The Samsung Gear S2 is now officially official, and while it may be small, there's no doubt the watch carries a lot of brand baggage out of the box. The original Samsung Gear was, and this is a fact, bad. The second one wasn't even really that much better. And the Gear Fit, while sort of cool to look at, was basically worthless. And then there was the Gear S but honestly who even bought one of those? (I'm about to find out, aren't I?)

The Gear name is pretty much associated with critical and consumer misses for Samsung in the wearables market at this point, so Gear S2 is perhaps a slightly less predictable name than you might first think. There are two basic models - the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 classic. The "classic" adds a black watch body with ridged bezel accents and exposed lugs, attached to which is a black leather strap. Samsung advertises it with more traditional watchfaces. The standard Gear S2 has either a smooth brushed aluminum-look or black body and comes with silicone bands.

Gear S2 classic

The Gear S2 runs an unspecified version of Samsung's 'Tizen-based wearable platform' (that's the actual name, which, OK) that will presumably have new features. The headline feature likely to star in numerous upcoming commercials is tap-and-pay via NFC on the Gear S2, though it's not clear if this will work only with Samsung Pay via NFC (the watch does not do MST) or if other apps like Android Pay will be supported via the native tap-and-pay function in Android. Regardless, that means that Samsung Gear S2 owners will have to tap their Samsung watch on the Android / Apple Pay logos, and not place it against the side of the card reader as you would with Samsung Pay on your Samsung phone. That just seems odd.

It's not even clear if a Samsung phone is required to use the Gear S2, though I'd have to assume it is (edit: any Android phone is compatible, but Galaxy devices will have exclusive functionality with the Gear S2) - the watch relies on Samsung's own push service and the Galaxy Apps store for content, which are only available on Samsung devices. One Gear S2 model does have a 3G e-SIM with voice services, so presumably it can function as a standalone phone, though it would probably still be syncing via your phone for things like notifications, just over the web instead of Bluetooth.

The watch has a quite-small 1.2" Super AMOLED display at a resolution of 360x360, giving it an exceptional screen density for a wearable at 302PPI. 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, and an unnamed dual-core 1GHz processor round out the major specs. The Gear S2 is rated IP68, though Samsung carefully only claims that it is water-resistant (as opposed to waterproof). It has a 250mAh (non-3G) or 300mAh (3G) battery, wireless charging (that's a plus), and features Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC.

They also have this kind of nifty rotating bezel for use as a selector dial (I'm guessing), and home and back buttons. How useful the extra controls will prove to be, though, is harder to say. Samsung claims an impressive 2 days on average per charge, and if there's one thing that's been true of the Gear devices to date, it's that Tizen does seem like a power-sipper.

It appears as though all four major US carriers will sell the 3G version of the Gear S2, as well, but no pricing or exact availability beyond "this fall" was provided.

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Source: Samsung