Image: Mashable, Lili Sams
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Over the last two years, virtually every smartwatch manufacturer has gone back to the drawing board at least once. Some, like Motorola and LG have made welcome, if incremental, improvements to their designs. However, when Apple introduced the Apple Watch earlier this year, it appeared as if the company had ingested every lesson in the history of wearables and then leap-frogged the competition. Quite honestly most of what I’ve seen since then has been companies playing catch-up. No one appeared to have the courage to start over.
Until Samsung.
Samsung calls its new wearable the Gear S2 to remind people that it’s part of the Galaxy Gear line of wearable products it started introducing in 2013. The first batch of large and not particularly well-designed devices all ran Android Wear, Google’s powerful wearable OS that’s also a notorious battery-life hog.In 2014, Samsung dropped Android Wear in favor of Tizen, but the Gear 2 still had the same awful design.
With the Gear S2, Samsung’s wearable line gets a completely new, classic look and gains every benefit of running the ultra-light and fast Tizen OS. The result is the best round smartwatch on the market.
Set up
Setting up and using the Samsung Gear S2 is about as uncomplicated as getting started with a standard watch. You unbox it, charge it up and then pair it via Bluetooth 4.1 with any Android 4.4 or above device. Samsung lent me a Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ (sorry, no iOS support, for now). You will need to install and run the Gear app, which, in my case automatically found and paired with the watch. The only issue I had is that the Gear app icon would not show up on the phone, so I had to search for it every time I wanted to open it.Design
With the Samsung Gear S2, you have two broad design choices, the 42-mm Gear S2 and the 39-mm Gear S2 Classic. The S2 is available in stainless steel and dark gray (also stainless steel). The smaller classic includes a grooved bezel that will remind you of, naturally, classic watch design. Put simply, there aren’t as many material and design choices as with the Apple Watch, though I suspect that will change if the Gear S2 takes off (as I think it should). My test unit was the Gear S2 with a white back and white elastomer band.
Image: Mashable, Lili Sams
Image: Mashable, Lili Sams
Another thing the Gear S2 has in common with the Apple Watch is exceptional tolerances. The edge of the watch, for example flows smoothly to the band. In fact, Samsung has adopted a similar push-button band removable system. In the case of the Gear S2, you press a button on the underside of the watch and adjacent to the band, and then slide the band up and off the watch. It worked smoothly for me and others who tried it.
Image: Mashable, Lili Sams
Like the Apple Watch’s physical digital crown works with the Watch OS interface, the Gear S2 bezel works in concert with the Tizen interface and high-resolution touch screen. The bezel can rotate infinitely and works throughout the watch. It turns freely, but with little mumps as your rotate though apps, activities and notifications.
Honestly it’s hard to talk about the bezel without diving into the Gear S2’s smart interface. So let’s do that.
Super smartwatch interface
Whatever anyone tells you, interface design is an art and if you don’t approach it as such, or if you ignore the aesthetics and necessary information architecture, the results can be something far worse than bad.Many of the early smartwatches appeared to ignore this, partially because no one could figure out how to convey so much information in such a tiny interface and they struggled with the marriage of hardware and software in something you were supposed to wear. The more they tried to ease the task of navigation on early smartwatches, the uglier they made the devices.
Android Wear and smartwatches like the first Moto 360 were a step in the right direction, but the Apple Watch was, up to now, the best solution for navigating on a tiny screen. That said, Apple's solution for organizing a growing number of apps on your Apple Watch is, essentially, no organization. It’s a cluster of app icon dots that you can move about with your finger and zoom into with the digital crown. At a glance, I can never find the app I’m looking for.
I have to say, I prefer Samsung’s solution, which uses concentric circles to organize watch apps. You turn the bezel to move the cursor dot from one app to the next and then touch the center of the watch screen to launch the selected app. You can’t organize the apps on the watch, but you can drag them to wherever you want in the Gear app on you smartphone. Apple, take note. Samsung’s app navigation metaphor is simply a much better and smarter way to access apps.
That excellent experience is due, at least in part, to the bright, colorful and incredibly sharp super AMOLED screen. It's 360 x 360 pixels with 302 ppi, which is roughly the same ppi you’ll find on the Apple Watch’s retina screen.
Faces, interfaces and apps
Samsung’s Gear S2 comes with a decent collection of watch face choices, which you access by pressing down on the screen until you get a little haptic feedback. You can then swipe through them (just like on the Apple Watch) or use the bezel to rotate through the 15 choices. There are faces that focus on activities, others that focus on time zones and still more that are branded and offer access to unique partner content, like the CNN watch face. These designs are smart and fun (many include little animations or touch interactions) and a few offer the option of “Stylizing,” which usually means adjusting one or more face complications.
Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff
I can view more detail on any notification by tapping on it, and can dismiss it by swiping up. Again, everything was super-readable on the sharp screen. Notifications, however, can also reveal the Gear S2 limits. Occasionally, when I wanted to dig deeper into something like my Twitter notifications, I ended up at an option to open Twitter on the phone. Personally, I'd like to get all the way to the tweet, but that won't happen until the Gear S2 has a dedicated Twitter app.
Swiping right or turning the bezel right takes you first to a quad of major watch functions: S-Voice, apps, buddy and settings. Keep turning and you can view your current steps, heart rate, music, weather and events.
S-Voice is Samsung’s digital assistant that works OK, but not as smoothly as Apple’s Siri or Google Now. I set up a "wake phrase" and it proceeded to ignore it unless I yelled at the watch.
Like virtually every other smartwatch on the market, the Samsung Gear S2 is equipped to track activities and exercise. It houses that under S Health. The app lives on both the watch and the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ phone. It paid attention to my level of activity, nagged me when I’d been sitting for too long and gave me "atta-boys" when I started moving. It tracked my steps and let me browse through the history of my activity stats. I could track my heart rate and even, manually, keep tabs on when I had a glass of water and when I had a cup of coffee. If you are really into body metrics quantifications, you’ll enjoy all this. Personally, I just like to know when I’ve been sitting for too long (which happens a lot in my line of work). This is something, obviously, the Apple Watch does a very good job of, as well.
There are all the core apps you would expect, including calendar, weather, messages, stopwatch, alarm, photos, music and more. Many of them, like photos and music, rely on you making some of that content available on your Bluetooth-connected phone. Maps (which is based on “here” technology) works pretty well and even includes transit, but compared to my experience on the Apple Watch, it was a little slow.
Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff
Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff
Differences
The Gear S2 is supposed to come with Samsung Pay (it has built-in NFC), but that was not enabled on my watch.One area where the Samsung Gear S2 outshines most smartwatches (but not the Pebble) is on battery life. Even with a bright, full-color screen, the smartwatch easily lasted a full two days on a single charge. When it did run out, I put it on the wireless charging base, which smartly props the watch up vertically so I can use it as a bedside clock.
I can’t say that I like the Samsung Gear S2 watch more than the Apple Watch. I still prefer Apple’s full-metal designs, wider array of band and material options, Apple Pay, digital touch and more refined haptic response. Yet, I have never worn a round, classic looking smartwatch that I liked this much. The Android Gear watches I’ve tried have always been a disappointment, either in design or functionality. Before trying the Gear S2, I had my doubts about the Tizen OS, but no longer. Plus, at $299.99 for the base Gear S2 model, it's priced competitively.
If you own an Android smartphone, the Samsung Gear S2 is the smartwatch for you.
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