Samsung Gear S2 vs LG urbane Watch The features comparison

Samsung Gear S2 vs LG urbane Watch The features comparison 

Samsung's experience in the smart wearables category is, at this point, second to none, and the company seems to have learned quite a lot in the past year and a half. All this knowledge is now being made good use of with the company's new Gear S2 smartwatch, powered once again by Tizen, not Google's Android Wear platform. And while the smartwatch scene is getting more and more crowded, one of the most obvious competitors of the S2 will be cross-town rival LG's Watch Urbane, which is nevertheless at a distinct disadvantage: it was made official half a year ago.

Can the Urbane compete, or is Samsung's newer and meaner Gear S2 the superior product? While we're not rushing into a final verdict just yet, we're nevertheless taking our first look.

Design

While both the Gear S2 and the Watch Urbane have their own design intricacies, perhaps the first thing you're bound to notice were you to put them side by side is the difference in size: the latter is visibly larger, even though its display is only slightly bigger. Samsung has promised to bring to market a larger model at some point in the near future, though, but that one is still not available for us to play with, so we're going to stick with what we already know about the existing model.

In any case, since we've got the more modernistic, sporty-looking Gear S2 at hand, it should be noted that it'll appeal to a different demographic or fit a particular set of occasions and outfits compared with the Urbane and its classic design. Indeed, while the latter wins points in our mind just because it's such a good attempt to bring together geeky and classy, Samsung still deserves applause for the S2. The new smartwatch is definitely stylish, and it actually goes in a different direction when talking user experience, thanks to that rotating bezel and the two distinct buttons on the right hand side. The top one — alike a power button — can be used to navigate back home, while the smaller piece on the bottom works like an Android device's back button. In comparison, the LG Watch Urbane has no rotating bezel, and makes do with a pronounced, digital crown button on the right used mostly to wake and sleep the screen.

Display

While the LG Watch Urbane runs on Android Wear, Samsung continues to develop its own Tizen operating system for its wearables. The Gear S2 runs a visually unique, fully fitted UI, which runs smooth and synergizes with the rotating bezel perfectly.

In terms of apps, the Wear platform is probably the one which will be favored by developers for quite some time. The Gear S2 will still, however, will have more than 1,000 apps available for it at launch, according to Samsung. Additionally, for out-of-the-box experience, especially when synced to a Samsung handset, we find the Gear S2 to be the more software-rich product, while Wear is still in a bit of a skeleton stage.

Now, at the time of writing this, an Android Wear sync app has already become available in the iOS App Store. The Gear S2 was hinted to be available for platforms other than Android, b