Sony Smartwatch 2 SW2 Review

Launched in the tail end of 2013, the Sony Smartwatch 2 (SW2) is not Sony's most recent wearable, but it's the last in Sony's line of Smartwatches running their own OS. The SW2 is a relatively pretty Smartwatch with a fair few bugs that keeps it from being great.

Scratchy scratch number one

Utilising an aluminium frame, a "scratch resistant" glass  and a metal strap the SW2 has all the pieces of the puzzle on paper to make it a gorgeous piece of hardware, unfortunately Sony got to the last hurdle and stumbled, they used capacitive navigation buttons which mimic Android's old style ones, before Android 4.0 ICS, the power button on the side was as mushy as all heck and lastly, the scratch proof glass isn't all that scratch proof. The Aluminium frame is anodised black, and chamferred  on the top edges, and just like every device that has ever been chamferred and polished, it scratches and dings so quickly I've forgotten what mine looks like without them.

Now i said that the SW2 uses capacitive buttons that mimic the old style of how android used to do
buttons, but actually, the entire OS feels like a low budget rip off of android mixed in with iOS, to unlock the watch you either press the button on the side to wake it and then press it again to go into the OS to actually do something, or you can press the button to wake it up and swipe up or down, once you're into the OS it's where the iOS comparison comes in, its just a grid of app icons, no folders (not that you'd want them on a screen this small)  the home screen per se is this, you can order the alphabetically, or by most used, with recent updates to the OS you were supposed to be able to set an order of icons of whatever you want via the Companion Android app, but i haven't gotten that to work just yet, and that sentence is one you're going to see a lot.

Looking more into the comparison's with android and iOS, there is a notification centre, you slide down from the top of the display whilst in the "homescreen" and you can see all your notifications and you can tap on them to see them, or you can swipe them away to dismiss them, and whilst this mirroring makes learning the watch easy, it's almost the same as using your phone, this interaction doesn't  work so great on such a small screen, a 1.6" Transflective LCD screen, it's tiny, the homescreen is 6 icons, 3 across and 2 rows of icons, in the settings menu there is 3 options visible at a time, there is a lot of scrolling and/or a lot of squinting involved. Although this looks a lot like Android, this isn't, at all, it's a java based OS that Sony has developed, and it just shows you how optimisation and the right components can help, Android wear watches use batteries that are between 2x and 3x the size of this one (140mAh) and much more powerful Cortex A series SoCs (Cortex A7 Snapdragon 400) compared to the Cortex M series microprocessor of the SW2, yet they get a day, maybe 2 days if you're lucky and eek it out, the SW2 can easily get 4 days of battery from a charge, which is insane, it's got a battery half or a third the size, but that lasts twice or 4 times as long, I've got to give Sony props where props are due, they didn't go the black and white route like Pebble , but they still manage to get nearly as long a battery as them guys, and I cant complain about it,

relax, that's paint not anything nasty like mould

The Screen of the SW2 is worth mentioning just because its nifty, it's not got great colour reproduction, it's actually pretty washed out, and at 220x176 at 1.6" its noticeably pixelated, even to my crummy eyes, but, the Transflective LCD is actually usable outside without a back light, I'm not quite sure how the technology works, but it definitely works, and i really think that helps make the battery last longer, if it doesn't have to turn the back light on to show me the time it saves battery, and if i only want to see the time, i don't need to waste a chunk of battery by turning the screen on or using motion launch gestures like most Android Wear watches. Again, like most if not all Android ear watches the SW2 uses standard watch straps, but at 24mm watch bands they're pretty wide, And lastly for the positives, it uses MicroUSB for charging and it's waterproof, using microUSB and having a small 140mAh battery this thing charges in no time, using a wall plug its fully charged in what feels like 20 minutes, and via a battery pack I'd say it's only a bit longer at 25 minutes, and the waterproofing, whilst I'm not throwing my watch into a lake to test it, i don't take it off when i wash my hands  and when it rains I'm not worried about it getting damaged, if anything I'm more worried about the leather strap i added on than the watch, it's able to take a beating and a soaking.

