In less than five minutes, I changed the plasticky rubber strap out for a leather option that looked nicer and was more comfortable to wear. My review unit was a rather loud orange color (the Gear 2 also comes in staid black or a pretty ugly rose gold), which works at the gym, but not in the board room. It could stand to be a beat or two faster to be truly seamless, though.īeing able to change the strap on the Gear 2 with any standard 22mm watch strap sounds trivial, but it’s actually a pretty big deal. The display is not always on, but the Gear 2 is much better at waking up when you lift your arm to check the time, making it a slightly better timepiece. It’s still a touchscreen and your main point of interaction with the Gear 2, but Samsung has moved the physical home button from the side of the watch to below the display so you don’t need to rely on gestures quite as much. It’s bright and colorful, with wide viewing angles and good outdoor visibility. The Gear 2 doesn't shake the 'computer on my wrist' lookįront and center on the Gear 2 is the same, 1.63-inch square Super AMOLED display used on the Galaxy Gear. But learning from the past and preparing for the future are two entirely different things, and Samsung needs to prove it can really do the latter if it wants the Gear 2 to survive once Android Wear arrives. This year, its big advantage is experience. Samsung’s big advantage last year was being first, but it wasn’t able to make the best of it and the Galaxy Gear suffered as a result. Where does that put the Gear 2? It’s a marked improvement over last year’s Galaxy Gear, with a better design and useful new features, but it doesn’t radically change the premise of the Gear or make it that much more attractive as a smartwatch. The $299 Gear 2 has been available for purchase for just over two months now, yet it’s all but assured that the Android Wear devices will steal its thunder. Samsung has already been named a partner for Android Wear, despite offering a smartwatch system of its own for months. Now, we’re just a few weeks away from Google’s annual developer conference, where the highly anticipated Android Wear platform is expected to make its formal debut. A scant four months later, Samsung took the curtain off of its successor, the Gear 2, before any of its big-name competitors could really mount a response to the first effort. It was the first major smartphone maker to jump headfirst into the modern era of smartwatches when the Galaxy Gear was revealed in September 2013. This is the game Samsung plays: it leverages its massive size and deep infrastructure to crank out products quicker than anyone else. But for Samsung, it’s actually year two of the smartwatch, a second round to right the wrongs committed by its first effort, last year’s Galaxy Gear. Or at least that’s what’s expected based on the hype surrounding wearables. This is the year when all of our wrist-mounted computer dreams are going to come true. The improvements are only small however, and there's still room for more, but with the price dropping steadily, the Gear is getting more and more attractive.This is the year of the smartwatch. The screen's the same, but it's more than good enough for this size and though the switch from Android to Tizen may have improved battery life, it means the Gear 2 is likely to be limited for future apps. The Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 improves on its predecessor in almost every significant way - it's slimmer and lighter, the camera's better and it's faster too. Samsung has released a Tizen software development kit though, so hopefully some enterprising developers are already creating some additional functionality for the device. Samsung claims it should work with up to 17 different models (Samsung only though, boo!) and we tried it with the Galaxy S5.īecause Samsung has abandoned the Android operating system in favour of its own bespoke Tizen-based OS - and it works very smoothly - it's likely that you won't be able to add third-party Android apps as they become available. You don't need to pair the Gear 2 with a smartphone (you can still monitor your paces and tell the time) but you'll get a lot more out of it if you do. There's 4GB of memory on board for storing your pics and adding music tracks and next to the lens is an IR blaster which you can use to synch with your TV and set top box so you can use the Gear 2 as a remote control.
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