've been nice to be able to push the bezel in to make selections, but since your fingers are already on the watch anyway, it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, Tizen's selection of third-party apps is weak compared with Android Wear, Apple, and Pebble. There are no music streaming services besides Samsung's Milk Music, little in the way of fitness apps besides Samsung's S Health, and nothing when it comes to note-taking apps or popular social media like Facebook or Twitter. There are some useful apps available, like Bloomberg, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Yelp, but Samsung needs to lure many more companies if it wants to compete. And although watch apps aren't available, you can still receive and respond to phone notifications from Facebook, Google Hangouts, and Twitter on the Gear S2 with a robust set of options. You can choose from some short, canned phrases or send an emoticon. You can also respond with voice-to-text, though unfortunately this feature is hit-or-miss; I never reached a point in testing where I felt like I could rely on it to quickly send an accurate message. Surprisingly, the Gear S2 also offers a phone number pad-style keyboard with three letters assigned to each number so you can type out messages. It's a slow process, but predictive text helps things along. A friend texted me some good news and I was able to type in "Wow, that's great! Congrats!" fairly easily. Don't expect to take calls on the Gear S2, though. You can use it to dial a call, but you'll have to take out your phone or put on a Bluetooth headset if you want to take things any further. Battery life is relatively excellent. Samsung promises up to three days of use, which is accurate if you keep the display set to power off automatically. With it set to always-on, the watched lasted for nearly two days, which is still better than any other smartwatch with a color display I've tested with the exception of the Pebble Time, which can last for about a week, albeit with a much dimmer, lower-resolution display. The Gear S2 can also be set to go into Power-Saving mode, which turns the screen monochrome when you're running low on battery. It charges with an included magnetic dock and micro USB cable. ConclusionsThe Samsung Gear S2 should certainly sit alongside the Apple Watch and the Pebble family as one of the better smartwatch options on the market. It sports a sleek design, a user-friendly interface that blows the confusing Android Wear out of the water, very good battery life for a smartwatch, and a unique, rotating bezel. Unfortunately, a paltry selection of apps holds it back, especially when Apple and Pebble have so many to choose from. And underwhelming voice recognition ultimately makes the Apple and Pebble watches easier to use. I'd certainly choose the Gear 2 over Android Wear options like the Huawei Watch and the Moto 360, but it's a harder pick from there. The Apple Watch remains the smartwatch for dyed-in-the-wool Apple users, with a reliable heart rate sensor that works as you exercise, NFC so you can pay without flashing your credit card, the best selection of third-party apps, and an intuitive interface similar to that of the Gear S2. But our Editors' Choice remains with the Pebble family, which we highly recommended to smartwatch newcomers. The original Pebble is inexpensive, is compatible with both Android and iOS, and works with many useful apps. The Pebble Time $ at AmazonOpens in a new window adds a color screen and reliable voice-to-text messaging. Or you could wait for the Pebble Time Round, which is the Pebble Time with a traditional round watch face. The Samsung Gear S2 is definitely an intriguing new option, but it's worth waiting for the second generation. Pros Sleek design. Nice display. Useful rotating bezel. Intuitive user interface. Good battery life. View More Cons Weak app selection. Spotty voice recognition. Pricey. The Bottom Line The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch has great software and a thoughtful design going for it, but a paltry app selection and finicky voice recognition hold it back. Like What You're Reading? Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. The quick takeSamsung was a pioneer in the new generation of smartwatches, but it hasn't produced the best overall products in its past few tries. With the Gear S2 it finally has a lot of things right — the watch looks nice, has a good screen, is built well and is now a proper size for most wrists. The Tizen-based operating system doesn't have as many restrictions as before and now works properly with non-Samsung phones, which is huge. Unfortunately the software still feels a little rough around the edges, and tries to do far too much considering the screen size it has to work goodCompact and lightInnovative rotating bezelGreat screenGood battery lifeThe badSoftware still tries to do too muchNative apps offer poor experienceMore complicated than Android WearNotification support not entirely universalSamsung's best watch yetGear S2 Full ReviewWhen you look at the history of the modern smartwatch, it's