Samsung seems to have gotten the wearable right. And we do mean it when comparing the Gear S2 with other smartwatches that have been around in India. Officially launched in October 2015, the Gear S2 was pushed by Samsung into India only recently. Priced at a whopping Rs 23,000+, the device sure demands a lot of second thoughts when buying. But once on your wrist, you won’t regret it—as much. We had the Gear S2 slapped on our wrist for a while and have lot of good and a few not-so-good things to say about the wearable. Find out ahead.
Let’s start with a little about the product itself. The Samsung Gear S2 has three variants to itself—a standard Gear S2, a Gear S2 Classic and a Gear S2 3G. While the 3G variant may not see sales in India just as yet, the standard and Classic are very much on display. The standard S2 will cost you Rs 22,900 approximately, while the Classic asks for a little more —Rs 24,300. While some may prefer the standard as it could go with your style and also looks a little sporty, the Classic feels a little richer and classier. Given a choice, the Classic would be favored by most. However, the review piece we received was the classic.
Specifications:
Let’s first check out what makes up the guts of the Gear S2. Based on an Exynos 3250 chipset, the Gear S2 runs on a dual-core processor with speeds of 1GHz. The chipset gets its additional boost with a Mali-400MP2 graphics chip and 512MB of RAM. An internal storage of 4GB has been provided, but it is limited to apps, a few audio files and photos—you cannot expand the memory storage in any ways. The maximum storage that you can use for apps, photos and music is just 1.9GB. You also cannot connect the watch to the PC for storage data transfer either. All controls can be done via your smartwatch using the Bluetooth mode. However, if you have the expertise, you can also connect the Gear S2 via Wi-Fi using the developer options for further tweaking.
The Gear S2 will impress you with a full circle Super AMOLED display that is 1.2-inches in diameter and features a 360x360pixel panel. The AMOLED display is bright, vibrant and sharp. The display sports multi-touch functionality and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
Moving on, the Gear S2 features various sensors such as accelerometer, gyro, heart rate and barometer. It is fuelled with a tiny 250mAh battery and is powered by Samsung’s own Tizen operating system. The Gear S2 is also IP68 certified for resistance to dust and water and weighs just 47g with a shell that is 11.4mm thick and 42.3mm in diameter. On the other hand, the Classic Gear S2 weighs just 42g, 5g lighter than the standard version. Bundled along with the Gear S2 is the wireless charging dock, a power adapter and a quick guide. The Gear s2 is compatible with most Android smartphones, but they should be running Android 4.4 and above and should have at least 1.5GB of RAM, not lower. The Gear S2 will not work with tablets.
Connectivity options are taken care by Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and NFC. While Bluetooth is for the main functions, Wi-Fi is restricted for certain uses and NFC will work in place where tap and pay would work.
Design and build:
As for the design, we must say that Samsung has definitely done a good job. However, the smartwatch is still chunky at 11.4mm—not much of a change we are seeing as compared to other brands. Well, we presume that they will take a while to shrink that since the obstacles such as battery and electronics are yet to advance from their existing state. For now, the standard model is pretty decent and its unisex looks will be favored by both sides.
The Gear S2 has a rotating bezel—yes, one of the first ones in the market to actually use something which makes a smartwatch smarter to use. Unlike the other smartwatches in the market, the Gear S2 has a very easy, helpful and satisfying way to interact with the user interface using the rotating bezel. As you would touch any watch on your wrist, you should know that the first thing that you touch is automatically the bezel or outer ring. The placement of the two buttons for home and back are also great—to the right side edge, one on top and the other on the bottom. The outer ring or bezel is very smooth and gives you a tactile feel to know when you are moving through the UI. The ring rotates 360-degrees in both directions, giving you an additional edge on controlling the UI sideways as well as up and down. Alternatively, you can also use the touchscreen to interact with the UI.
The straps are one area which we did not favour—though comfortable and good in quality, they are not easily replaceable. If you wear-out the strap, you need to buy one from Samsung itself. Neither are there any compatible ones available nor the regular watch fit. So make sure you think twice before ordering a white Gear S2. You know what happens to white, right?
Apart from the rotating dial, you can interact with the watch using the touchscreen and the home/back buttons. There are no additional buttons or controls that are available. On the bottom you will find the heart rate sensor, albeit this time, the sensor has a green light as compared to the regular ones you have seen with red LED lights. There are no charging ports or pogo pins as usually seen in other smartwatch variants. The Gear S2 uses a convenient wireless charging dock which can be plugged into any standard micro USB charger.
