Good improvements on original Gear, including style, speed, camera and much better battery life
Not many apps available yet, needs a dock to charge, accelerator doesn't always activate screen when you move
Pride of place in Samsung's new wearables collection goes to this, the Gear 2. It has the most features, and arguably looks best too. But has it got that X factor that makes you really want to wear it?
It will go on sale for £250.
Chassis
It has a similar look to the original Gear that surfaced last year. But the mark II is a little smaller, slimmer, and comes with a faux leather plastic strap that helps it to look more like a proper digital watch than its predecessor -- though you can now change it for any standard watch strap. It's still on the chunky side for wristwear though, weighing in at 68g (5g lighter than the original). Like Samsung's other recent wearables, the Gear Fit and Gear 2 Neo, it comes with IP67 certification, which allows it to be immersed down to one metre in fresh water for up to half an hour.
Operation
It's ditched the Android operating system in favour of Samsung's own Tizen, which the company reckons helps to optimise battery life. And it may have done the trick because, despite having a slightly smaller battery, it's a big improvement over the charge-a-day original, and we got a comfortable three days out of it.
It has the same 1.6-inch Super Amoled screen as its predecessor, which offers a resolution of 320x320 pixels (278ppi). That's perfectly fine for reading alerts, text messages and even scrolling through emails. You can also make or receive calls while your phone is in your pocket, which doesn't sound like such a big deal until you try it -- it feels like quite a novelty to be freed from your ever-expanding brick of a smartphone. Sound quality is okay, though you won't want to use it in heavy traffic, and though the microphone made our voice audible to callers when it was held at lower chest height, it tended to sound quite distorted.
Health options are built into the Gear 2, including a heart rate sensor on the underside that sits next to your skin. We found it to be reasonably consistent within a few bpm each time we tried it.
There are also options for tracking your running, cycling and walking, which you can then combine with the S Health app on the Galaxy S5 and others to analyse your health data.
Features
The dual-core processor is clocked at 1GHz and backed by 512MB RAM, which improves upon the original's 800MHz. That's still small beer by modern smartphone standards, but the Gear 2 doesn't feel slow. Within its necessarily limited remit, it opens apps quickly, including the camera, which you can set to open with a double click of the home button.
That 2-megapixel camera (just up from 1.9 megapixels) is now located more discreetly on the edge of the device itself, rather than protruding from the strap. It's reasonably quick to open and focus, which is the main thing with a camera like this. While picture quality isn't great, it's fine for quick snaps in good light. You can also record 720p HD video at 30fps which looks great on the Gear 2, but not quite so mind-blowing when you transfer it to a computer screen.
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.
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. Samsung claims it should work with up to 17 different models (Samsung only though, boo!) and we tried it with the Galaxy S5.
Because 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. Samsung has released a Tizen software development kit though, so hopefully some enterprising developers are already creating some additional functionality for the device.
Conclusion
It's getting there. 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. 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 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.
Operating system: Tizen
Processor: Dual-core 1GHz
Memory: 4GB storage, 512MB RAM
Display: 1.63in Super AMOLED, 320x320 pixels
Features: Pedometer, Exercise, Heart Rate, Stopwatch, Timer, Music Player, WatchON Remote Control
Strap: Plastic, changeable
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0, IrLED
Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, heart rate
Camera: 2 megapixel with autofocus
Video: 3GP, MP4, H.263, H.264
Audio: MP3, M4A, AAC, OGG
Radio: No
Battery: 300mAh
Size: 37x58x10mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
