Revamped hardware and a plethora of software highlight the second round of Samsung's smartwatch. Samsung has announced the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches ahead of Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, Spain. These are follow-ups to last summer's Samsung Galaxy Gear. Unlike the original Galaxy Gear, which has a full build of Android 4.2.2 on board, the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are running the Tizen OS — an open-source OS Samsung played a big hand in developing. (More on that here.) That's good and bad, of course. It's great for those who have been waiting to see Tizen on a mainstream product (insofar as smartwatches are mainstream, we suppose) and bad for the tinkerers. That's also led Samsung to drop "Galaxy" from the product name. Thew new OS is just part of the changes, though. The hardware's been revamped as well. The ugly wart that is the camera on the Galaxy Gear is gone, moved from the strap to the body of the watch itself. And Samsung's tucked an IR port in there for good measure, turning the watch into a living-room remote — not really much of a surprise given that wearables will make up a good part of Samsung's Smart Home initiative, announced in January. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines And that's just for starters.

Samsung Gear 2 image gallery

The difference between the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo? Lack of camera in the latter. Visually speaking, there's not a huge difference between the Gear 2 and the Gear 2 Neo. You get different color options, but other than the the biggest change in that the camera's been stripped out of the Neo. So instead of a larger transparent window, there's just the small circle for the IR port. It's also slightly lighter. Does one look better than the other? Your call. Overall, the design of both Gear 2s is largely the same as the original Galaxy Gear. Your still going to need some sort of charging cradle, and the pins have moved from the first time around. You're also missing the speaker grille on the wrist from the Galaxy Gear. And the button has moved from the right-hand side to the bottom of the watch face. Also worth mentioning: The Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are rated IP67, meaning you can actually get these a little wet. That was a big concern we had with the original Galaxy Gear. Samsung Gear 2 Neo image gallery

Samsung Gear 2 specs Hardware-wise, the Gear 2 sports a 1.63-inch (320 by 320) Super AMOLED display, so you'll get the same sort of superb colors we've enjoyed on the original Galaxy Gear. It's all powered by a dual-core processor running at 1 GHz, has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of on-board storage. The Gear 2 has a 300 mAh battery, which Samsung says will last two to three days with "typical" usage, or up to six days with low usage.