IFA is taking place in Berlin this week, and everyone is showing off their new consumer electronic devices. The pre-show rumors led us to believe that this year was going to be all about smart watches, and Samsung didn’t disappoint.
During Samsung’s press conference, the company announced its foray into the smart watch market – the Galaxy Gear. It’s a smart watch with a 1.63-inch display powered by an 800MHz CPU. It sports 4GB of internal memory and 512MB of RAM. It connects to Galaxy devices, including smartphones and tablets, via Bluetooth and uses the BLE standard to ensure that it doesn’t drain your smartphone’s battery.
“Samsung’s ongoing smart device innovation leadership reflects our commitment to listen to our consumers, who want their daily lives to be easier and more enjoyable. Samsung GALAXY Gear benefits consumers by integrating smart device technology even deeper into their everyday lives, and bridges the gap between the mobile device and fashion worlds to create truly wearable technology,” said JK Shin, CEO and President of IT & Mobile Division, Samsung Electronics.
So, what can the Galaxy Gear do? Surprisingly, quite a lot. For starters, it will notify you of any incoming calls, texts or emails, and then let you either accept or ignore the message. When you accept, the message will be automatically opened on your smartphone for you to see.
Besides receiving notifications of incoming calls, the Galaxy Gear can also be used to make phone calls with its built-in voice recognition. You just have to speak the name of the person you want to call and the Galaxy Gear will handle the rest. Just don’t be too surprised when people look at you weirdly for talking into your wrist.
The above features are what you would expect from a smart watch, but Samsung does have a surprise up its sleeve with its Memographer function. Memographer uses the built-in 1.9 MP camera on the device to record both photos and videos right from your wrist. It can also record sound and save them to Galaxy devices with Voice Memo.
Samsung says the Galaxy Gear will be available worldwide in a variety of colors on September 25. It won’t be making its way to the U.S., however, until October and it will sport a $300 price tag.
[Image: Samsung]