Roydon Cerejo

Samsung's Gear 2 is an iterative update to the company's debut smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear. While we quite enjoyed using the first version, we felt certain features were a bit unnecessary, which could have been the reason for it's high price. The Gear 2 takes all the features of the Galaxy Gear, improves upon some and adds a bunch of new ones into the mix, hoping to justify its price tag.

The packaging remains pretty much the same as the Galaxy Gear. In the box, you get the charging cradle, wall adapter and a bunch of manuals. The Gear 2 also has a smaller cousin called the Gear 2 Neo. As the name suggests, the Neo drops certain features like the metal body and camera, in order to drop a notch in price.

The Gear 2 is the proper follow-up, while the Gear 2 Neo is a toned-down update and could do for the category what some of Samsung’s mid-range phones have done for smartphones. Both watches run Tizen and this is a move forced in part by one of the biggest criticisms of the first-gen Gear i.e. battery life. The company is announcing better battery life numbers, but we don’t know whether this is due to hardware or software changes. Tizen, which has been developed largely by Samsung and Intel in conjunction with other tech companies, is also an open-source OS and thus has the same advantages of Android.

Both watches are more or less the same with some minor hardware differences. They have a 1.63-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 320×320 pixels. They both feature a 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. That sounds about as good as a low-end Android phone. The Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are both IP67 certified for dust and water resistance.

The Samsung Gear 2 retails for about Rs 20,000 while the Gear 2 Neo sits at Rs 15,000. We'll be bringing you the full review soon. In the meantime, let's take a look back at the Samsung Galaxy Gear review to see what went wrong.