The 3G-enabled smartwatch will be available from a wide range of carriers and let you place and receive calls while on-the-go.
The Gear S wearable will launch next week in the US, Samsung has confirmed.
Samsung
Samsung's
Gear S smartwatch, which lets you to make calls, receive notifications
and check emails when not tethered to a smartphone, is heading to US
store shelves next week.
Samsung on Thursday said the Gear S will
be available in the US starting on November 7. The smartwatch will be
available in both black and white, and all four major carriers --
AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile -- will carry it in
store. The Gear S will also be available at Samsung Experience Shops
found in Best Buy stores.
Unveiled in August, Samsung's Gear S features a 2-inch curved Super AMOLED screen and runs the Tizen mobile operating system, Samsung's alternative to Google's Android
mobile OS. The smartwatch also has a 1GHz dual-core processor and
features Samsung's S Health fitness app, as well as Nike+ Running.
The smartwatch is the
first in Samsung's lineup to include a 3G cellular radio, meaning it can
connect to a carrier to send and receive calls without needing a phone
nearby. That ability stands in stark contrast to just about every other
wearable on the market. The Apple Watch,
for example, needs to stay paired and connected to an iPhone for many
of its features to work. Smartwatches from LG, Motorola and others are
also meant to be paired with a phone.
AT&T will offer the Samsung Gear S starting next week
for $200 with a two-year contract. Sprint is making the device
available for no money down and 24 monthly payments of $16 through its
Easy Pay system. T-Mobile is offering a similar deal by allowing
customers to pick up the device for no money down and pay $14.58 per
month over a two-year period. Verizon has yet to announce its pricing.
Emerging markets are seeing huge growth in mid- and lower-tier
smartphones. ARM seeks to catch some of that trend with its new line of
Mali graphics-chip designs.
CEO Simon Segars wants ARM to grow in mobile graphics.
ARM
These
days, even cheap smartphones and tablets need to handle complex
graphics, with people using the devices for mobile gaming and
high-resolution video.
ARM, which designs the computing chips
in nearly every smartphone, hopes to seize on that trend, introducing
Monday a new suite of its Mali graphics-chip designs aimed at the low-
and mid-tier mobile markets. The Cambridge, UK-based company unveiled
three new graphics chips, a video processor and a display processor,
which it hopes to sell to the mobile, automotive and digital TV
segments. The new line will update its current mid-range mobile
offerings and complement its graphics designs in the high-end and very
low-end.
"The capabilities of these devices are ratcheting up
each year," said Steve Steele, an ARM senior product manager. "You can
see a mid-tier device doing what a super-premium product did two years
ago."
Since introducing its Mali graphics designs in 2006, ARM
has been able to quickly grow the business, with 400 million graphics
processing units selling in 2013, up from 150 million the year before.
Mali chip designs are now used by electronics giant Samsung and
Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek, and are in most tablets powered by Google's Android
operating system. The new suite of GPUs and processors could help the
company better compete against Qualcomm's Adreno chips, which have a
leading position in mobile graphics, and Imagination's PowerVR
technology, which is used in Apple's iPhones.
The new offerings could also be a way for ARM to try
capturing the rapid growth of mobile devices in emerging markets, where
low- and mid-tier phones and tablets are the top sellers. For 2014,
market researcher IDC predicted smartphone sales in emerging markets will surge 32 percent, while mature markets will grow by only 5 percent.
On Monday, ARM unveiled the Mali-T860, Mali-T830 and Mali-T820
graphics chips. The T860 will focus on the higher reaches of the
mid-tier market, supporting high-resolution 4K video and offering
improved energy efficiency from its past designs. The T830 and T820 will
provide faster performance than past comparable ARM graphics chips.
"From a strategic standpoint going forward," Canaccord Genuity analyst
Matthew Ramsay said, "[Mali] becomes a more important part of the
business," since GPUs -- once solely used for generating graphics -- are
increasingly being utilized for computing and calculation in devices.
As part of the announcement, ARM also unveiled a new video
processor, the Mali-V550, and display processor, the Mali-DP550. The
announcement was the first time ARM has unveiled a whole suite of
graphics technologies at once. ARM executive Steele said that's because
the company did more to integrate the technologies of the new GPUs and
two processors than in past generations, which should allow ARM's
customers to develop new devices faster than before.
The new Mali technology should appear in electronics starting in late 2015 and early 2016.
