Hands-on with Samsung Gear S2: slim round design, smart interaction model, makes it the most promising Samsung smartwatch so far
gear s2 looks SUPER mediocre. I'd take 360 over this (or the huawei!) http://www.theverge.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
At IFA 2015, Samsung's round Gear S2 arrives as the company's first watch with a rotating bezel and a slim case — a hardware reset after earlier Gear models, and enough for The Verge's hands-on to call it the most promising Samsung smartwatch yet even as a commenter in the coverage calls it 'super mediocre' next to the Moto 360 and Huawei Watch.
The tension the hands-on flags — great industrial design riding on Tizen's thin app store — is exactly what the follow-up reviews keep finding: the Gear S2 3G review cites limited capabilities and a slim app store, the Gear Sport repeats the few-third-party-apps complaint, and by the Galaxy Watch the criticism shifts to Bixby being terrible.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between Android Wear rivals get a genuine design-led alternative, but early adopters inherit Tizen's app gap immediately — voice controls are slow and third-party music integration is missing.
Second-order effects
- Samsung is forced into an annual cadence — Gear S3, Gear Sport, Galaxy Watch — where each iteration fixes hardware complaints like battery life while the software短板 persists, pushing the brand to lean on Google partnership rather than its own platform.
Third-order effects
- The pattern suggests Samsung's wearable strategy structurally converges on Google's ecosystem: when your own OS can't sustain an app catalog, the durable asset becomes hardware design and display quality, not the platform layer.
The trend: Samsung's wearables show that best-in-class hardware cannot compensate for a thin proprietary app ecosystem, pulling the line from Tizen independence toward deeper reliance on Google services.