hard to ignore Samsung's involvement in the process. Though it hasn't necessarily made blockbuster products that have led the wearable industry, Samsung has been eager to keep trying new things with each generation — whether it's large screens, new software interaction or standalone cellular connections in watches. Samsung also hasn't shied away from different operating systems, starting with Android, trying Android Wear and finally settling on the launch of the Gear S2, it's clear that Samsung has been learning from its mistakes as well — and this is finally the first watch from Samsung that feels like a complete product. The new watch is compact, capable and designed to look like a watch — and the new rotating bezel is a truly innovative way to interact with it. Perhaps most importantly, the Gear S2 works with Android phones other than Samsung's own, which was a bigger issue for most people than the overall quality of its previous while the Gear S2 is a better product than any previous Gear, the competition is a bit stiffer now as well. Android Wear finally has some legs, and Pebble has released new versions of its own watches. Does the Gear S2 have what it takes to be considered as your new primary wrist computer? We're here to answer that question in our full review — read this reviewI Andrew Martonik am writing this review after a little more than a week using a silver and white Gear S2 with a cameo appearance by Phil Nickinson's black and dark grey model. It's a standard Bluetooth and Wifi model not 3G, and for the entire review period was connected to either a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 or Moto X are two distinct designs of the Gear S2. There's the "standard" model which I have here that's a bit sporty in design, and then there's the Gear S2 Classic, which has a more standard watch design with proper lugs and a standard watch band on it. Both are roughly the same internally — the only difference is the case design. There is also a 3G model of the standard Gear S2, which is slightly larger and has a bigger new take on GearGear S2 Hardware and displaySamsung has tried various approaches to its smartwatch designs, but the one unifying feature — from the original Galaxy Gear to the gigantic Gear S — was that they kind of just felt like little phones. They were all bulky for smartwatches, had relatively large and rectangular screens and some even integrated cameras into the bodies or the straps. It doesn't make sense to do so much on a watch, and with the Gear S2 Samsung no longer tries didn't just move down to the competition, it went smaller with the Gear than just drop down to the same size on offer by the current crop of Android Wear devices, Samsung went a step further with the Gear S2 and went smaller than what's out there already. The Gear S2 has a slightly smaller display, and is thinner and lighter than your average LG Watch Urbane or Huawei Watch. The only downside here is that there aren't two different case sizes on offer like the Moto 360 2015 and ASUS ZenWatch 2 — you'll have to like the one size off, let's talk display. Samsung went with a relatively small circular Super AMOLED screen, at 360x360 resolution, and it looks beautiful. The reliance on black backgrounds in the interface make the whites and colors pop, and while there's no automatic brightness mode I found myself comfortable with brightness set to 80 percent. The resolution is plenty high for this screen size, and it has good viewing angles as well. I just expect Samsung's displays to be good at this point — no matter what the size — and the Gear S2 doesn't display is really great, and the simplistic stainless steel case is of top-notch display is surrounded by a solid casing made of 316L stainless steel, available in a light silver or a dark grey, with a plastic and glass insert on the bottom to allow for wireless charging and heart rate monitoring. And while it doesn't have standard lugs for attaching watch bands, it does extend on the top and bottom to marry up with a proprietary connector for its own bands. The bands are designed to flow seamlessly into the case, giving it a slick look, but some may still prefer the more "standard" look of the Gear S2 Classic case is nicely machined in a minimalist design, with the flat and lightly-textured steel being set off just a bit by a shiny bevel all along the rotating bezel that surrounds the screen. That rotating bezel serves as a main way of interacting with the watch, which I'll get to in a later section, but it's important to note that the bezel is very well engineered. It clicks along as a great interaction mechanism for the watch, but also doesn't look out of place or get in the way when it isn't in the same can't be said about the dedicated "back" and "home" buttons on the right side of the case, which indeed stand out as not only poor choices for usability but also kind of detract from the otherwise sleek case. A single button would've looked much better, but I can at least applaud Samsung for ditching the big front-mounted home button of previous Gear S2 comes with a