Samsung earlier this week confirmed that its next smartwatch will come with a rotating bezel ring. It happened at the Tizen Developer Summit 2015 which took place in Bangalore, India.
The rotating bezel control has been rumoured for a while now. It was effectively confirmed when Samsung unveiled a new Gear SDK. According to the documentation, the bezel ring will offer various functions including controlling the volume in the media player, scrolling through contacts and other lists and even work as a keyboard.
At this week’s event, Samsung also showed how it could be used to play games. In one demonstration, the ring was used to move a character left and right in a vertical scrolling game.
While Samsung has now effectively confirmed that its next smartwatch will be round and will sport a rotating bezel ring, the watch itself was nowhere to be seen and was not announced. That will likely take place at Galaxy Unpacked 2015 on August 13th. The Samsung Gear A, codenamed Orbis during development, should be unveiled alongside the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge Plus.
According to an earlier rumour, it will have the following specifications (some of which Samsung itself has confirmed):
- Processor: 1.2GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos 3472 with Mali-400 MP4 GPU
- Operating system: Samsung Tizen 2.3.1 (confirmed)
- Cellular connectivity: None
- Other connectivity: GPS, Bluetooth 4.1 (variant to include 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi)
- Display: 360×360 pixel circular display (confirmed)
- RAM: 768 MB
- Internal storage: 4GB
- External storage: None
- Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer and heart rate sensor
- Battery: 250mAh
- Other: Digital crown, rotating bezel ring (confirmed)
There is still no word on when the Samsung Gear A will hit the street and how much it will go for.
Sources : SamMobile (1) // SamMobile (2) // SamMobile (3)