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Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Prototype Leaks Ahead of IFA Reveal

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A prototype of Samsung’s rumored Galaxy Gear smartwatch has leaked into the ether, revealing the design and a few specifications. The smartwatch is reported to come with a 3-inch display, built-in speakers for music, notifications, etc., WiFi, a microphone, NFC capabilities, and a 4-megapixel camera that will be embedded into the smartwatch’s wrist strap.

The leak was revealed by VentureBeat, which describes the smartwatch as “chunky,” thanks to the device’s squared-off display with the thick bezels. It essentially looks like a shrunken down version of the company’s Galaxy S line of smartphones, thanks to it’s overall rectangular shape with the rounded corners.

Other features that were revealed include S Voice functionality, pre-loaded apps for social media and health tracking (heart-rate monitor and pedometer built-in), an “easy-to-use swipe function” to access various apps, and the obvious integration with other Galaxy devices, including both smartphones and tablets from Samsung.

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The smartwatch is also said to come with a 10-hour battery life, which is standard for most smartphones and tablets, but a little disappointing to see in a smartwatch. It’ll obviously vary per user and how much its used throughout the day, but one would hope that the battery could last all day and into the evening without a hitch. Nonetheless, it seems like the Galaxy Gear will have a lot more features than the current smartwatch king, the Pebble, although even that turned out to be a little disappointing.

It’s noted that Samsung prototypes usually undergo a lot of changes before they’re set for mass production, so it’s possible the design you’re seeing now may not be exactly what you’ll see when Samsung eventually unveils the device, hopefully at IFA this week during the company’s September 4 event.

Previously, we’ve heard that the Galaxy Gear smartwatch will come with an 2.5-inch OLED display (contrary to today’s leak) with a 320×320 resolution, as well as a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and either 6GB or 8GB of internal storage. With the big focus on fitness and health tracking, we can expect all the bells and whistles, including an accelerometer for detecting motion, and NFC and Bluetooth to sync fitness data with your smartphone.

While the Galaxy Gear may be one of a kind when it’s announced this week, it’ll eventually get some heavy competition from other big players in the industry, including both Apple and Google, which are planning smartwatches of their own, the former of which we could see being unveiled later this fall as the iWatch. As for Google, we haven’t heard much about its smartwatch plans recently, other than that it just recently purchased WIMM, a company that focuses on developing smartwatch platforms.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. John

    09/02/2013 at 8:08 am

    Ugly, I’ll just wait for the apple version.

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