



Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

Mark Walton

BERLIN—The Samsung Gear S2 is an odd beast. It's easily the best-looking smartwatch Samsung has ever made, and while it doesn't quite match the premium styling of the Apple Watch or the Moto 360, its stainless steel construction and small size make it rather handsome. The trouble is that like previous Gear smartwatches, it also runs Samsung's Linux-based Tizen OS—and no matter how good it might be, it's tough to see developers opting to develop for it over the likes of the Apple Watch or Android Wear.

That the Gear S2 wasn't even mentioned in Samsung's main IFA presentation is telling. Early rumours pointed to the company unveiling a suite of new apps for the smartwatch during the show, and while there are quite a few now available on the Gear app store, the selection isn't as broad as its competitors. Samsung told us that the Gear S2 will be compatible with a range of Android phones, not just the company's own Galaxy devices.

The rectilinear silhouette of previous Galaxy Gear watches has finally been given the boot in favour of a circular screen, with two possible stainless steel finishes: a smooth sci-fi look with proprietary rubber watch straps (pictured above) and another version that looks slightly more like a traditional watch, with a knurled bezel and standard watch strap lugs. I prefer the look of the latter, but both have their charms.

Part of the reason the Gear S2 is more aesthetically acceptable this time is due to its size. The Gear S2 has a tiny 1.2-inch (360×360) OLED touchscreen, which makes it a lot smaller than the likes of the Moto 360. Don't get me wrong: people are still going to know you're wearing a smartwatch when you don the Gear S2, but it looks and feels a lot less bulky.

The unique and most interesting aspect of the Gear S2 is its rotating bezel, which you can use to navigate your way around the watch's radial menus, in conjunction with enter and back buttons on the right hand side. Given the smaller screen size, this is a very smart way of keeping your prodding fingers from obscuring whatever you're trying to look at. Spinning the bezel from the watch's home screen brings up a variety of different "quick view" screens. The UI feels very responsive as you spin the bezel around.

From the home screen, the demo watch had quick views for upcoming appointments, the weather, music controls, heart rate, steps taken (pedometer), and a strange screen for inputting how many cups of coffee and water you'd consumed. Sadly, that didn't appear to include an option for "steins of beer quaffed."

Pushing the bottom button pops up a radial menu of apps, which you scroll between using the bezel. This is a great way of navigating between apps, and it's surprising that it's taken this long for a company to do it, particularly as rotating bezels have long been a common feature on mechanical watches. There weren't a whole lot of apps on the Gear S2 at Samsung's IFA booth, outside of the standard ones like e-mail and calendar (both of which worked well). There was an ESPN app that showed the latest scores for some sportsball teams (sorry, not a sports guy) and a rather unexciting New York Times app that showed headlines. There was also the usual stock ticker guff, as well as a photos app for presumably displaying photos from your phone.

Under the hood there's a dual-core 1GHz processor with 512MB RAM and 4GB of storage, along with an accelerometer, a heart-rate monitor, a gyroscope, and a barometer. The Gear S2 will come in two different flavours: a 13.4mm thick model with built-in 3G, and another 11.5mm model without. The 3G version of the watch also comes with a larger 300mAh battery instead of the 250mAh unit in the non-3G version. Samsung claims both will give you around two days of solid use. The 3G version of the Gear S2 will let you make phone calls and access certain apps without the need to tether your smartphone, but just how well this works in practice remains to be seen.

Both the 3G and non-3G Gear S2 include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and NFC, which you can use with Samsung Pay. (Samsung Pay has launched in South Korea and will come to the US on September 28. It's coming to the UK "in the near future.") They're also both IP68 dust- and water-resistant, which is obligatory for a watch to function as a watch in my view. Indeed, the Gear S2 does function rather well as a watch: the OLED screen is always on, so you can always glance at the current time; you don't need to wave your wrist around like a loon to convince the accelerometer gods that you really want to know the time.

Despite all the goodness of the Gear S2—it really is leaps and bounds ahead of what Samsung has done before—the fact that it runs Tizen OS makes it that much less compelling. Other smartwatches, such as the Pebble, have faced similar problems in the past, but we're not sure if the S2's wider gamut of features will attract or repel developers.