Tech Tools review: Samsung Gear S2

Samsung has been doing smartwatches and other wearables for a few years now and it’s been a learning curve. Lessons learned from the original Gear and Gear S have been taken on board, with the end result being the rather fancy Gear S2.

The Gear S2 isn’t Android Wear; it runs on Tizen, Samsung’s own open source platform. So it’s already ploughing its own path.

The design has also taken a step back towards to a more traditional watch; forget the original Gear’s wraparound style and angles. The S2 has a round face and silicon strap, which presented my first hurdle: changing it for the smaller strap.

It’s supposed to be a simple operation: push the button, pull the strap, slide in the new one and you’re done. Instead it went something like this: push the button, pull the strap, pull the strap harder. Then worry that the strap is about to come apart. Push the button in a slightly different way, pull on strap. Nothing. I’m sure I was doing it wrong because 40 minutes later I finally managed to free the strap and swap it for a more manageable size for my wrist.

The watch requires a bit of set-up, including the downloading of an app for the smartwatch to your phone. This was where pleasant surprise number one occurred. One of those aforementioned lessons is the decision to allow all phones with Android 4.4 and above to pair up with the S2. All you have to do is download the required app and you can pair it with your Sony Xperia, LG or HTC. Then you can get downloading your apps.

There are plenty to choose from, covering health and fitness, customised watch faces and even news apps. That was pleasant surprise number two: there is a decent portfolio of apps in there. However, it’s still an additional operating system so it may fall behind Android Wear or Apple’s Watch OS in terms of offering a variety of useful apps to users in the future. For now, all the bases are covered. It will give you notifications of calls and messages, which is the chief function of most smartwatches. There’s a heart rate monitor built in – now standard on smartwatches it seems – and that data will be brought in to your overall S Health app.

To scroll through apps and screens, you can use the rotating bezel that Samsung has included on the S2. That means no need to poke or swipe at a small screen, covering it in fingerprints as you go. One area where the S2 has upped the game is in its power. The battery life is about two days, which means you aren’t stuck charging it each night. And when you do need to charge it, it will power up quickly, taking only a couple of hours to get to full when you pop it in the wireless charging dock. It’s water and dust-resistant too, which is a good feature for a smartwatch that could find itself in all manner of situations.

The good

Welcome to the rest of the Android ecosystem. The Gear S2, unlike other Samsung watches, isn’t limited to a small number of Galaxy handsets. The battery life was also a nice surprise.

The not so good

I was afraid to let the Gear S2’s battery get too low as other users had reported difficulties in reconnecting the watch to a paired phone if it ran out completely. Battery anxiety ahoy.

Samsung Pay will eventually be supported by the Gear S2, but not for another while. That leaves the way open for Apple Pay – in countries where the payments system has been launched of course.

The rest

The watch comes in two varieties: the more sporty looking Gear S2 and the Gear S2 Classic, which looks for all the world like a regular watch until you start fiddling with it. There’s a minimal price difference – about €30 – so it depends if you prefer to have your watch a little more robust or something you can wear day and night that doesn’t immediately scream “smartwatch”.