14 DAY TRIAL // It’s certainly no longer a mystery that Samsung is planning to expand its grasp of the wearable market and the tech giant seems to have a solid reason for doing so.
A recent report showed us Samsung is the undisputed king of the smartwatch market in the US, being in control of most of the market share.
But with the advent of Apple’s own smartwatch and with the upcoming Google Fit platform, Samsung’s position could be soon threatened. But the company is not willing to go down without a fair fight.
As you might as well remember, when Google first announced its wearable platform Android Wear, it also called Samsung as one of its official partners in the project. And we have already received confirmation an Samsung Android Wear smartwatch will be coming this year.
Given the hype build upon the new LG G Watch and Moto 360 smartwatches, it’s no wonder Samsung too wants a piece of the action.
And now it appears that Samsung’s first Android Wear smartwatch might not be far from us. According to the guys over at SamMobile, the SM-R382 smartwatch model has just been spotted paying a visit to the FCC.
Compared to the current Gear 2 which sits on the market today, the new device is a tad smaller, with 10 mm / 0.39 inches so, to be more precise. So basically the new model is 37 x 46 mm / 1.4 x 1.8 inches while the Gear 2 is 36.9 x 58.4 mm / 1.45 x 2.2 inches.
It should be noted, the new device falls in line with the Gear 2 which goes by the model number SM-R38X. Samsung is known to have filled for the Galaxy Wear trademark too, which might as well be the same smartwatch we’re talking about here.
We should know more about Android Wear later this month when the Google I/O conference kickstarts. The search giant will probably give us some insights into the plans of its Android Wear partners including, ASUS, Acer and HTC.
Samsung has also been said to be working on a standalone watch, which unlike most products available on the market today can place phone calls without the aid of a smartphone. However, it’s highly unlikely the new smaller smartwatch caught at the FCC recently is the cellular smartwatch.
We’d expect such a product to be bulkier, not smaller, but in the end, who can say for sure?