Samsung Confirms Smartwatch Announcement for Sept. 4

By Jane McEntegart
published

Samsung's smartwatch will break cover on September 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

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.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Parsian
    But will it come with holographic display? i so wish ... :D
    Reply
  • g00fysmiley
    note 3 and galaxy gear... the most likely replacments for my samsung galaxy nexus and sony smart watch being announced and possibly released together :) happy day,sept 4th can't get here soon enough
    Reply
  • pbrigido
    I'm on the fence with smartwatches. If I would have to charge my watch as often as I charge my phone, I'm not too sure I would purchase one.
    Reply
  • gm0n3y
    I can't figure out why a 'smart watch' would be useful. I guess it means that you don't have to take your phone out of your pocket to have access to a limited set of functions, but having to wear a watch seems like more of a burden than having to take my phone out of my pocket. And if I need to answer a call I can't use the watch either. There must be some use case that I'm not thinking of. I guess as a shiny fashion accessory it makes sense. Am I missing something?
    Reply
  • joaompp
    @ gm0n3y
    You can answer calls, which would be extremely useful if you have a blue tooth headset on, especially when you are engaged in a task that makes it inconvenient to pull out your phone
    Reply
  • robochump
    I will only get a smart watch if its not like the 80s version of a calc watch and feel like a total nerd wearing one. Its not easy to come up with the next big thing but like the iPad it had plenty of doubters and see how that turned out.
    Reply
  • house70
    SONY, Pebble, now Samsung... and a few others...
    I am not buying one, but the more, the merrier. I'll keep my IWC.
    Reply
  • okibrian
    @sherrib1ryan

    Your sister-in-law and her friend are hookers. No take your spam and hookers and get the hell out of here.
    Reply
  • rwinches
    I can't help it.
    Can it play Crysis 3?
    Truly, a lot of people that wear watches, pay big bucks for them and switch them to match what they are doing or wearing.
    These watches need to come in a wide array of designs and styles to be widely excepted. So some alliances with quality designers is in order. Maybe have it look like a nice watch until a notification or call comes in then the transparent crystal switches to a status screen and the info side scrolls.
    Reply