Samsung Confirms Smartwatch Announcement for Sept. 4

We've been hearing rumors about the Samsung Galaxy Gear for months but it looks like Samsung is finally ready to talk about its smartwatch plans for itself. The company has confirmed reports that it will unveil a smartwatch device on September 4. Speaking to the Korea Times, Lee Young-hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said that the device will use a "non-flexible display" and will be called Galaxy Gear.

Lee described the Galaxy Gear as a new wearable concept device that will "enhance and enrich the current smart mobile experience in many ways."  Samsung says it is confident that the Gear will 'add meaningful momentum to the mobile industry' and lead a new trend in smart mobile communications. However, Lee's referral to the Gear as a 'concept device' could mean that this smartwatch won't ever make it to market. It's also possible that Samsung will follow in Google's footsteps and offer only a limited number of Galaxy Gear smartwatches. Previous rumors mentioned Samsung selling the Galaxy Gear in a pop-up store in Times Square.

Rumored specs for the Galaxy Gear list Samsung's own Exynos 4212 SoC with two Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz and four Mali-400 MP4 GPU cores clocked at 400 MHz, a 2.5-inch screen with a 320 x 320 resolution, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, a built-in accelerometer, and Android Jelly Bean.

Samsung also told the Korea Times that it will introduce the newest Galaxy Note, the Galaxy Note 3, at this September 4 IFA event as well. The Note 3 is rumored to pack a huge 5.7 inch 1080p AMOLED screen, a 13MP camera, 3 GB of RAM and Android 4.3.

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Jane McEntegart works in marketing communications at Intel and was previously Manager of Content Marketing at ASUS North America. Before that, she worked for more than seven years at Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware, holding such roles as Contributing Editor and Senior News Editor and writing about everything from smartphones to tablets and games consoles.