IFA 2013 begins in Berlin on the sixth of September, and wraps up five days later on the eleventh. We’re all very excited about what we may see over the course of the week, but something I’m personally pumped for is Samsung’s Galaxy Gear– a smart watch that is going to add to the list of wearable gadgets which have been pushed to the public over the past few years. The Korean tech giant is hosting a couple of events, one in Berlin and one in New York, both of which are taking place two days prior to the beginning of IFA.
Now, GigaOM journalist Om Malik has spoken about what he believes to be the Galaxy Gear’s hardware profile. Citing unnamed sources, his report lists details about several key components, including:
~ CPU: Malik has stated that the Galaxy Gear will ship with Samsung’s own Exynos 4212, dual-core chip. This unit is said to be clocked at 1.5GHz.
~ Display and Operating System: A 2.5″, 320×320 panel built with an OLED assembly is going to provide users with a way to interact with the (supposed) provided Android 4.2 build. It is said that this panel will, of course, support touch input.
~ Camera: While Malik did not list any specific details relating to this particular component, he did state that the Galaxy Gear has been manufactured to house a camera inside the device’s wrist strap.
~ Audio: In addition to a small camera, we can expect to find a pair of speakers tucked in around the clasp of the Galaxy Gear.
~ Communications: Malik reports that the Galaxy Gear will launch with an array of communications-related hardware. This includes NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and an accelerometer — which will supposedly allow the Gear’s display to toggle between ‘on’ and ‘off’ states, depending on whether the user has lifted the watch towards their face.
~ Software: This is where things get even more interesting. The Galaxy Gear is reportedly set to support Facebook and Twitter integration at launch, along with a companion application that users will install on their smartphone– to provide device management utilities, and what not. It appears that this functionality is limited to Samsung-manufactured devices, though. As for additional applications, Samsung is set to launch an entirely new application ecosystem. Moving away from the hugely popular Play Store, Galaxy Gear owners can expect to interact with an application store dedicated to providing Gear users with software tailored to their device.
While all of these details are extremely juicy, they are still unconfirmed. Therefore, it appears that we’ll just have to wait until we hear from Samsung itself. Believe us, we’ll be watching…
Are you excited about the launch of the Galaxy Gear? Are you a fan of smart watches, at all? Let us know your thoughts…
