Gadgetory

smartwatches aren't perfect but Samsung is doing its best to make smartwatches cooler starting with the gear s2 it's round it's nice looking and it works with many Android phones not just Samsung ones why is it such a big deal it's well designed as a round watch see that rotating bezel around the watch dial you can spin it to change watch modes and you can scroll through menus it's like Apple watches digital crown but on the watch face and apps are in a wheel everything is designed to be round it's a fully round display and it looks beautiful it feels good and looks good that's not easy the s2 fits on my wrist well and it's not too big the simple sort of futuristic design stands out but isn't weird it's flashy but understated well done Samsung it handles most of the things you need clever watch face apps can be used to follow your favorite team via ESPN or check stocks via Bloomberg or track fitness using samsung s health or nike plus it gets messages it can play music and has pretty decent voice recognition what's the temperature outside battery life it's not a monster but it gets a day more on average than most fancy smartwatches like the Apple watch or Android where you could miss charging it one day and be okay and it comes with a nice magnetic contactless charged off to fitness tracking works step count heart rate all-day activity tracking they happen smoothly and fitness apps are easy to use on the watch interface you can even track water and coffee intake it's not the best fitness tracker but it's one of the best fitness tracking setups on a SmartWatch it's good enough to replace another tracker if you have one apps aren't plentiful however because this is Samsung Tizen not android where it runs its own specific apps and there aren't that many of them but even with what it's got this gear s2 it's pretty nice and it shows Android wear watch as a thing or two about how watches could be designed next and look a lot more interesting on your wrist i'm scott stein at cnet with the Samsung gear s2