The saviour of the smartwatch has landed. Having applied a scattergun approach to the early days of the wearables race, Samsung has taken a step back over the past year, reassessed its efforts and, well, taken a long hard look at what the Apple Watch has done.
The result of this wearable soul-searching is the Samsung Gear S2, a stylishly finished round device with a few innovative surprises up its sleeve. Chief among these isn’t the ditching of Android Wear in favour of its proprietary Tizen OS, but the rotating bezel interface that revolutionises how you interact with the device.
All the usual notification-providing, fitness-tracking smartwatch gumph is present, but it’s this bezel-based refinement that steals the show. This isn’t just a serious challenger to the Apple Watch, it’s a device that’s given us renewed hope for the smartwatch as a whole.
The Good
- Brilliantly intuitive rotating bezel
- Nice, smart design
- Well priced
The Bad
- Tizen is ugly and under-served
- Battery could be better
- No iOS support
Samsung Gear S2 Design: Smart, but not quite a classic
Having previously cluttered the market with all manner of ugly square and rectangular devices, Sammy has now embraced the circle, a la the Moto 360. This seemingly small switch in shape instantly gives the Gear S2 a more approachable feel. It’s something the Apple Watch lacks, and is an elegant way to bridge the gap between traditional and ‘smart’ watches.
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