Samsung Gear S3 reportedly coming to India next year, here's what you should know

Samsung announced its new Gear S3 smartwatch range back at IFA 2016 in September consisting of the Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier. Successor to the Gear S2 , the new smartwatch gets the same circular design and features like LTE connectivity (only on Gear S3 Frontier), mobile payments, GPS, built-in speakers, IP68 water resistance and so on. Both the versions first went on sale in South Korea back in October and are currently selling in US, Canada, UK and parts of Europe. While there is no official news from Samsung as to when it will launch the Gear S3 in India, a report claims that the Korean tech giant is planning a January 2017 release. For the ones interested in the upcoming watch, Samsung is offering a clean look with the Gear S3 Classic while the Frontier has a more rugged look with a bigger watch face and flashy bands. Both the smartwatches feature a speedometer, altimeter/barometer and the S Health app for the ones who like to stay fit. Samsung has also added the Always On Display just like the Galaxy smartphones. Of course you still get the rotating bezel wheel which now lets you accept or reject call. Samsung has also added the ability to write text on the watch so you can reply to messages. Jumping onto the hardware, the Gear S3 features a 1.3-inch Super AMOLED circular display with a 360x360 pixels resolution protected by Corning Gorilla Glass SR+ protection. On the inside there is a 1GHz dual-core processor with 768MB RAM and 4GB of storage. Both the versions feature Bluetooth 4.2 and a 380 mAh battery with the Frontier having support for 3G/LTE. The new range has been received well and a certain reviews suggest that it is one of the best smartwatches to go for. However, it still comes one big issue that was on the Gear S2 and still remains a huge factor in investing in Samsung’s smartwatches, the operating system. Samsung moved away from Android Wear and started using its in-house ‘Tizen’ platform. Now this doesn’t hamper the overall functionality of the smartwatch, in fact its quite simple to navigate and use. The real issue here is the support for apps. Unlike the Apple Watch and Android Wear, Tizen is limited when it comes to app support. A review of the Gear S3 suggests that apps like Google Maps and Twitter are missing which is disappointing. Samsung still has a long way to go with Tizen OS, but if app support is not a primary concern for you, then the Gear S3 is definitely the smartwatch to look out for.