As teased about a week ago, Samsung has announced two new smartwatches – the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 Classic. Samsung says, that the Gear S2 smartwatch comes with a “more minimal and modern design” while the Gear S2 Classic has leather and a black finish.
As you might have expected, the watch runs Samsung’s own Tizen OS, an OS used by Samsung in the original Gear smartwatch and an OS which has virtually seen no adopters till date. It also includes NFC for payments and other wireless connectivity along with an e-SIM – a method to make calls and perform some tasks without a phone nearby.
The watch is unique in the sense that it has a round rotating bezel on the edge of the crystal. There are two buttons on the side for home and back. The 11.4mm thick watch’s 1.2 inch Super AMOLED display sports a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels. It is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB internal storage.
It also has IP67 certification for dust and water resistant. Connectivity options on the devices include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1 LE. Samsung said that it is partnering with others to offer a range of watch faces and watch bands. It will support all the popular audio formats – mp3, m4a, aac and ogg and have fitness features like S Health and Nike+ Running built-in.
The sensors on the device include Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Heart Rate, Ambient Light, Barometer and the watch is powered by a 250 mAh battery while the 3G variant is powered by a 300 mAh battery. Samsung claims that the Gear S2 can provide battery life of about 2-3 days.
The company will showcase the smartwatches at IFA in Berlin this week. Samsung has not yet announced anything about the pricing and availability of the Gear S2.
It will be important to see how these smartwatches performs in the market as its Samsung’s first smartwatch after Apple’s sensational Apple Watch debut. The failure and success of the Gear S2 will have a long-lasting impressions, more so, considering Samsung $44 Billion loss in market valuation despite a glitzy S6 Edge and S6 Edge Plus launch.
