One well-kept secret of the new Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch is one that is bound to make a lot of Android enthusiasts happy: The Gear S2 will work with non-Samsung smartphones.
Consider that again: Samsung is opening its ecosystem a bit.
There's a caveat, of course. You'll need a phone with Android 4.4 or higher — that comprises 57 percent of current devices as of Aug. 3 — and you'll need a phone that has at least 1.5 gigabytes of RAM.
Beyond that, expect to use a manager app, of course. (Hopefully downloadable from Google Play.) And there might well be a few hiccups, Samsung tells us. Samsung Pay is out for obvious reasons, and you may run into the occasional feature that simply doesn't work right because of differing APIs. (The phone dialer was one specifically mentioned.)
This is great news for folks who don't want to be locked into Samsung's ecosystem. We'll just have to wait and see how well it works.