this flap is near impossible to get open without nails though

Now we get on to the not so positive aspects of the SW2, mainly the OS, applications and bugs, lots and lots of bugs. The SW2 is very limited out of the box, from the watch itself you can just browse really, control is mainly done via the companion app on the phone, and unfortunately for the SW2, the app is terrible, it's slow, clunky, no matter what device i tried it on it dropped frames and just didn't work that well, from the app you can manage your apps or as Sony calls them ,extensions, you can create custom watch faces, reorganise them and set up to 3 watch faces to cycle through on the watch at your will, again, unfortunately the app freezes often, and sometimes forgets the custom watch faces, causing me to have to remake mine, it isn't too much hassle, but its more hassle than it should be.  The Extensions is where it gets annoying, Sony's first party extensions are pretty paltry, they have a messaging app, twitter app, Facebook app, an Instagram viewer and some, none are exceptional, they all just work, none of them are great, the twitter app and facebook apps for example can be set to push you updates at a quickest time of 15 minutes, with no option of push, depending on your usage, having @Replies and DMs pushed to you at 15 minute intervals might be good or bad for you, if (like me) you prefer to be notified as soon as something happens, the 15 minute intervals can be annoying as all hell. Another problem with the apps is that you can restrict users that come through on the watch, but as you can guess, it doesn't quite work as expected, and by that ,i mean it barely works at all, it often just lets everyone through or no one through.

So the Companion app sucks, and the apps suck, but the OS has got to be pretty solid after being out for nearly 18 months? Nope. couldn't be more wrong, the watch routinely freezes and resets itself, forcing me to reconnect it to my phone in the blue tooth settings,  it forgets the order of my apps, it forgets my custom watch faces and it forgets when I've turned the vibration settings (hangouts gets an intense vibration, gmail gets medium for example) and sometimes it just freezes, the back light will go off and it'll go into the "watch face mode" where it turns off the back light and doesn't accept touch response and trying to power cycle the watch is near impossible, holing the power button in an attempt to cycle it or force a shut down does nothing ,and i ended up waiting for it to reboot itself, one time even waiting nearly an hour with a then useless hunk of metal,glass and leather on my wrist. and even then, the Bluetooth connection isn't that great, constantly disconnecting from my Moto G and Nexus 4 multiple times per day, to the point where i had to stop using Motorola's trusted bluetooth feature, because i was having to enter the password because the watch wouldn't stay connected often enough, forcing a reboot of the watch or if i was lucky a Bluetooth reboot. In my mind i was saying the immortal words said by Chris O'Dowd in the IT Crowd

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

More often than not, it actually fixed the problem.

But after all this, in good conscience i cant recommend anyone buy this watch, it isn't as simple as the pebble, which just mirrors every notification from your watch and lets you turn off the ones you don't want, it isn't as fully featured as Android wear with an always listening mic and proper apps, it lies in this weird middle ground where it lasts forever, but apart from basic things like messages and call notifications (actually,even answering a call requires a Sony device, on any other device it just shows a reject and a reject but send a message button) every thing else has to be downloaded, and when Sony puts so little effort into making great and worthwhile apps, why should third party developers? for example there is no Hangouts app made by Sony, and all the third party ones are pretty terrible, but for someone who uses it as much as i do, i have to live with a terrible app that in turn for using accessibility settings, disables the "Okay Google" Hot word from the homescreen. If Sony doesn't seem to care, why should Third party devs?

Given the choice between this and the SW3, I'd incredibly reluctantly take the SW3 over this, Android wear works better than this, it has a better screen, but more importantly, Android Wear is better than Sony's Smartwatch OS, and is more than likely going to get more support, from both Google and Third party developers, the downsides of the SW3 is that it is horrifically ugly, it doesn't use standard watch bands so you have to use the nasty silicone straps, and the battery lasts about a day and a half, maybe 2 days if you're unlucky.

The SW2 could have been a great Smartwatch, but it wasn't, it was just okay, it cost too much at launch, and even if someone managed to get it at the price that i did (£100 with the black metal strap) i would recommend against it, there are too many great products now, there is the Moto 360, the LG G Watch R, the Pebble Steel, the Asus ZenWatch and more, i wont stop wearing this until i get a new smartwatch, but i still be sad to see this industrial design go.