Roger Fingas
Samsung on Wednesday announced two new fitness-oriented wearables, the Gear Sport and Gear Fit2 Pro, which will square off with the Apple Watch "Series 3" coming this fall.
The Gear Sport is a smartwatch equipped with a round, 1.2-inch AMOLED display, as well as a 1 gigahertz dual-core processor, 4 gigabytes of storage, and a 300 milliamp-hour battery, Samsung said. It runs the company's Tizen operating system, and can pair with both iPhones and Android devices. Connection options include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and NFC, the last enabling Samsung Pay.
For fitness purposes the device meets MIL-STD-810G durability standards, along with 5 ATM water resistance. Sensors include a barometer and heart rate monitor, while GPS, GLONASS, and even China's BeiDou are supported for navigation.
The Gear Fit2 Pro is explicitly just a fitness tracker, but features many of the same specifications as the Sport. Apart from software, the main differences are a curved 1.5-inch screen, a 200 milliamp-hour battery, and the absence of NFC.
Neither of the devices run Bixby, the Samsung voice assistant found on the Galaxy S8 and Note 8.
The Gear Sport should ship sometime this holiday season, but pricing is unavailable. Preorders for the Fit2 Pro start on Thursday for $199.99, with an official launch on Sept. 15.
Apple is expected to reveal a third-generation Apple Watch on Sept. 12. While most features are unknown, the highlight is predicted to be LTE support, something the new Samsung devices lack. The technology is on other Samsung wearables however, such as the Gear S3.
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14 Comments
Samsung is trying to impress people by saying it meets MIL-STD-810G, I know this standard and use to test things and not one other military used it any more. I highly doubt it meet most of the requirements at a product level, maybe some of the component could pass.
I want to see if it actually passed Method 511 Explosive Atmosphere, or Method 519 Gunfire Shock or maybe Method 522 Ballistic Shock.
I doubt their watch are this rugged, there are other ruggized standards out their for electronics other than this Mil Std I wonder why they did not use one of those.
anyone ever see one in the wild? (love that saying)....i have not
Oh look. Activity rings. How original.
One of my colleagues has a gear fit. It came free with her phone. As a Samsung person she likes it, but it is really only a fitness activity device, which to be frank, she needs to do a lot more of.
I think these will compete with an Apple watch on price.