Samsung Gear S2 review: A great smartwatch

Samsung has launched several smartwatches but running on Tizen OS, Gear S2 by the company is quite an impressive piece of wearable.

Design: The previous generation of watches from Samsung had a bulky design and restricted compatibility but Samsung has addressed all these issues with the Gear S2. Besides a 1.2 inch super AMOLED display and 360x360p resolution, this watch has a density of 302 pixels per inch. Everything appears sharp and crisp on this display even in bright daylight. Samsung has eliminated auto brightness mode but when at minimum brightness level, it automatically increases the brightness depending upon the ambient light.

The Gear S2 not only supports touch input but also has a rotating bezel for navigation and two hardware keys on the side for home and back. While rotating bezel sounds a bit complicated, it is really smooth and easy to use for navigating. I got accustomed to it in a short while.

Pairing: Unlike the regular watch that can be used straight out of the box, the Gear S2 needs to be paired with a smartphone. Thankfully, it isn't restricted to Samsung hardware and works with any Android smartphone running on v4.4 or above and iPhones too. While reviewing this smartwatch, I paired it with Asus Zenfone and BlackBerry Priv using the Samsung Gear app, which can be downloaded from the Google Play store. Pairing the watch only takes a few minutes and I was able to control the notifications I wished to receive on the watch, including automatically displaying the details of the new notifications. Samsung has added a few watch faces too using which you can make the watch look different depending on the occasion.

Functionality: The Gear S2 works as a perfect second screen on your wrist for your smartphone. I was able to check all my notifications on the watch, without picking my phone. For instance, it notified me for incoming calls, messages, emails, Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and other apps that I had selected under the notification manger. As I had allowed the watch to display the details too, I was able to read the messages and Whatsapp from the watch itself.

The watch can be used to reject incoming calls with a preset text. You can use it for dialling calls too but the watch doesn't have a speaker phone and I had to use the phone or the hands free to communicate. Over the watch itself, I was able to access maps, S Voice functionality, weather and much more. The Gear S2 is not only an extension to the smartphone but does feature S Health functionality, where a profile can be created and it can be used to track running, walking, cycling, hiking, elliptical trainer, step machine and exercise bike. It also has the Nike+ running app which needs to be installed on the phone to be used. It can even measure heart beat.

All the fitness functions works well. More apps can also be downloaded from Samsung Gear apps. The collection includes themes for the watch face, news briefings, healthy living app such as Lifesum, The Wall Street Journal, Line, ESPN, etc. to name a few. Another interesting feature on the Gear S2 is the option of remotely accessing content on the watch over WiFi connectivity but even after turning on the remote connection, however, I encountered a few snags while using this feature. It is powered by Exynos 3250 chipset which houses a dual-core processor clocked at 1GHz and is paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. Above all, it isn't running on Android wear platform and instead has got Samsung's own Tizen wearable platform.

Battery: The Gear S2 is accompanied with a charging dock that takes over a couple of hours to fully charge the watch, which lasted me close to two days with heavy usage.

Bag it or Junk it:  Offers a good blend of utility and fitness tracking features, making it a great smartwatch.

Rating: 4.5/5

Price: Rs 24,300

Plus: Display, Performance

Minus: Price