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Report: Samsung to introduce SIM-enabled Gear Solo alongside Note 4 at IFA

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 was once thought to be the sole guest of honor at Samsung’s Unpacked event next month, but a recent report says that isn’t quite the case. Yonhap News in Korea is reporting that Samsung will be introducing a new Samsung Gear smart watch at the show. The name is said to be “Gear Solo,” which alludes to its supposed standalone SIM card.

That detail would effectively make it Samsung’s first smart watch that wouldn’t require a smartphone connection to receive data. We’re not sure what other features it might gain or if it would be much different from the Gear 2, though our gut tells us current Gear 2 owners won’t really be needing an upgrade unless they’ve been yearning to ditch their smartphone.

The impacts of cellular radios inside a smart watch could be quite significant. For starters, devices with 3G or 4G radios tend to be more expensive than their WiFi-only counterparts. Cellular radios also suck up a lot more battery than WiFi or Bluetooth. Samsung’s going to have to pull some pretty neat tricks in order to mitigate those typical drawbacks, but we won’t count them out until we see it for ourselves. Fingers crossed that they end up trotting to IFA with it on their wrist for their September 3rd event.

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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2 Comments

  1. Okay, so in theory, I just wear a BT headset, set my watch to a WiFi hotspot and carry my WiFi only tablet, right?

    1. That will be great for the 3 hours the battery lasts.

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