Samsung Gear S2 Software
|
Droidever - Hello Samsung lovers, this time we will provide information about the Samsung Gear S2 software. The Gear S2 software is Samsung's own Tizen operating system, a fork of Android that Samsung occasionally uses in its wearables. It's a great choice for this device. It simply wouldn't be possible to navigate Android Wear with a rotating bezel simply, because of the up-down, left-right structure of the interface. Samsung's circular interface and nifty navigation are a match made in heaven.
There are about a dozen screens on the Gear S2 by default: a notifications area to the left of the watch face and several dedicated app screens to the right (S Health, weather, calendar, heart-rate monitor and so on). There's a swipe-down info screen with a toggle for Do Not Disturb mode and a shortcut to the music player and brightness settings.
You can scroll between these screens horizontally using your finger or you can twist the bezel to move much more quickly. It's a very intuitive way to navigate and much faster than clumsily pawing at the screen. The Gear S2 also has two physical buttons. The top one takes you back a screen and the bottom bottom either takes you home from a menu or launches the app picker from the home screen.
The Gear S2 has just over two screens of app icons, arranged around the edges of the display. You simply tap the icon you want or rotate the bezel to scroll through them and bring up the app name. You can swipe the screen to jump straight to the next app screen or rotate your way through the apps one-by-one.
Your current screen in relation to the total number of home screens or app pages is always marked with a small readout at the top of the screen, so you always know where you are in the OS. It takes very little time to get used to and at no point do you feel as though you're lost in menus. Samsung has done a remarkable job of keeping the interface simple and easy to navigate, despite its complexity.
The Gear companion app for Android is pretty decent, offering tweaks to watch faces, app notification controls, Find My Gear, app manager, Gear Apps store, settings, and the ability to simply push media (such as music or photos) to your Gear S2.
Tizen is not for everyone and the list of available Tizen apps on the Gear S2 is quite limited. If you have a Galaxy device and are already happy using a lot of Galaxy apps then you might be fine. But if you're a heavy Google app user, switching from Google Fit to S Health, Google Now to S Voice and so on will be a bit of a pain.
Fortunately, the Gear S2 is perfectly capable of displaying your app notifications, so you can receive WhatsApp messages (but not respond to them), and Google Now cards still show up right on schedule. The problem arises if you want to add your favorite Play Store apps to your Gear S2, because they simply don't exist for the most part. This is something you need to consider if you're contemplating trying out Tizen.
Having said that, the Gear S2 is perfectly usable with the apps it comes with. If you don't have a Galaxy phone, you will have to install a few Samsung apps to get started: the Gear app, the Gear Plugin app and the Gear Accessory Service. If you sign in with your Samsung account you can also use Find My Phone and Find My Gear.
A Samsung account also lets you make use of the reactivation lock, so if your Gear goes missing the thief can't just factory reset it and carry on. If you factory reset the watch yourself, and in my case, I had to frequently, you can use the restore option to get things back to where they were pronto.
Accessing the settings menu brings some standard fare: a display section covering always-on display, watch faces and brightness, vibration strength, wake-up gesture, a customizable double-press action for the home button, connections (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC), screen lock, keyboard, power-saving settings and info, which includes reset options.
Read also: Samsung Gear S2 Design and Build Quality
I enjoyed the Tizen interface a lot, but the limited apps was frustrating, because it felt as though I had to largely reorganize my app life. There are more than 1,000 Tizen apps available, but many are location specific, so you can't access them all. This occasionally meant I had to use an alternative to an app I use a lot, or do without it entirely.
An addition was made to the Gear S2 firmware in December 2015. Now, if you miss a notification, a small yellow dot will appear on the watch face's nine o'clock marker. It's a small but helpful addition that means you can just swipe to your notifications area when the dot shows up and see what you missed.
One thing I must note is that because one of the Gear S2's main selling points is its compatibility with non-Galaxy devices, that is what I used it with. For the majority of the week I paired the Gear S2 with a Nexus 6 running Android 6.0 Marshmallow but also occasionally switched to Lollipop devices to see if that had any effect on the regular connection dropouts I experienced (more on those below). Using a Galaxy or Tizen device will naturally provide a different experience.
You can scroll between these screens horizontally using your finger or you can twist the bezel to move much more quickly. It's a very intuitive way to navigate and much faster than clumsily pawing at the screen. The Gear S2 also has two physical buttons. The top one takes you back a screen and the bottom bottom either takes you home from a menu or launches the app picker from the home screen.
The Gear S2 has just over two screens of app icons, arranged around the edges of the display. You simply tap the icon you want or rotate the bezel to scroll through them and bring up the app name. You can swipe the screen to jump straight to the next app screen or rotate your way through the apps one-by-one.
Your current screen in relation to the total number of home screens or app pages is always marked with a small readout at the top of the screen, so you always know where you are in the OS. It takes very little time to get used to and at no point do you feel as though you're lost in menus. Samsung has done a remarkable job of keeping the interface simple and easy to navigate, despite its complexity.
The Gear companion app for Android is pretty decent, offering tweaks to watch faces, app notification controls, Find My Gear, app manager, Gear Apps store, settings, and the ability to simply push media (such as music or photos) to your Gear S2.
Fortunately, the Gear S2 is perfectly capable of displaying your app notifications, so you can receive WhatsApp messages (but not respond to them), and Google Now cards still show up right on schedule. The problem arises if you want to add your favorite Play Store apps to your Gear S2, because they simply don't exist for the most part. This is something you need to consider if you're contemplating trying out Tizen.
Having said that, the Gear S2 is perfectly usable with the apps it comes with. If you don't have a Galaxy phone, you will have to install a few Samsung apps to get started: the Gear app, the Gear Plugin app and the Gear Accessory Service. If you sign in with your Samsung account you can also use Find My Phone and Find My Gear.
A Samsung account also lets you make use of the reactivation lock, so if your Gear goes missing the thief can't just factory reset it and carry on. If you factory reset the watch yourself, and in my case, I had to frequently, you can use the restore option to get things back to where they were pronto.
Accessing the settings menu brings some standard fare: a display section covering always-on display, watch faces and brightness, vibration strength, wake-up gesture, a customizable double-press action for the home button, connections (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC), screen lock, keyboard, power-saving settings and info, which includes reset options.
Read also: Samsung Gear S2 Design and Build Quality
I enjoyed the Tizen interface a lot, but the limited apps was frustrating, because it felt as though I had to largely reorganize my app life. There are more than 1,000 Tizen apps available, but many are location specific, so you can't access them all. This occasionally meant I had to use an alternative to an app I use a lot, or do without it entirely.
An addition was made to the Gear S2 firmware in December 2015. Now, if you miss a notification, a small yellow dot will appear on the watch face's nine o'clock marker. It's a small but helpful addition that means you can just swipe to your notifications area when the dot shows up and see what you missed.
One thing I must note is that because one of the Gear S2's main selling points is its compatibility with non-Galaxy devices, that is what I used it with. For the majority of the week I paired the Gear S2 with a Nexus 6 running Android 6.0 Marshmallow but also occasionally switched to Lollipop devices to see if that had any effect on the regular connection dropouts I experienced (more on those below). Using a Galaxy or Tizen device will naturally provide a different experience.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Add a comment if there are needs to be discussed in this article and please comment politely without spam. Thanks!