flexible elastomer aka rubber band out of the box, with a standard watch buckle in matching metal to the case, and while it still has a proprietary connector it's at least easily swappable and can be changed without tools. Samsung includes both large and small bands in the box — but really they should be called "long" and short" because the only difference between the two is the length. You can mix-and-match the two bands to get the right fit, and while I just used the standard large set, those with smaller wrists will want to opt for the small only downside to the standard Gear S2's design is its sporty style, which doesn't work in all is only offering the Gear S2 in two color choices, but at the launch of the watch showed off quite a few different band color options. We haven't heard anything more about when or where those band choices will be available Samsung did eventually sell replacement bands for previous Gears, or if third parties will be able to get in on the action, but I wouldn't put much stock in them becoming available — just pick the color you'll be happiest with out of the box, and anything more is just a elastomer bands give the Gear S2 more of a sport watch feel, not unlike the Sony Smartwatch 3 or any other basic non-smart active watch from Nike or Adidas, and that can be a little polarizing. It feels right at home with casual attire and daily wear, but stands out notably if you're dressing up for a nice dinner or a meeting. Of course the opposite is true with a design like the LG Watch Urbane, which is just far too flashy, but I do wish that the standard Gear S2 band and case were a bit more neutral. At least Samsung is offering the Gear S2 Classic, which costs $50 more but has a design that should work in more How to change the Gear S2 strapsTizen is better, but incompleteGear S2 Software and performanceSamsung's Tizen-based smartwatch operating system has greatly evolved since it took over for the Android offering on the first Galaxy Gear. And just like its smartwatch hardware story, Samsung's smartwatch software often feels more like it belongs on a small phone rather than a watch. Though the latest iteration is far simpler to understand and use, I still get the impression that Samsung is just trying to do too much on the watch — particularly for a device with only a circular entire interface is navigable with swipes, but the rotating bezel is preferable in almost every this watch packs a touchscreen, there are multiple ways to interact with it that don't involve tapping the screen. The Gear S2 has two buttons on the side — one for "back" and another for "home" — as well as a rotating bezel to help alleviate navigating a rather complex interface on a small screen. The back button simply takes you back to the previous screen you were on, just like on an Android phone, and the home button returns you instantly to the watch face. You can also set a double-press of the home button to launch any app of your the entire interface is navigable with swipes, the preferred method is twisting the watch bezel. The bezel clicks while turning, with each click in position being analogous to a full-screen swipe. In most of the interface you'll turn the bezel clockwise to move right, and counterclockwise to move left. In vertically-scrolling lists, menus and apps, you'll turn clockwise to go down and counterclockwise to go up. Turning the bezel means you aren't covering the interface you're trying to manipulate, and on such a small screen it helps to just move in a series of bezel clicks rather than swiping. In multiple areas of the interface, you can highlight items from a radial list with the bezel, and then simply tap the center of the screen to select the highlighted the highest level of the interface you have a set of home screens, with your watch face of course being the primary screen — a swipe down on the screen returns you to the watch face, and a swipe down again on the watch face gives you quick controls for media playback, do not disturb mode, and brightness controlls. To the left you'll find your notifications as they come in, and to the right you'll find a succession of customizable widgets. There are 13 in total pre-loaded, and you can choose to organize, add or remove them as you see fit — by default you'll have a quick app launcher, as well as widgets for your calendar, S Health step count, weather and heart Gear S2's software still feels a bit like it belongs on a phone, and can get confusing quickly when you use the cleanest possible look you can remove all of these widgets, but you'll still get a blank page to the right of your watch face with a "+" imploring you to add more. Many of the widgets just aren't useful at all, like the full-month calendar widget, or some of the widgets that require deep multi-level dives into apps to make use of. But others, like the media playback control widget and the step counter, are genuinely useful to have at a glance over from your watch face. The best part about these is being able to choose which ones you main interface paradigm is rather simple to figure out, but it gets