Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung’s big Unpacked Episode 2 event is underway, and as expected, the company has used the venue to announce the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone. The Note is the original phablet, and the new version continues the tradition of big screen gadgets best-suited for big-handed people.

The new Galaxy Note 3 features a design with extremely slimmer bezels and sharper angles on its rounded edges, marking a slight departure from Galaxy device design language thus far. It’s thinner than its predecessor and lighter (168g), despite offering a larger screen at 5.7-inches. It also offers more battery life than the Galaxy Note 2, and there’s a new and improved S Pen, too. Plus it supports faster, and more “seamless LTE” with multi-band support.

The camera has 4K video recording capabilities with a new CRI LED flash that should improve low-light photography. Samsung claims nearly four more hours of battery life when playing back video, and performance in general during normal use should also extend battery by up to 40 percent over the previous generation.

Samsung was emphasizing craftsmanship with the Galaxy Note, which features a stitched leather rear cover (available in black, white and pink). It also has a metallic rim running around the edge, and there’s a flip wallet accessory available in 10 different colors that also features a larger S View window cover for checking messages, making calls and accessing more info at a glance without having to activate the whole display.

The new S Pen is designed to work with the larger screen. Samsung called it the “key” to unlocking Note features and power. This works via a number of new interface controls. There’s a dot on-screen that appears when you can activate “Air Command,” which is a tool wheel that provides quick access to memo, scrapbooking, screenwriting, and a finder search function. There’s also something Samsung calls “circle,” which uses a circle drawing gesture to capture content you want to save to your scrapbook, as called up via Air Command. Box is a way to multitask, that lets you do two things at once via essentially a picture-in-picture interface.

Samsung’s Knox mobile security feature, which is designed to help increase enterprise and consumer security via partitioned software for consumer and business use for BYOD device users. The Note 3 will ship September 25 in 149 countries around the world.

Samsung’s smartphone fortunes are the subject of major scrutiny at the moment, since the company is perceived as possibly having hit a ceiling in terms of growing its overall share of the market. The company is hosting a meeting with investors and analysts to discuss its long-term plans in the face of these fears, and the Note line drives quite a few sales, though not as many as the flagship Galaxy S4. Estimates for break-out sales of the Note 2 on its own are hard to place, but Samsung has in the past said it anticipated the device would pass 20 million units shipped.

Galaxy Note 3 specs:

• 151.2mmx79.2mmx8.3mm
• 5.7-inch SuperAMOLED 1080p display with 368 ppi pixel density
• 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, or 1.9GHz Samsung Exynos Octacore depending on market
• Android 4.3
• 13 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera
• 3GB RAM
• 32 or 64GB storage
• MicroSDXC card storage expansion
• Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11ac, LTE Category 4
• 3,200 mAh battery
• LED/IR combo

No information on Galaxy Note 3 availability just yet beyond the September 25 date, and the official Samsung press materials around the launch says only that it’ll make it out to all major U.S. carriers “later this year.”

Developing…

This week’s Galaxy Gear prototype leak didn’t leave much to the imagination. Samsung’s new wearable was expected to debut with a built-in camera, speakers and a relatively clunky design, all of which are indeed present on the device we’re meeting today. But we now have quite a bit more clarity when it comes to functionality and specifications — the rumored 3-inch display size and 4-megapixel camera resolution, for example, were incorrect. The Gear will instead ship with a 1.63-inch Super AMOLED panel with a resolution of 320 x 320. That strap-mounted camera, for its part, is designed to capture low-res shots and 10-second 720p videos, and includes a 1.9-megapixel BSI sensor and an auto-focus lens.

The big surprise here is third-party applications support — there will be a total of 70 partner programs at launch, including sharing apps like Evernote and Path, fitness companions like RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal, and a handful of other offerings, such as TripIt, Line, Vivino and even eBay. We’ll dive into software functionality a bit more in our hands-on, so for now, let’s talk compatibility and specs. We were caught a bit off guard by the wearable’s limited compatibility, though — at launch, it’ll only work with the Note 3 and Note 10.1, though some Galaxy S4 owners may be able to take advantage soon, after that device scores an update to Android 4.3. Assuming your handset is compatible, the Gear will serve as a companion device, enabling access to features like S Voice, Find My Device, a pedometer and third-party additions including those outlined above.

