Samsung Galaxy Gear S2

[red-beard]

Yes, the S2 not the S3.

I was looking at "upgrading" from my now damaged Gear S to a Gear S3. As I was looking at the specs, the S2 and the S3, except for battery and screen size, the specs are almost the same. Well that and the S2 is physically smaller than the S3.

We're on T-Mobile. An Amazon reseller has refurbished T-Mobile Gear S2 Watches for $109. That is friggin cheap. The cost to get a replacement Gear S is nearly $200, for refurbished! So, I bought the Gear S2.

The model I selected is the "sport" model with elastomer band. It is also 3G, which means it can operate as an independant phone when not connected to my cell phone.

I am impressed. The build quality is very high. Body is metal with some sort of Gorilla Glass. It feels similar to my black Swiss army. Size is about the same. The elastomer band is very smooth and looks better than I was expecting. The body is about twice as thick as my Swiss Army watch, but I don't notice it. I would prefer a "Classic", but they are not available in 3G.

The crown bezel turns to allows you to run through menus. The smooth bezel on the sports version seems almost too slippery. THe "classic" with ridges on the bezel seem like they would eb better.

Notifications are very similar to the Gear S. Watch face selection is good, but includes a lot of goofy ones I'll never use. I like the "Submariner" style faces. And they kept the "always on" feature, where the energy saving mode is a non-backlit simple watch face, not a black face.

I bought a metal band with the adapters to allow it to connect to the body. With the adapters, you can put any 20mm band on the watch. The one I bought was a standard black metal link style. Does make it look a bit more elegant. But I've found I like the elastomer one for everyday.

There seem to be more applications and there is a native bicycle application, unlike the Gear S. The phone application number pad sets the number clock-wise, about the same places as a clock face. Not sure why, but this seems wrong. I looked at old US rotary phones, they were counter-clockwise.

It counts steps. And it also has a periodic heart rate measurement.

The bad: battery life. On my old Gear S, the battery would last ~35-40 hours with the cell connection turned off. With similar power reductions, the Gear S2 is down to 75% in 5 hours. So battery life seems to be about 1/2. I'll keep playing with the settings to see if I can stretch it out to 24 hours.

Everything I've heard about the Gear S3 is bigger and bigger battery/life. My wrist is big enough for the face, but I'm not sure it has enough different. Do I need 4G-LTE? I usually only use the watch in bluetooth mode. It does have the special magnetic interface to allow credit card payments with the old standard readers. Time will tell. Christmas is coming....