Usability:
The Gear S2 is pretty simple to setup and use. Using the Gear S2 is absolutely no issue—its comfortable and light and you will get used to the new smart wearable on your wrist within a few hours of use. All you need is a compatible Android smartphone and install the Gear Manager app from the Play Store. If you are using a recent Galaxy S smartphone, you should already have it onboard. Install the app, and start pairing it with your watch using Bluetooth. The app will automatically take you through the entire setup and also guide you on the watch on how to use it. The demo on the watch will show you the functions on the device and make you do it once till you settle down and start using it.
The Samsung Gear S2 is feature-packed—the Tizen OS is equipped with almost everything you need from a smartwatch for now. Samsung also promises more apps to be filled from the Tizen app developers around the world. So you will definitely see a flood of apps from the Gear app store.
For starters, the Gear S2 features a blend of useful pre-loaded apps which gets you going immediately. Messages, phone, health, settings, calendar, voice, schedule, weather, alarm, timer and watch faces are amongst the common ones that you would need everyday. A few news apps from CNN to Bloomberg are also preloaded. Email, GPS, maps, voice recording and music are a few others that are also available. You can simply add or remove the apps you won’t need from the control panel on the smartphone itself.
Widgets can also be placed on the screen. A single twist of the rotating bezel to the left gives you notifications, and the rest of the quick access apps and widgets are found when twisting to the right. You can add more widgets or simply delete the ones you don’t like. All widgets are active and you can interact with them according to the functions they come with. The widgets include health, calendar, clocks, news, weather, events, step counter, world clock and a few others. Setting up the widget is a breeze—simply long press on the display and you can add/delete the widgets.
Health and fitness apps are one of the most important features for a smartwatch user. As usual, a fitness conscious person would expect the watch to accompany him or her during workouts and also keep an eye on the activity apart from entertainment on the move. An all-in-one device which can give you alerts, news, emails, music and monitor your health is what each person expects from a smartwatch.
The Gear S2 monitors your health and activities in many ways—counting steps, heart rate, and a few others. Apart from measuring, it can also offer graphical view to showing how you are progressing with your workouts and fitness levels during the day, week and month. The Gear S2 is also intelligent on its own—it senses that if you have been sitting for a little too long (over an hour or so) it will gently nudge you and ask you to start walking or do some activity. The watch also alerts you if you have achieved your targets and goals as far as exercise is concerned. There is also an app that you can use when you have a cup of water or coffee. Simply tap the appropriate icon and you can keep count on how much of water or tea/coffee has gone down in the day. Sadly, there are no goal settings for water intake, which could help alert you if you have drank less water or have overdone your coffee dose.
Apart from the basic, the watch can also be used with Maps, but won’t work independently—no GPS. The device will use the smartphone for internet and location services and show the map on your smartwatch display. However, though useful, we still feel that the smartwatch display is a little too tiny for a map.
The Gear S2 is useful, but does lack in certain places. For example, it does alert you when you have a call, message, or email, but the vibration is a bit too faint for you to notice properly if you are busy. It could be missing out on important messages or events. There is no speaker too—meaning you cannot get alerts in sound or music. You can reply in very short to your messages, but the keyboard is absolutely tiny on the 1.6-inch screen for you to work on. The Gear S2 does not use Android Wear and hence you have to make use of S Voice as a Google Voice alternative. Though S voice is usable, it is not as good as Google’s Voice or Siri.
Battery life:
Coming down to the battery life, we were not too impressed, and not disappointed either. As expected, the Gear S2 lasted us barely 24 hours on average and a few times a few hours more. However, you should know that the battery life is not always great and will depend completely on your usage and settings. If you have enabled notifications for all apps, turned up the brightness to full, kept the display always on and other such things, you can expect around 12 – 14 hours at a stretch. Nevertheless, if you are a light user, you can go on for more than 36 hours too.
Swipe down on the interface and you will see the battery icon showing you the power remaining. You have the choice to switch to power saving mode where the watch will alert you on notifications, messages and calls only. It will also turn off the Wi-Fi, and switches from a colour display to a grey screen. This can retain the battery life to a great extent in case you don’t have time to charge your watch on time.
Verdict:
The Samsung Gear S2 is a great watch if considering it as a smart wearable. However, due to the limitations on the battery front, the device has shortcomings which are seen in size and battery life. As for the features, yes Samsung has done a pretty good job with the Tizen OS, but there are a few areas it could probably do better (vibrations, speaker, GPS, strap). We have seen many smartwatches from local as well as big brands, but the rotating bezel is the first we have witnessed and have never felt as comfortable with a smartwatch so easy to use. We definitely recommend the Samsung Gear S2 if you are looking at investing in one in a budget of Rs 25,000.
