Samsung Gear S2 review: attractive design, great interface, but slow voice controls, limited app selection, which isn't likely to change given its use of Tizen
Dan Seifert / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
The Verge's hands-on in September had framed the round, slim Gear S2 as Samsung's most promising smartwatch yet, and this review largely confirms the hardware half of that promise — while delivering the platform verdict the hands-on couldn't: Tizen's thin app selection and sluggish voice controls are structural, not launch-window gaps.
That framing matters because it predicts the shape of everything that follows in the coverage: the Gear S2 3G review six months later repeats the slim-app-store complaint almost verbatim, and by the Gear Sport in 2017 S Voice is being called useless — the same hardware-praise/software-criticism split running through every Tizen watch Samsung ships.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the Gear S2 and competing smartwatches face a clear trade-off: best-in-class design and interface on one side, an app store too sparse to bet on, with no reason given to expect third-party support to arrive.
Second-order effects
- Developers watching Tizen's installed base see little incentive to port apps, which deepens the very scarcity the review cites and pushes Android users toward watches with richer ecosystems — a dynamic the later Galaxy Watch review shows persisting under Bixby.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — as the Gear S3, Gear Sport, and Galaxy Watch coverage suggests it does — Samsung's wearable strategy becomes a hardware-led franchise where each generation must win on displays, battery, and fitness features precisely because its software platform never closes the app gap.
The trend: Samsung's Tizen smartwatch line is settling into a durable trade-off — premium industrial design against a perpetually thin third-party app ecosystem — that each successive model inherits rather than fixes.