quite confusing once you dig deeper into it. Again you get the feeling that there's more smartphone DNA in this watch than anything else, as there are still situations where you need to be several taps, swipes or clicks deep into the interface to get things done. Diving into the settings is just a rabbit hole of lists upon lists, with every option imaginable available, and doing some things like replying to an email can take upwards of five taps on the screen. You can get by with just the simple things on the Gear S2, but there's a lot going on here that can get frustrating and confusing to navigate on such a small facesSamsung has done a pretty good job with the watch face offerings on the Gear S2. Out of the box you'll have 15 distinct watch faces to choose from, some of which are branded with pre-loaded apps like Nike and CNN, but in general run the range between modern and classic, as well as analog and digital. Most of the faces can be customized some more than others, with options to change the dial, hands if analog, colors and information can also browse through dozens of watch faces from Samsung's Galaxy Apps store, though I honestly couldn't find many that appealed to me and was more than happy with a customized version of a pre-loaded face. Perhaps these offerings will improve over time, but only time will tell there — there's nothing in the Galaxy Apps store that can rival the watch face offerings for Android Wear of the most important experiences on any smartwatch is how it handles notifications from your attached smartphone, and thankfully Samsung has made huge strides in this area compared to the original Gear S. There are two major improvements to the notification system — two-way notification sync, and actionable third-party notifications. Two-way sync means any action you take on the smartwatch is reflected on the phone, and vice-versa, while actionable third-party notifications mean you can actually do things with notifications that arrive rather than just clear notifications arrive on your phone they're pushed over to the watch and lined up in chronological order — grouped by app — on individual screens to the left of your watch face. You can also have the watch screen turn on when notifications arrive, as well as adjust the vibration intensity on your wrist for notifications. Unfortunately if you turn on this heads-up notification mode, you can't actually clear the notification right as it arrives — you need to hit the back button and then go back to the main notification area to clear it. Baffling, but that's how it you scroll or swipe through your unread notifications you'll see an app icon indicating where it came from, as well as a brief bit of information on the content — such as the subject line of an email, or the first few words of a text message. Tapping individual notifications expands them so you can view the full content — as in, you can actually scroll through a 500 word email if you want. If it's a text-based chat — like an email or Hangouts message — that can warrant a response, you can reply with quick canned responses, a set of emoji, voice dictation which is unfortunately not very well done, or even type in words with an absolutely tiny T9-style keyboard believe me, it's not great. If you'd prefer to just clear the notification, you can swipe it up on the watch and it'll also clear on the sync and actionable third-party notifications are a minimum requirement in a modern the Gear S2 now supports more than just Samsung phones that also means it supports non-Samsung apps, and the compatibility is surprisingly good. For example when Gmail messages arrive you can actually archive or delete them from the watch, and when Hangouts messages come in you actually see the person's picture as a background and can reply properly. There are also a few glaring omissions, like a lack of turn-by-turn notifications from Google Maps, and informational pop-ups that are more watch-specific like boarding information from airline as is the case with Android Wear you can't expect every app you have to interact properly with the watch, but it seems as though Samsung has done its part to get popular apps working as expected on the Gear S2. Unfortunately it isn't likely that new apps released further down the road will be supported, and if a developer is choosing to hook into just one wearable platform on Android, chances are they're going to start with Android using Tizen for its wearable platform has many advantages, but one of the biggest downsides is in its handling of apps. Because there's no inherent link between the apps on your phone and the watch outside of just basic notifications, if you want any more complex interaction you need to install an app on the watch directly. Samsung showed off dozens of apps from well-known names at the launch of the Gear S2, but unfortunately a large number of those have yet to show up in the Galaxy Apps store for download. And those that have are quite a pain to install, involving downloading the watch app from Samsung's store, often followed by another app download from the Play