Samsung designs a smart watch to replace smart phones: report

The new Samsung smart watch would not need to be tethered to a tablet or smart phone, reports allege. 

|
Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy Gear 2. Samsung is also reportedly prepping a voice-enabled smart-watch.

Samsung is reportedly working on a smart watch capable of making standalone voice calls. 

According to the English-language Korea Herald (hat tip to TechCrunch), the upcoming watch, which would initially be available only in Korea, would come equipped with a SIM card, much like a traditional phone. That SIM card would allow users to directly ring up buddies without first syncing the watch to a tablet or smart phone, as you must do with the Galaxy Gear and Galaxy Gear 2 devices. 

The Korea Herald attributes its report only to sources "close to the matter." Samsung, unsurprisingly, isn't commenting. But it makes sense that eventually Samsung would launch a Dick Tracy-type watch-phone. As we noted last year, when Samsung launched the first Galaxy Gear watch, a lot of the criticism of the device centered around the fact that in order for users to take advantage of its most interesting features, the watch always needed to be tethered. 

"It works better than I expected and does plenty of tricks to impress your friends and co-workers, like placing calls, displaying email and taking pictures and videos with a camera in the wristband," Brier Dudley, a reviewer for the Seattle Times, wrote. "But the Gear also feels a bit like a prototype – a work in progress that Samsung released early to build interest among app developers and beat its nemesis, Apple, to the punch." 

In related news, Samsung has released a software development kit for the Galaxy Gear 2, a smart watch first unveiled back in February. The Gear 2 will run Tizen, a Linux-based operating system – a departure from the original Galaxy Gear, which relied on the Android OS. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Samsung designs a smart watch to replace smart phones: report
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2014/0319/Samsung-designs-a-smart-watch-to-replace-smart-phones-report
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe