Samsung has been going at it in the wearables game for a while now, and their past attempts has been somewhat underwhelming. With the Gear S2, they finally have a watch that I think is at least worth checking out.
It looks like a watch
Out of the box, Samsung has already gotten one thing right this time round. It looks like a watch, and a well-built one at that. Which is good news considering the “basic” Gear S2 costs S$448, and the more svelte “Classic” version costs S$548.
With a metal body, glass front, and a tiny bit of ceramic, the Gear S2 feels solid, and premium. The rubber strap, not so much. While the design blends in well with the watch’s body, I still wished that the Gear S2 has ability to take in standard watch strap, something that is only available on the more expensive Gear S2 Classic.
As someone who prefers smaller thinner watches, the Gear S2 took a bit of time to get used to. Though comparing to other smartwatches, it’s pretty petite already. Its design is very discreet too. Most people didn't even realised I was wearing a smartwatch until I lifted up my hand, and started interacting with it.
A circular watch that makes good use of its circular design
On the Gear S2, most people wouldn’t even know the bezel rotates until you tell them. Let them try it, and see the look of amazement on their faces. This is one of the best feature of the Gear S2 in my opinion. While I have not been using a smartwatch daily prior to this, I played with most of them in the past. The Pebble, the Moto 360, the Apple Watch. The interface and navigation method on those devices (particularly on the Apple Watch) feels cumbersome in comparison to the Gear S2.
With the rotating bezel, it made navigation around the system so much easier. Firstly, you no longer have to swipe on the tiny but gorgeous 1.2” 360 x 360 resolution AMOLED screen for navigation. Which means my not-so-thin fingers won’t block the screen. Secondly, it is faster compared to swiping through page by page. After using the Gear S2, it makes you wonder why other manufacturers haven’t adopted the rotating bezel design yet.
Intuitive user experience
On top of the rotating bezel, the user interface is nicely designed too to suit the circular design, as well as the rotating bezel navigation. The user interface while usable with the touch screen alone, feels like it was built for the rotating bezel, the back button, and the home button. Most of the time I only touch the touchscreen to select an option.
As weird as it sounds, this feels nicer than relying on software buttons or gestures. It feels solid. It feels like I am interacting with the watch directly.
And boy does it feel direct! The OS is snappy and fast most of the time when it comes to navigating around the OS. There are some delays and pauses from time to time, but often happens only while the watch is trying to pull information from the phone.
This is where running Samsung’s own Tizen OS gives it a slight advantage to customise the OS to their own liking. But as you will read more about later when we talk about third-party developers support, how this turns out to be a double-edged sword.
Getting in Sync
To use the Gear S2, you need Samsung’s Gear Manager app which you can download from the Galaxy Apps store for Samsung devices, or the Play Store for other Android devices. You read that right. It works with Android devices running version 4.4 KitKat and up, and has more than 1.5GB of RAM.
I am using the Gear S2 with the Galaxy Note 5 for this review.
You use the Gear Manager app for adjusting most everything, from what notification comes in, and to sending media from your phone to the Gear S2.
Using the app, you can look for Gear apps, watch-faces, etc, in the Gear App Store. Being Tizen, the apps availability are very limited as expected. Even some of the apps that Samsung said would be available hasn’t shown up yet. I haven’t found anything that was actually worth downloading in my time with it.
Starting with the basics
On the bright side, the watch itself is actually pretty capable on its own. Your home page is pretty much just your watchface. Swipe down for a few quick settings for brightness, do not disturb, etc. To the left, lives all your notifications. To the right, your widgets.
For widgets, you can customise those to your needs. Things like a music playback control, steps counter, weather, alarm clock, heart rate monitor, etc. You add a new one by just scrolling all the way to the right, and hit that + icon.
Knock Knock, Who’s there?
For notification, it mirrors pretty much whatever shows up on your phone, as long as you’ve allowed that app to show notification on the Gear S2 in the Gear Manager app. However, you are only able to take action on a handful of them like SMS (provided you are using the default Messaging app), Emails (provided you are using the default Email app), WhatsApp messages, Line Messages, and FaceBook Messenger for example.
For someone like myself who rarely use the apps above, the option that I see the most is just the “Show On Phone” button. If you have “Smart Lock” enabled (which you should) or you don’t have any security set on your lock screen, once you tap the “Show On Phone” button, it goes into that notification on your phone automatically. It takes a bit longer than I would have liked, but works well enough in most instances.
For phone calls, you can easily answer or reject calls as well. The catch is that since the Gear S2 doesn’t have a speaker, answering a call would still require you to take out your phone, or be connected to a bluetooth headset. When rejecting a call, you are given the option to reply with a preset template message as well, which is pretty handy.
It’s time to get moving
Part of the appeal of a smartwatch, is that it can monitor your activity level more conveniently since you always have it on your wrist. With a pedometer and a HRM (heart rate monitor), the Gear S2 can track just how active you have been throughout your day. If need be, the Gear S2 even notifies you if you’ve been inactive for too long, to motivate you to be more active.
Personally, I’m not a fan of micromanaging every aspect of my life. All I need tracking of are my jogs, and for that the Gear S2 is kind of pointless. Unless you are using S Health or Nike+ for your fitness tracking, you are out of luck here (endomondo user here). All I was able to track are my steps, and my heart rate after the run, something I could already do on the Note 5 without other added peripherals.
Since I have to bring my phone out to track using endomondo in the first place, the Gear S2 becomes redundant. It was able to guess that I was jogging without me telling it which was nice I guess, even though it wasn’t 100% accurate.
However, for someone who uses a bluetooth headset while jogging, and uses S Health or Nike+ to track their jogs, the Gear S2 is going to be great. But chances are, it's not. Unless you are willing to change your activity tracker of choice, and buy a bluetooth headset (both of which I am unwilling to do), the Gear S2 is not going to do much for you.
Cleaning it up
As with most smartwatches these days, it comes with a bit of dust and water resistant qualities, which is pretty much a prerequisite in my books. It is rated at IP68, and it seems to be holding up to that claim. I brought it out for jogs, wiped it with a wet cloth afterwards, washed my hands with it, and pretty much what I expect a normal watch to be able to go through.
So far so good, and the rotating bezel still works as well as it did on day 1, which is definitely a good sign.
The best feature of the Gear S2 houses its biggest flaw
S Voice is a bit of a mixed bag at this point in time. The ability to lift up your up and speak a “wake up command” to activate S Voice makes the watch a lot more useful. I have mine set to “Okay Gear” and it activates the feature very consistently.
I can use it to shout out a quick command like “Call Alex”, and it’ll make the call. By the time I pull out my phone, it’s already dialing the number and all I have to do is put it to my ears. I use it to fire off simple messages as well from time to time, but the downside is, I had to switch to Samsung’s default Messaging app on the Note 5 to do that.
Other commands works surprisingly well too. I can tell it to “measure my heart rate”, and it’ll do just that. I can tell it to “Play Music”, and music will start playing from my phone. I can ask it to start a voice recording, and it will go into the voice recorder app for me. I can even ask it questions, and it will do an online search for me. There are some things that it can’t do, like setting up a reminder for example, but it does a lot of things well enough.
The downside? It’s rather slow. After launching the S Voice which is pretty much instantaneous, and after saying what you want to, it takes a bit of time to process that voice into text. It then takes a bit of time to send that query, and then a bit more to get a reply. The speed alone is enough to dissuade me from using it too often. Holding up your wrist while you wait for an answer isn’t “user-friendly”.
Hurdles and Hoops
Since the watch runs Tizen OS, it means that it lacks the app catalogue that Android wear already has. With Android Wear, it is a lot more convenient too when it comes to third party apps. Let me explain what I mean.
I wanted to install the Maps, and navigator app by Samsung on the Gear S2, and going into the Gear App store works just fine. But then since it’s powered by Here maps, it asked me to install it. However on my phone inside the Galaxy Apps store it says that the app isn’t available for my device. I had to go to the Play Store, and install the app myself.
Talking about apps, there are pretty much close to zero third party apps that I found useful in the app store at the moment. Even some other applications shown off during the announcement has yet to show up like Twitter for example.
The thing is, looking at Samsung’s past smartwatches, it is a little hard to place faith in the company that they will continue the support of the watch for as long as they can.
Good battery life
The Gear S2 comes with a built-in 250 mAh battery, which is pretty tiny by any standard. The good news though is that the Gear S2 has pretty decent battery. For my usage, I charge it every 2 days with about 45% of battery left. 3 days of use is probably possible for me, but I didn’t want to risk running out throughout the day.
(On 40% brightness, with “wake-up gesture” and “voice wake up” feature on.)
The battery life of course can’t be compared to something like the Pebble, but 2-3 days of use seems okay to me for a smartwatch with such a nice display too. That, plus the battery life has been really consistent in my time with it. The inclusion of wireless charging was a nice touch too.
Extras
There are some nice things that comes with the watch as well such as the availability of Wifi for when bluetooth range isn’t enough for you. Say if my phone is charging in my room, and I’m out of range of bluetooth since I’m in the living room, the watch will use Wifi to relay the notifications to the Gear S2. Though this is probably common with other Android wear watches too.
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Conclusion
This is undoubtedly one of the best smartwatch in the market right now. It has a really nice design, great build quality, intuitive user interface, good battery, and some useful functionalities. It is a little surprising that Samsung was able to make a watch that not only looks nicer, but is easier to use too compared to Apple.
As a smartwatch, the Gear S2 does what it was made to do, compliment my mobile experience. It saves me a bit of time every time I use it. Instead of taking out my phone to check every single notifications, I do so on my wrist, and only take out my phone if I need to reply any. Instead of taking out my phone from my pocket to skip a song, I just use the watch to change to the next track. With the Gear S2, I can put my phone in silent mode, leave it in a bag, and not have to worry about missing any notifications. I can charge my phone in my room while watching TV in the living room, and still be notified.
It also provides a bit more functionality like health tracking, stop watch, calculator, voice recorder, some third-party app, etc, and those can be accessed using my voice easily. But the thing is, Android watch does the same too, and then some.
The main things that the Gear S2 has going for it, are its design, and its intuitive user experience. In other aspects like ecosystem, compatibility, it loses out to its Android Wear counterparts. If you are already using an Android device, an Android powered smartwatch still makes more sense. No need to rely on third party solutions like Here Maps when Google Maps works great already. No need to do Yahoo searches when Google is still the best at search. No need to use the slower S Voice when Google Now works better.
In the pursuit of using Tizen OS and separating itself from Google's own Android Wear offerings, Samsung made some choices that sacrificed user experience for the sake of getting clear separation from Google. No one wins in situations like that, certainly not us consumers.
Whether it is worth the money Samsung is asking for will be entirely up to how much you are willing to pay for a bit more convenience, and a bit of time saved. The same could be said for any other smartwatches in the market right now actually, but that is a discussion for another time. What we have here, is a very capable smartwatch that goes toe to toe with the likes of Apple and Google despite its flaws. And that, gives me hope for the future of Samsung devices.
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