Store on the phone side, and then some complicated of the big name apps aren't here yet — but unfortunately even those that are here aren't like CNN, Bloomberg, Nike+ and Here Maps are on-board, but dozens of others — like Uber, for example — aren't here and have no time frame of when they'll arrive. But I'm not losing much sleep over it, because the app experience as a whole isn't that good anyway. As you'd expect there isn't a ton you can do on a screen, and reading CNN articles three words at a time or scrolling through Bloomberg headlines just isn't in any way something I want to do on a outside of direct fitness trackers and small utilities, there isn't much you can do on a watch that would warrant a full app running on it. And while the apps do run smoothly and work, they don't offer a good enough experience to make you want to use them on the watch instead of just taking out your phone. The only real downside of not having local apps is for things like messaging, where it's impossible right now to initiate something like a Facebook Messenger message, a Gmail email or a Skype call — the only way to interact with those apps would be through a reply to a VoiceSamsung's S Voice service — think Google voice search, only from Samsung — is baked into the watch, and getting beyond the awkwardness of trying to interact with a watch for voice controls, it has some limited functionality. You can initiate phone calls by number or name, send text messages though only if you use the default app on your phone, show contact information, get calendar information, play local music, set an alarm and get current can turn on always-listening mode to respond to your command of "Hi Gear" or train it for any other phrase, which works any time the watch is on, but that feature is turned off by default, likely for battery voice command list is relatively limited, and S Voice just isn't as robust as Google's offering on Android voice commands for calls and texts seem to work, other natural language queries like "What was the Seattle Seahawks score last night?" just came up blank and queries such as "Send an email to Phil Nickinson" returned a "no matching applications found" error. It's hard to knock S Voice too hard considering that voice commands aren't the biggest feature of a watch, but when it doesn't work properly for basic Google-style searches or can't handle basic queries, it limits the number of times I'm going to actually turn to it throughout the Voice is also the speech-to-text engine when you're sending messages or speaking voice replies to messages, as an alternative to the other text input methods. Voice replies are rather accurate, but the method for taking input and sending the message is a bit clunky. S Voice doesn't do a good job of identifying when you've stopped speaking when you're replying to a message, leaving you to simply hit the "send" button to stop the recording — I really wish it would identify the end of your sentence as it does in the main S Voice ManagerIn order to get up-and-running with the Gear S2, you'll need to have the Gear Manager app installed on your phone. The Gear Manager app itself hasn't changed dramatically since Samsung's last wearable release, but quite importantly the compatibility of this companion app has opened up to non-Samsung phones. The full list of supported phones is right here{.nofollow}, but basically anything running Android or above with of RAM should work just finally supports other Android phones, and thankfully the experience is nearly Manager is the middleman that lets your phone talk to your watch, and it's necessary because Android doesn't inherently talk to non-Android Wear smartwatches. You can use the app to change your watch face, choose which apps give you notifications, and toggle a few different settings on how the phone interacts with the watch. You'll also find it puts a persistent notification in the shade, not the status bar telling you the watch is connected, but you can simply "block" it in the phone's application settings without the experience of using the Gear S2 on a Samsung phone and any other Android phone is nearly identical. Of course things are a bit more seamless on the Samsung phone on account of the Galaxy Apps store and Samsung's apps being pre-loaded on the phone, but you can overcome these things on any other device — the Gear S2 hooks right into the stock dialer, messaging app, calendar and other system-level functions on compatible phones. I never had any issues or notable differences in app performance, notifications or Bluetooth connection when using the Gear S2 on a non-Samsung phone in my case a Moto X 2014.Just charge at nightGear S2 Battery lifeWith the Gear S2 being relatively small and thin, I was immediately worried about how Samsung was going to handle battery life with the 250 mAh cell inside. Thankfully my concerns were completely overblown, as I haven't had a single worry about battery life on the watch. Leaving the Gear S2 at 80 percent brightness remember, there's no automatic brightness with its ambient display mode on, S Voice listening