Samsung Gear S 2 Hands-On Full Review

Samsung got a new Smartwatch and this time it looks like they’ve got it right.

Today, we got hands-on with a brand new Samsung Gear S 2. When it comes to smartwatches, Samsung is no new arrival. Samsung making smart watch since 2013. Samsung has been released tons of models before the Apple Watch even came around. All these models have been more or less experiments not hugely successful, but I think with the New Samsung Gear S 2, the Samsung Smartwatch has finally come of age.

The Samsung Gear S 2 is available in two designs. You have the regular or the standard Gear S2 over here and this one they’re calling The classic. The main difference between both models are of course as you can see the bezel around the clock face and the type of strapped used. The strap on the standard model is made up of a material called elastomer plastic. It is lightweight and actually feels like you’re wearing one of those Swatch Watches. While the strap on the classic is genuine leather comes in either black or as you can see here brown. Samsung says it should be compatible with any standard size 20 watch strap.

The watch faces are also different, on the standard model you have clean lines while the classic as its name implies has a more chronograph looking classic. In terms of button placement you have only 2 up here. You have the back button and it down here the home button. The back of both watches looks like this and as you can see this over here.

That is the heart rate monitor. This time over here to remove the strap on the base model you just pull like this as you can see that was pretty easy to pick out and put it back in. You just have to pop it back in place like that.

This is what the interface of the Gear S 2 looks like. This is the home screen, one swipe to the right brings up the menu. Where you can access apps as voice settings and Buddy. Another swipe brings out like a step counter, schedule, the weather, music player, heart rate monitor, and a host of fitness metrics, and calendar. This one is pretty cool you can tell me how much water and coffee you had on a particular day. So for example let’s say you’ve had 2 cups of coffee and 5 cups of water. You can add an alarm and you can also add other widgets from the following options. Now let’s go home just press the button on the side. A swipe to the right brings out the notifications like emails, text messages and if you have missed calls they would appear as well.

On the Gear S 2, Samsung introduces a new way to navigate the Smartwatch apart from the normal gestures for example swiping and tapping. The bezel can be rotated in both directions. How does it feel ? There is not a lot of friction just enough actually to get some tactile feedback but just enough that I can smoothly rotate the bezel lightly with one finger.

Now let’s go ahead and take a look at the Apps Place

There is whether, there is S Voice, Schedule settings, and Nike Plus integration, S Health, Phone, Messages. Now, if you want to see more apps just go back the other way and then let’s tap on next page and then this is the another page. Until you reach the end the Apps Place. Speaking of apps, let’s take a look at some of them just as familiar it’s Uber, now it’s very easy you can basically initially just select the kind of Uber you want to take.

Now the rotating bezel can also be used to scroll through texts over here. We actually has an unread emails from The Walt Disney Company, let me go ahead and tap into that. By rotating bezel, I am actually scrolling through the entire email. You can see the entire email by just rotating the bezel.

You take a look, there is no micro USB port on any side of the device that’s because the Gear S 2 uses wireless charging. You just drop it down onto its bundled charging dock. The Watch chargered magnetically.

Both variants are available in a 3G version but there is no SIM card tray instead. It has a built-in E Chip that needs to be activated by your respective earlier. If you have the 3G version or you’re just paired to a smartphone. You can use a SmartWatch to send and receive text messages. You also can reply in one of three ways. You can use voice to dictate my reply, you can select an emoji.

You also can bring up a keyboard and actual keyboard will appear. So that’s my message input into it and brings up the keyboard now. It is reminiscent of those num pad on those candy bar smartphones, but it has auto complete feature.

The last thing I want to show you is the settings menu. So let’s rotate our vessel into settings. You can see Display Settings, General Settings, Vibrations Settings. Vibration Setting is pretty interesting. You can actually change the intensity of the vibration from strong to weak.

This is the home button (on the side / under the back button). This is the back button (on the side / above the home button). So if you wanna go back one step just press the back button. On the Settings Menu, there are call settings, connection setting. It is also interesting, you can connect by Bluetooth, wi-fi or NFC.

Now, it is time for Power Setting. If you’re familiar with ultra power saving mode on Samsung lineup of smartphones. This is similar. If you tap into power settings, it will ask you to activate power saving mode. It will give you a home screen that is gray scale and it will turn off all functions except for calls, messages and notifications. So WiFi is turned off and it limits performance but it also saves your battery for the life of your device. Let’s check it’s out, You will see a black and white clock face and really can’t go anywhere except to see notifications.

This is how the home screen looks like. You basically have access to calls and messages. By tapping on The Power Saving OFF you can turn power saving off and then we should get back to our colored home screen.

Thanks to GadgetMatch for this Great Review !!

You can see full video here