Samsung has produced a lot of smartwatches over the past few years, but last year’s Gear S2 has been one of the most well-received to date. So it’s no surprise that the new Gear S3 takes a lot of design cues from its predecessor.
The Samsung Gear S3 has a round touchscreen display and a circular bezel that rotates, giving you another way to interact with apps.
The Gear S3 will be available soon in two styles: a Gear S3 frontier with a rugged, outdoor look and the Gear S3 classic with a smoother, more minimalist design. Both feature IP68 water resistance, built-in GPS, and optional support for 4G LTE and mobile payments.
The Gear S3 features a 1.3 inch, 360 x 360 pixel always-on, full color Super AMOLED display and Corning’s new Gorilla Glass SR+ scratch-resistant glass cover.
It has a 22mm standard watch band and the watch measures 46mm (1.8″) x 49mm (1.9″) x 12.9mm (0.5″). The Gear S3 frontier weighs about 62 grams (2.2 ounces) without the band, while the classic is 57 grams (2 ounces).
Both watches feature 380 mAh batteries with wireless charging support, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and dual-core 1 GHz processors.
Samsung says the new watches don’t replace the Gear S2 and Gear S2 classic in the company’s lineup. But the new models feature refined designs, slightly larger displays, bigger batteries, GPS, and about 25 percent more RAM.
The Gear S3 can also support mobile payments, even when you don’t have a phone nearby, assuming you’ve got a model with LTE support.
The new Gear S3 also runs a slightly newer version of Samsung’s smartwatch operating system: the Tizen-based wearable platform 2.3.2, vs 2.3.1 for the Gear S2.