for a wake-up phrase, and receiving nearly all notifications on the watch, I would end each day with at least 20 percent battery life — many times ending with up to 40 that's with what I'd consider "normal" smartwatch usage, as in I wasn't interacting with it all day. I would regularly check messages, archive Gmail, check my step count, look at the weather or my upcoming appointments on the calendar — but I didn't regularly perform lots of voice searches or do anything that kept the screen on more than 20 seconds or so at a you do plan to use the watch on a more frequent basis — as in more often than when notifications arrive — I'd recommend turning off the ambient watch face mode and lowering the brightness to get the most out of the 250 mAh battery. You can also flip into a limited Power Saving Mode, just like Samsung's phones, that severely limits functionality to preserve battery. In any case, I don't think you can actually expect the Gear S2 to make it through multiple days of use comfortably, which is hardly a knock on it considering that's the case on just about any other non-Pebble smartwatch out be charging every night, but at least the cradle is well Gear S2 charges wirelessly, which is preferable from a case design standpoint but does mean that you'll need the included dock to get the job done even though it's Qi, the band design makes it tough to use on other charging pads. The dock is a simple small cradle that holds the watch with the screen vertical and the strap ends resting on the table, similar to the Moto 360 2015's cradle, but unlike that model the Gear S2 actually holds magnetically to the back of the cradle for a secure charge. The entire cradle is quite a bit smaller than Motorola's offering, which is vertical cradle style certainly looks nicer when on display on your desk or bedside table, but it's far less practical if you plan to bring it with you when you travel when compared to the flat disc-style charging attachments. That's a small deal for most, but considering the watch will need charging every day you'll have to bring this thing with you wherever you're going to be spending the best Gear, but not the best smartwatchGear S2 Bottom lineIt's hardly a stretch to say that the Gear S2 is Samsung's best effort yet at making a compelling smartwatch. The hardware is very attractive and well made, and between the standard and Classic version you'll likely be able to settle on one that fits your style. The Gear S2 is refreshingly small for a smartwatch, and the rotating bezel is a genius way to overcome issues related to interacting with a very small touch screen. The screen is absolutely top-notch, and the battery lasts a full day without the software on offer is still a bit of a mixed bag on the Gear S2. It's very capable when it comes to handling basic notifications, giving you glanceable information and using native functions provided by Samsung. On the other hand, the third-party app support is anemic and poorly implemented at best, interaction between the watch and the phone can be a bit clunky, and voice commands and speech-to-text leave something to be clearly learned a lot of lessons from the original Gear S, but with the Gear S2 it's still trying to do far too much in the software considering the limitations of the screen size. Having lots of options and features on a watch is great in theory, but those extra options and interactions get in the way of getting things done on the watch — and in the end the goal should be to interact with the smartwatch less, not you buy it? Android Wear is still in the leadOne of the biggest hurdles facing Samsung on previous Gears was its limited support of just its own phones, which with this generation it has finally eliminated. Though that opens up the Gear S2 to dramatically more people, it doesn't mean the Gear S2 has vaulted to the top of the list of smartwatches to buy if you have an Android the hardware on the Gear S2 is really great, and surely on-par with other Android Wear offerings in the same price range, the software doesn't quite offer the great experience it may have seemed to at first glance. And even though Samsung has made leaps in adding support for third-party apps and improving its overall interface, there's no getting around the fact that Android Wear more seamlessly integrates with all Android phones and is simpler to there are places where the Gear S2 beats Android Wear — namely in the use of widgets, the rotating bezel for interaction and albeit limited on-watch apps — but those few wins don't overtake the issues in interface and interaction that are handled much better on Android Wear. And when we're talking about a $299 or $349 smartwatch, I don't think you should feel the need to settle for something that doesn't work as well as the other offerings out to buy the Gear S2Amazon BestBuy Samsung Macy's Expansys UKWhere to buy the Gear S2 ClassicAmazon BestBuy Samsung Macy's Expansys UK{.nofollow .cta .shop} Andrew was an Executive Editor, at Android Central between 2012 and 2020. Most Popular

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