(SVoice)
My one and only hope is that the genius community of Android developers and software tweakers can find a way to hack this smartwatch an add in Google's voice search and voice commands feature. C'mon! It's a GOOGLE product! Ah, Samsung. Why you gotta be this way.
As users start to hit the forums and reviews start to come out, we'll see the overall consensus is that the Samsung Gear S2 is a fantastic smartwatch, minus a few software annoyances or limitations. One can hope that it'll be fixed in a future update, but I'd bet small "bugs" might get fixed before you ever see a real update with added features. Perhaps small new features like the ability for the watch to be set for right or left handed users since the screen already rotates on the dock, might be nice for someone like me who wears my watch on my right wrist, but even for this, I won't hold my breath. Much like Sony's popular mirrorless lineup of cameras, you're more likely to see a whole new watch before you ever see updates and new features ADDED to the current watch. Not a bad business model really, but it can be disappointing. Many gripes of early users will be eased as they get to know the watch better, but some issues will never get better and one feature above all will be what gets users returning their watches in under 14 days despite what otherwise is a fantastic step in the right direction for Samsung smartwatch design with a genius, trend-setting feature in the rotating bezel. This one feature is Samsung's own S-Voice. Samsung had the foresight to implement voice actions and voice responses into their watches as the reality of typing on these little screens proves to be very difficult. Unfortunately SVoice is so thoroughly integrated into so many aspects of this watch that the further you dig, and the more you try to use a smartwatch instead of a smartphone in your daily life, the more you'll realize that subbing in any other alternative would be amazing, but it's also very unlikely.
While certainly a better implementation than it is on their Samsung phones, you'd be hard pressed to find a single user who would say it's anywhere close to as fast or as accurate as Google Voice Commands and Voice Searches. Look at any number of forum threads and user reviews, and you'll see that "SVoice is disappointing" is the common "we stand united" sentiment. Not to say the watch is a failure. It's not at all, in fact, it's almost the opposite. But it's one of those things that when people ask you "hey is that an apple watch?" (yes, even though it's round, people will still ask that) you'll be excited to say that it's not, and that in a lot of ways it's a lot better...well, except for one thing. And that's sad. No one goes out and spends $300-$400 on a watch unless they really think it's gonna be awesome. I like many others believe that this watch checked so many "hell yeah" and "finally" boxes on the must have list for smartwatches...it's just unfortunate that a feature - which is arguably more useful on a smartwatch where typing just isn't practical compared to typing on a smartphone - is so disappointing.
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