[Samsung Galaxy Gear] BarryH_GEG:
There are a bunch of people here to whom wearables are a toy or play thing. Others bought a Gear and have come to rely on it as a productivity tool. For the latter Tizen is a God send because of the pre-installed productivity app enhancements and greatly improved battery life. Personally, because I'm a productivity user, I'd rather use Tizen with no third-party apps than go back to Android for the few apps I appreciated and actually used. I get 100's of e-mails from multiple accounts a day in addition to an enormous amounts of SMS messages. The control Tizen provides over that onslaught makes Android seem like a "1.0" solution. So to those who use their Gear as a garage project and to impress their friends I guess Tizen vs. Android (null and/or stock) is a much different decision and discussion. And that's fine.

Again, as a productivity user, Android Wear is a non-starter for me. Like many productivity users I don't (can't) use Gmail which most Google Now features depend on. And Android Wear is a wrist-borne version of Google Now. The fact Gear Live isn't on any of Samsung's websites but is on Play makes it seem more like a "Play Edition" device than something Samsung's throwing their weight behind. It may be a half-hearted effort on Samsung's part to appease Google while they continue with their own wearables strategy which certainly looks like Tizen. Time will tell but we can say for sure Samsung's wearable support for Android (other than Android Wear) is most definitely dead.

I've played with Android Wear on a Gear Live and I'll share this article from Fortune released today. I've emphasized parts I tend to agree with. People should buy (or use) what makes them happy. For me, at least as it stands, that's Tizen on my Gear 1.

I’m looking at this watch [Gear 2 Neo] after my experiences with the LG G Watch and the Android Wear operating system. Samsung has developed the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo to use a variant of their Tizen operating system, and that means all the decisions in terms of UI, operation, and presentation belong to Samsung.

While Android Wear may provide a much richer graphical experience, of the two smartwatch operating systems Tizen’s smartwatch variant makes more sense to me and is more mature than the first round effort of Android Wear. While both systems are built around the notifications on your Android smartphone, the Gear 2 Neo is much less invasive. Where Android Wear pushes the notification to the front of the watch screen demanding action, the Gear 2 Neo’s Tizen powered software is more subtle, putting the notification under a ‘notifications’ shortcut icon that is a swipe away from the main clock screen.

This puts notifications in their place and while you do get a vibration on your wrist for incoming notifications with a full screen display, this will only stay on-screen until you dismiss it or the Gear 2 Neo display switches off. The next time the watch screen switches on you’ll find yourself at the main time display.

The notifications shown on the Gear 2 Neo screen will show you the same information that you get on your Android notification screen, and an on-screen option will allow you to open the notification on your smartphone. Alternatively a swipe down from the top of the bezel and into the screen will at as the ‘back’ button.

For me, the important differentiator between the Tizen powered Gear 2 Neo and the Android Wear powered Gear Live is that Samsung’s solution preserves a history of your notifications, organised by application. You can see the read and unread notifications on your watch, and be able to come back to any of them at a later date. This gives more options to manage notifications, allowing them to be checked and actioned at the point of arrival, or leave them for later, knowing they will still be available on the watch. I feel more in control with the Gear 2 Neo (and the Gear 2) compared to the Android Wear styled notifications.

Samsung’s smartwatch vision feels more like the app based Android experience than the Google Now powered cards approach of Android Wear. You have a main ‘homescreen’ which lets you choose from various watch faces; sliding this view to either side with your finger and you have screens which are populated with shortcuts to your choice of apps on the smartwatch; and an apps icon which opens up to reveal all the apps in the smartwatch. This app view, in a slightly confusing move, looks similar to the shortcuts screen. Maybe a slight change in colour for the stylised ‘line drawn’ icons would help differentiate the app screen from the shortcut screens?

These apps differentiate Samsung’s own smartwatch offerings from other choices, especially Android Wear.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspe...s-the-mainstream-smartwatch-for-the-summer/2/
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