The device is powered by an 800MHz processor and a 315 mAh non-removable cell, which Samsung reps say should provide up to a day of “regular” use. There are two built-in mics (with noise cancellation support), a speaker, Bluetooth 4.0, an accelerometer and gyroscope, 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM. The Galaxy Gear will eventually ship, along with the Note 3, to more than 140 countries. Pricing and country-specific availability has yet to be confirmed, but some customers should expect to have it in hand (or on hand, rather) beginning September 25th. Sadly, customers in the US and Japan will have to wait until October to pick one up for $299.

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Filed under: Wearables, Samsung

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The good ship Galaxy Gear smartwatch is springing multiple leaks ahead of its official reveal this Wednesday, September 4, and there are even leaks about previous leaks vying for attention. That said, there’s a lot about the device we can reliably say we know at this point, although what the device looks like probably isn’t one of those things. Here’s a quick breakdown of the latest rumors about Samsung’s foray into wearable computing, for those of you keeping score at home.

Not Just A Shrunk-Down Galaxy S4

The Internet cried out in horror at leaks this past weekend that claimed to show the Galaxy Gear in the flesh on a person’s wrist, effectively taking the shape of a shrunk-down Galaxy phone that’s still looking might unwieldy when worn. But that’s apparently not what the shipping hardware does in fact look like, according to Om Malik, who appears to have solid sources providing lots of information about the upcoming device.

Malik wrote on GigaOM that Samsung will present a “different, more finished product” at an event taking place in Berlin ahead of the annual IFA consumer tech show, claiming the version leaked to VentureBeat was actually an early developer prototype. It isn’t uncommon for major smartphone OEMs to seed early hardware to developer partners to help them build software; BlackBerry’s BB10 development devices are perhaps the most public example in recent memory.

More Powerful Than Many Budget Smartphones

Rumored specs for the Galaxy Gear, according to both GigaOM’s sources and SamMobile’s, paint a picture of a device that has the guts of a decent mid-range phone, with a smaller display best-suited to a wrist-top computer form factor. In short, the Gear is said to offer:

• A Samsung Exynos 4212 dual-core 1.5GHz processor
• An AMR Mali-400 MP4 GPU (the same found in the Galaxy SII)
• 1GB of RAM
• 2.5-inch, 320×320 OLED display
• Bluetooth 4.0 Low-Energy
• Android 4.3 (likely because of included Bluetooth LE support)
• Accelerometer and other sensors
• Built-in camera and mic
• 24-hour batter with light user, 10 under more strenuous conditions

The device actually pretty closely resembles the Galaxy SII in terms of its internal specs, but has a slightly more powerful processor, which could give an idea of its range of software capabilities.

Modified Android OS (And Non-Samsung Hardware Support)

New details from GigaOM shed some additional light on what the OS experience of the Galaxy Gear will be like, contrary to appearances from the leaked VentureBeat screenshots. The Gear will run the latest version of Android, minus a software keyboard (logical enough) and with no native browser. Using apps on-device should require a Samsung device and a special Samsung-specific app store, but connection to the iPhone 5 and other Android devices is listed as a strong possibility for basic smartwatch functions. It sounds like it’s possible the device could offer a basic set of notifications for all devices, requiring Samsung smartphones for more advanced features and third-party software.

A Gear To Grind Your Gears?

In a piece commenting on Samsung’s vision for the smartwatch based on the VentureBeat image leaks, Chris Velazco said that Samsung appears to have added too much complexity into the smartwatch mix for the Gear to be genuinely useful. The new details seem to suggest a device that focuses on supplementing the experience of using a smartphone (with full-screen notifications, for instance) rather than trying to replicate or replace that experience. It still might seem an unnecessary layer for most consumers, but at least the most recent reports about its features and hardware make it seem a bit more likely to achieve relevance than would a shrunk-down phone strapped to someone’s wrist.

This year the folks at Samsung have decided to bring about their own developers conference, one made to show the world that they, too, are capable of pulling in masses of users like Apple or Google. This event will be held not at the Moscone Center, as those other two monster brands, but at the […]

We know it’s been trademarked and patented and hyped in general, but now we also have a tentative launch date for Samsung’s anticipated smartwatch. A report by Bloomberg, attributed to two unnamed sources, says the device — which we suspect may be called the “Galaxy Gear” — will be unveiled at IFA in Berlin on September 4th. Other details are scarce, beyond the watch reportedly being able to “make calls, surf the web and handle emails” using Android, but that sounds like plenty to be getting on with.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Bloomberg