Samsung’s conference yesterday was a big one, even though it was somewhat overshadowed by announcements from Google, Microsoft and Apple earlier in the day. In this three-part series, we’ll have a look at the three major products to be announced, starting with Samsung’s new smartwatch – the Samsung Galaxy Gear.
Like the Sony SmartWatch 2, the Gear has a square colour display. Samsung’s watch is Super AMOLED, and is 1.63″ across the diagonal at a resolution of 320 x 320. As you’d expect, the smartwatch can display a number of attractive watch faces, but can also run its own apps. There are 70 apps made presently, with more to come in the future – you can choose from MyFitnessPal, Path, Pocket, RunKeeper, TripIt and plenty more. These are loaded onto the watch using that Bluetooth connection and a Galaxy Gear Manager app on your Galaxy device.
The Gear is a new take on the smartwatch ideal, with a massive boost to functionality at the expense of longevity. That means that the Gear is capable of much more than a Pebble or a Sony SmartWatch 2, but needs charging each night with your phone or tablet – it’ll only last about ten hours.
The Galaxy Gear has a integrated 1.9 megapixel camera on the strap, a speaker in the buckle and two microphones. That means you can take pictures, record 720p movies and use it as a hands-free device, although early reports have indicated that you’d need to be in a pretty quiet room for the speaker to be easily heard.
The Galaxy Gear isn’t a standalone phone though – for calls and most other information, you’ll need to be connected to a Samsung Galaxy device over Bluetooth. The Gear will be compatible on launch with the Note 3 and Note 10.1 (2014 Edition), but software updates that will add compatibility to the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 are on the way.
The Gear is available in about half a dozen colours. It’ll ship globally in late September (for an unnanounced price), and will hit the United States in October for around $300 (£200).
Are you planning to pick one up if it gets good reviews? Let us know in the comments below!
Image credit: The Verge.