The new watches which takes it right up to the Apple Watch are set to go on sale in Australia shortly however pricing has not been announced.
The devices will come in two flavours, the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 Classic.
“Classic” is not a reference to previous models. Instead, it means the smartwatch will appeal to those who prefer more traditional watch design, while the Gear S2 will appeal to those looking for something a little sleeker. The Gear S2 will be a 42mm device (also the size of the larger Apple Watch), and the Classic will be 39mm, just a millimetre larger than Apple’s 38mm Apple Watch.
However, we now also know that, at 11.4mm thick, even the pure Gear S2 model will be slightly thicker than the Apple Watch (11.5mm). It will also differ in other, more positive ways.
According to Samsung, The Gear S2 will feature a 1.2-inch circular screen with 360 x 360 pixel (320 ppi) resolution. The Apple Watch, by contrast, tops out at 390 x 312 and 302 ppi (for the 42mm model).
Samsung is also promising an impressive two to three days of battery life. Samsung is also promising an impressive two to three days of battery life. Apple promises 18 hours for the Apple Watch, though I have seen in excess of 24 hours.
That better battery life may be attributable to Samsung’s choice of wearable operating system. Even though the Gear line originally launched on Android Wear, Samsung has been preferring its own Tizen to the Google wearable OS for a while now.
The new devices are set to be shown at the IFA show in Berlin later this week.
Apple Inc. sold 3.6 million watches in the second quarter, making it the top provider of smart wearable devices after just one quarter of sales, market research firm IDC said in a report last week.
While Samsung didn’t release any apps for the Gear S2, the new watch will allow for mobile payments, smart car keys and remote control of home devices, the South Korean company said in a statement.
Fitbit dominates the basic wearables market with 4.4 million units sold in the second quarter, according to IDC. Basic wearables differ from smart wearables in that they don’t run third-party applications. Other companies making fitness wearables include Garmin and Jawbone.
IDC estimates that the smart-devices sector will grow to 89 million units in 2019 from 33 million this year, surpassing sales of basic wearables, which are forecast to increase to 66 million units in 2019 from 39 million this year.
The new Samsung watch features a 1.2-inch circular screen with a thickness of 11.4 millimetres. It will include “at-a-glance” notifications for calendars, e-mail and news and enables users to send text messages from their wrists.
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