Tech giant's next smartwatch to be called Gear A

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July 17, 2015 7:43 AM

Details about Samsung's next big smartwatch have been arriving bit by bit for weeks. But now,new information gives us the most detailed look yet Samsung's next wearable.

The company's upcoming smartwatch which is codenamed Orbis, will officially be called the Gear A, according to Sammobile.

The site says official details about the watch will be released at an upcoming Galaxy Note 5 announcement rumored to hold before the release of the next iPhone.

But the watch's internal specifications may have already leaked. It will have a Samsung-made Exynos processor, 4GB of storage space and 768mb of RAM, according to the report. However, it's tough to tell how fast the watch will be based on those details, as smartwatches are too new a market to make an accurate judgement.

The watch is set to include a bevy of sensors: a barometer, heart rate sensor, a Wi-Fi chip and GPS. That last one is key — an on-board GPS chip means it can accurately track your location without using your phone, and would give a Samsung device a big advantage over the Apple Watch. Right now, using location services is prohibitively slow on Apple's wearable, so loading up maps takes a long time. A GPS chip cuts down on load times for maps significantly.

In a break from other Android hardware makers, the watch will not run Android Wear, Google's software for wearable devices. Instead, the Gear A will run a customized version of Tizen, a Samsung-supported operating system made to work well with a circular screen. That could mean the watch will only work with other Samsung phones, and not any Android phone.

As per previous reports, you'll be able to turn the watch's bezel to navigate the interface. It will also sport a digital crown, an input method introduced in the Apple Watch used to scroll through menus and take you back to the home screen.

Even as some companies are still on their first smartwatch, the Gear A would be Samsung's seventh, and none of them have made much of a splash. It launched the first Galaxy Gear in 2013 to terrible reviews.

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