Android Wear 2.0 hands-on: new interface is much improved and easier to use, third-party complications are useful, but the QWERTY keyboard is not impressive
Dan Seifert / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
This hands-on is the first extended look at the Android Wear 2.0 interface Google has been building toward since the second big update brought gestures, Wi-Fi, and a UI refresh in 2015. The stakes are competitive as much as cosmetic: Samsung's Tizen-based Gear S2 was praised for its attractive design and great interface while being dinged for slow voice controls and a limited app selection that its own OS made unlikely to fix.
Dan Seifert's verdict — much-improved interface, useful third-party complications, unimpressive QWERTY keyboard — previews what reviewers would later confirm at launch, when the full Android Wear 2.0 review found the refined features easier to use but the experience spoiled by bugs.
First-order effects
- Watchmakers building on Android Wear get a redesigned interface and third-party complications that make watch faces genuinely extensible, while users typing on the wrist are left with a QWERTY keyboard that doesn't hold up.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's Gear S2 pitch — better hardware design on a closed Tizen base — gets harder to sell against a Wear release that adds local app installs and, per the later coverage, Android Pay, narrowing the gap on the app-selection weakness Tizen couldn't fix.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds through the 2.0 launch reviews and onward to the Galaxy Watch4 era, smartwatch platforms converge on standalone apps, payments, and health tracking as table stakes, leaving input method and ecosystem lock-in as the durable differentiators rather than the interface itself.
The trend: Smartwatch software is maturing from a phone companion into a standalone app-and-payments platform, with text input remaining the persistent weak point across generations.