Remember when we were kids and had a big craze about the digital watches? We used to plead to our parents to buy us one. Ah! Those nostalgic days. But now time has taken a leap and our good old digital watches are replaced by smartwatches with a hefty price tag. Just as many smartphone companies, Samsung too has ever been involved in making smartwatches. Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch alongwith its new flagship, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, on August 9.
This time around, Samsung has abandoned the Gear S branding and rebranded its smartwatch series with Galaxy Watch series. Samsung introduced the Galaxy Gear series in the wearable computing devices in 2013. The first device in the series was Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch itself, inspired by the Galaxy smartphone and tablet range. Initially, the Galaxy Gear ran on Android but was later upgraded to Samsung’s own Tizen OS for wearables. To recall, it launched the Samsung Gear Sport smartwatch back in November 2017 at a price tag of Rs 22,990 in India, which now couples with Samsung Galaxy Note 9 at a price of Rs 4,999.
The new Samsung Galaxy Watch will be available in two sizes – 42mm and 46mm. Both the size variants will sport different battery capacities, dial sizes and even pixel resolutions. The Galaxy Watch offers support for the Wireless Charger Duo which can simultaneously charge up the watch along with the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. The Galaxy Watch has not yet been launched in India but is expected to be priced somewhere between Rs 20,000 to Rs 24,000, as the pricing of 42mm variant starts at USD 329.99 (around Rs 23,000) while the 46mm variant starts at USD 349.99 (around Rs 24,500).
Thinking about how the watch will look on your hand? Well, the 42mm variant flaunts Midnight Black or Rose Gold casing and interchangeable straps with Onyx Black, Terracota Red, Lunar Grey, Cosmo Purple, Lime Yellow, Pink Biege, Natural Brown or Cloud Grey colour options to choose from. On the other hand, the 46mm variant will only be available in Silver body colour option but with Deep Ocean Blue, Onyx Black and Basalt Grey coloured interchangeable straps.
It will go on sale in the US on August 24, and on August 31 in South Korea, whereas availability for other markets starts from September 14. These prices are for the Bluetooth variants, while LTE variant pricing is not yet available.
To go with the trend and technology, the Samsung Galaxy Watch will feature LTE or 4G connectivity. One of the USPs of the smartwatch is that the 46mm variant can last over 80 hours of moderate usage time on a single charge, while the 42mm variant is touted to last over 45 hours of usage time.
As per features, the Galaxy Watch will be able to monitor sleep and stress levels. The watch will also keep you fit with its 21 new indoor exercises with a total of 39 workouts to track.
Certified for durability by US military, the Galaxy Watch also comes with Corning Gorilla Glass DX+ protection and water resistance at 5 ATM. Both the size variants of the smartwatch run on dual-core Exynos 9110 processor from Samsung. The smartwatch will be available in regular Bluetooth-based variants, too, with 768MB of RAM, apart from the LTE-enabled variants that will feature 1.5GB RAM. However, all the variants will bear 4GB on-board storage.
The Galaxy Watch can be connected to smartphones using NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and 3G/LTE support. Smartphones running on Android 5.0 and later or iOS 9.0 and later can be connected wirelessly to the Galaxy Watch. The watches will support wireless charging, touted to provide enough battery to last a long time on a single charge.
