Unfortunately there seems to be a major glitch or feature killer from either Samsung or AT&T. The email notification does function, however, you cannot reply to emails from the watch. This seems to be a known issue. I replaced the watch three times already and all of them cannot reply to emails. xda Developer forum has a slew of complaints relayed to the att version. No one can activate this feature. Only reply to texts works.

Nice review.
"Inexplicably, S Voice took one huge step back. On older Gears, you could set reminders and add calendar events from S Voice...I have no idea why Samsung would take this away. It's a big strike against the Gear S... For many shoppers, this could be a deal-breaker."
Indeed, this is a deal breaker. Worse, no info on future updates.
In addition as you've highlighted it requires a Samsung phone to install apps. I have one but its running 4.1. Getting a Gear S with the requirement to get a Samsung phone, is like getting a Riva but requiring the Amoco Cadiz tanker to get it up and running. Of course Google, Apple, Samsung all do it in different ways trying to make you become a bigger financial asset for them.

Signing up for a separate data plan is the nail in the coffin for this watch.

I was actually able to get it to work with an LG L90 & an iPhone

Destini, please explain...
Can you confirm what features work with iOS? This is the best smart watch on the market right now (IMO), but there's no way in hell I'm leaving the Apple ecosystem for the Google/Samsung ecosystem.

Worse yet, if you read the manual, the watch will overheat and drop calls if you talk for too long. You have to wait until it cools down before using it again.

the asthetics looks good, but so do those on a normal mechanical watch. let the tech dweebs buy these 10 generations of watches and fix the bugs in functionality .
when it's ready by 2020, by the time enough smart watches have failed and companies gone out of business, maybe i'll consider wearing one.

@Mike Marine You can reply back. But you cannot compose brand new email.

I have a note 3 4.4.2 ATT version and you cannot reply back to even the stock emails. It seems to work on kit 4.4.4 with the new stock email app version. This is being tested.
XDA developers has 17 pages and climbing all about this. I exchanged two watches already and on my third and all of them do not have reply only "show on device" or "dismiss"

I reckon they should skip the evolutionary steps get to straight too SciFi and give us a forearm sized gadget... that does away with the phone and phablet and laptop and the PC... then in a couple years we want laser beams and holograms! :)