Just a couple of days earlier, we had reported a speculation of Samsung’s Gear S2 and Gear VR being unveiled in India very soon. Samsung have now gone ahead of the speculations and formally invited the media for a launch event taking place on January 21.
The Indian market has seen many wearables and smartwatches in particular in the past, with 3 watches from Samsung itself to add to the list. However, since the launch of the Apple Watch here back in November 2015, the smartwatch market has gained more heat leading to more such devices being launched here. To recall a few, Huawei’s Honor Band Z1 (more of a fitness tracker), Android Wear based Asus Zenwatch 2 and Motorola Moto 360 (gen 2) have all made some news recently along with some lesser known brands like Wickedleak pulling off one of their own smartwatch, The Alpha running on the Nucleus OS which is popular among Chinese smartwatches.
Samsung had remained silent for a while now in the Indian smartwatch scene due to failed attempts of attracting consumers in the past, which Samsung itself had to be blamed for flaws like poor and bulky design, mediocore battery life and locking the smartwatch just for a handful of Samsung’s flagship devices back then. With the confidence from a positive response globally, the launch of the Gear S2 will be seen as a major comeback for Samsung to see if Indians are finally ready now to unstrap their regular “dumb” watches.
The Gear S2 currently only supports Android based devices (4.4 and up) and this can only be seen as a temporary shortcoming to its Android Wear counter parts which also support iOS. As, a recent announcement at CES was made to bring an update to the Tizen based Gear S2 to support iOS and possibly inculcate fuctionalities like Siri in the future.
Pricing will be another key factor deciding the Gear S2’s survival in a price sensitive market like India, where an Android Wear based smartwatch like the Asus Zenwatch 2 that costs just about Rs. 11,999 ($180) is struggling to strive.
Here are some of Gear S2’s specs-
- 1.2 inch 360x360p Super AMOLED circular display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection and rotating bezel control
- Qualcomm S4 SOC (2x A7 1GHz CPU and Adreno 305 GPU) on S2 3G and Exynos 3250 (2x A7 1GHz CPU and MALI 400 MP@ GPU)
- 512 MB RAM and 4GB flash storage
- 250 mah battery (S2 and S2 classic) 300 mah (S2 3G) with wireless charging
- IP68 water and dust resistant
- Accelerometer, Gyro, Heart Rate Monitor, Barometer, Ambient light, GPS (3G only) sensors
- Bluetooth 4.1 LE, NFC, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
- Tizen OS
