Review: Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic smartwatches
Monitor your health and look cool and stylish with Samsung’s latest in wearable tech, which use a proprietary operating system but are compatible with Android devices from other makers
Samsung is no stranger to wearables. The company was among the first to introduce a smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, in 2013 that ran on the Android OS. Its latest releases, the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 Classic, have made several leaps forward and are on a completely different system called Tizen, which the Korean phone maker helped develop (along with other partners including Intel).
Hardware and design
The Gear S2 looks just like a traditional watch, thanks to its curvy stainless steel face, but has a relatively slimmer body. The S2 Classic, as its name suggests, is classier and is the device tested in this review.
Its rotating bezel is adorned with ridges and makes turning a little easier. This is an important feature because it is with this bezel you navigate the functions of the smartwatch.
With such a small display, a touch and tap experience is rendered almost impractical as your finger is likely to obscure everything on the watch face. Other manufacturers have made attempts to counter this problem by either relying completely on buttons as seen on the Pebble, or having a combination of touch and secondary input such as the digital crown on the Apple watch.
The Gear S2 Classic is closer to the latter but takes the concept further. While the digital crown is limited to depth navigation such as zooming, the rotating bezel gives you vertical navigation, allowing for item selection as well as screen switching. Two further buttons to the right hand side take care of going back a step and to the Home screen.