I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m actually a very tiny, tiny little bit ‘excited’ about Samsung’s (…eh) new smartwatch, the Gear S2. It looks pretty decent, seems to have a better input method than laggy touch (Wear) or a finicky jog dial nobody uses (Apple Watch), and the software – that’s Tizen, so an alternative operating system! Right? Right? – looks nice, and seems to work well too.
The impressive things with the Gear S2 don’t end with its new design: Samsung’s actually figured out a really smart interaction model for smartwatches that I’m shocked no one else has done yet. There’s the touchscreen, yes, just like most other smartwatches, and the Gear S2 has a couple buttons on its side for home and back. But its real trick is in the rotating bezel, which lets you quickly and easily scroll through lists, apps, watch faces, and whatever else you might be looking at on the screen. It’s more predictable and intuitive than the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown and is a joy to use.
I can’t believe that upon first inspection, this Gear S2 actually seems like a really well-designed and well-thought out product, considering we’re dealing with Samsung here. This thing still isn’t watch enough for my personal taste, but there’s no denying that Samsung seems to have done a decent job here.
I hope I get to play with one soon.
The rotating bezel looks like a good idea. I just hope there is some prior art, so Samsung can’t “patent” the concept.
There are plenty of watched with rising bezels. Mostly outdoors-oriented add they can be easily used to created a compass. I have one sitting on my side table right now.
it looks like a mini Nest strapped to someone’s wrist. So with the user interaction nailed, all we need now is apps and battery life?
There is prior art for such a rotating bezel. More than that, in a smartwatch!
Look up the Epson Chrono-bit. It was released on the year 2000 (so it didn’t had wireless connectivity, only wired).
The Epson Chrono-bit smartwatch with rotating bezel is mentioned in the wikipedia page for smartwatches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch#2000
There are images of the watch in the official page (in japanese):
http://www.epson.jp/products/back/hyou/chrono-bit/chrono-bit.htm
It was nice but underpowered compared with the smartwatches of the day (the Ruputer and the Fossil Wrist PDA).
What bizarre world we are living in which Samsung can make beautiful products and Apple make square complicated boxes.
history repeats itself. Remember the 90s?
… and Apple are rumoured to be releasing another 90s classic, the Pippin v2! (aka Apple TV games console)
Still can’t see these “smart” watches as anything other than a solution no one needs and never wanted. If they are ever untied from having a smart phone with processors that won’t burn your wrist (smart phones can get hot enough to burn while doing certain things if you hold them against your skin too long) they MIGHT find some useful niche. But right now? Expensive nearly useless toys no matter how the corporations making them try to spin it.
I have the Gear S, and it’s never heated up on me like my Note 4, and as weird as it looks, it’s extremely comfortable. The downsides of the Gear S are A) I couldn’t find one unlocked that I could just outright buy. B) took Samsung way too long to figure out that people may want more than a rubbery sports band.
It’s not laggy or slow, it could use with some better battery life (I generally can get 2.5-3 days out of it) Tizen is a decent competitor to Android if they’d just push it outside of the few countries they currently are.
…. I’ll pass
How is a rotating bezel for scrolling through lists more intuitive than the crown? Does clockwise mean up or down? I guess it depends on which wrist you wear your watch?
More importantly, it’ll take you about 2 Seconds to figure out once you have it on your wrist.
I think they are getting closer. Interface seems sharp.