You know that old saying about a broken clock getting things right twice a day? Not wholly appropriate here, but after a handful of less-than-great smartwatch attempts, it's not entirely off. Perhaps a better idiom would be something along the lines of: a great smartwatch takes time.
Thus far, Samsung has taken a very Samsung-esque approach to the space. The company has long made it clear that it has both the time and money to experiment on a large scale, and earlier iterations of the Gear line certainly fit the profile. But here we are at IFA, staring the S2 in the face, and it seems safe to say the company finally got it right.
There are a number of other watches out there that feel premium - take the newly announced Huawei watch, for example - but the Gear S2 feels like more than that. It feels right. It's not big and bulky like past Gears, nor is it a smartwatch pretending to be dumb one. It's just a well-designed piece of hardware that embraces the small screen.
The device is the size and weight of a standard watch - a breath of fresh air after playing around with so many unwieldy predecessors, while the unassuming metallic bezel means it will pair nicely with a variety of different straps for different uses.
It looks good, it feels right, and perhaps most strikingly, it's a pleasure to use. This owes a lot to the plethora of navigation choices, including touch, physical buttons and a metal rim that spins around, allowing for an extremely quick method for getting around menus.
The rim is smooth and it's quick - a really clever and intuitive addition to the system. Sort of like a scroll wheel built directly into the watch's form factor.
I found myself using it a lot more than the little 1.2-inch touch screen, which isn't ideal for scrolling through menus. Not to knock the screen too much, as it was bright and sharp and looked quite nice - inside, at least. I can't wait to take one of these for a spin outdoors - and to test the stated two- to three-day battery life, for that matter.
No word on pricing yet, although it seems a pretty safe bet that it'll run somewhere around the same as the Apple Watch. This time, however, it definitely feels worth it.
