Today at IFA, was Samsung’s turn to take to the stage. However, as the company had already announced and unveiled their latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+, today’s event was much more based around the other things Samsung are working on, more specifically, the Internet of Things they are working on. That said, their highly rumored and speculated upon next smartwatch, Gear S2 was also in attendance. Although, thanks to Samsung officially announcing the Gear S2 (and the Gear S2 Classic) a few days prior to the start of IFA, this was also not as impacting as it would have been otherwise.
That said, details are still coming through with what to expect from the Gear S2 thanks to today’s announcement. For instance, this morning saw indications of price when the device does drop in Europe. Now some more details are coming though in regards to Samsung Pay. It is no secret that Samsung was planning on introducing Samsung Pay onto their next smartwatch, as the watch does come with NFC and Samsung Pay is going to be something the company are pushing forward with. Although details of when Samsung Pay on the Gear S2 would go live, had yet to be confirmed.
It now seems that confirmation is coming through and Samsung Pay will be live on the Gear S2 (and S2 Classic) starting from November. It had been already confirmed that in spite of the Gear S2 running on Tizen it will work fine with non-Samsung Android devices. However, it is worth pointing out that Samsung Pay does not work on non-Samsung devices. Therefore, even with the Gear S2 offering the capability to use Samsung Pay, you will only be able to take advantage of the feature if using a Samsung device with the Samsung Pay app also installed. For those hoping to pick up the Gear S2 or Gear S2 Classic, then it seems October is the earliest the latest Smartwatch from Samsung will become available to buy. So even then, you will have to wait a month or so for Samsung Pay to become active and usable.