Ahead of the IFA gadget festival here in Berlin, Samsung showed off its Gear S3 smartwatch, which builds upon the easy-to-use, watch-like features that first appeared past year in the Gear S2, such as a round watch face that’s controlled by rotating a bezel, but tries to make it look more like a regular watch. After last year’s solid effort in the Gear S2, this might actually be a watch worth getting excited about. The Gear S3 is set to arrive any minute now, precisely a year after the Gear S2 became official. App availability is still a concern, and we’ll be paying close attention to see if Samsung manages to narrow the gap with Android Wear, Apple, and Pebble when the Gear S3 is released. We all have been waited for the iOS support for Samsung’s wearable devices including Gear S2 and finally the Korean giant has rolled out the beta program for iOS which is restricted to its homeland for now.
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It’s also thought to pack in more sensors, and come with a larger display than the previous 1.2-inch screen.
The Samsung Gear S3 Frontier is aimed at more active wearers, with a rugged design and built-in LTE mobile network connectivity and Global Positioning System, which allows it to continue functioning as a smartwatch even when it’s not connected to a smartphone. It’s basically a blown up version of the Gear S2 with a bit more tech inside, which should be good news for anyone who wants a big smartwatch. That means it should look a lot better while sitting idly on your wrist than the S2, which would only display eight colors when it wasn’t actively in use. (Yes, even on the Gear S3 without cellular.) The watch will replenish those tokens the next time you sync up. On top of NFC for mobile payments, Samsung is also including MST this time around, so that the watch can be used at older swipe-only terminals.
Smartwatches are no longer niche gadgets aimed at early adopters and enthusiasts, thanks in part to devices made by Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung.
Where Samsung goes, we all go.
The upcoming IFA 2016 event in Berlin, Germany is touted to be the European continent’s major technical platform provider. A new safety feature will also let Gear S3 owners get in touch with emergency services or a specified contact by triple tapping a button on the watch.
Samsung Gear S3 United Kingdom release date: When is the Gear S3 coming out?
The Gear S3 isn’t the first smartwatch to come with features that expand what the watch can do when your phone isn’t nearby.
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Now, Samsung (SSNLF) is branching out with three outdoors-friendly versions of the S3: the Classic, and the Frontier, which comes in two choices – an LTE connected model and standard Bluetooth connection only model. That’s because they’re not created to perform certain tasks as well as our phones can, like having a verbal conversation or reading an e-book. On the right side, there’s a Back button in the two o’clock position and a Home button at four o’clock, just like on the Gear S2.
