2014 has been a big year for wearables and in particular smartwatches seem to be all the rage. So far on the market the choice largely consists of offerings by Samsung, LG and Motorola. The Motorola was the first to break the mold somewhat and began to standout with the release of their Moto 360. This smartwatch was round in stark contrast to the squarer ones offered by Samsung and LG. However, the connecting issue with all these smartwatches was they all heavily relied on connectivity to the user’s smartphone. That is however all about to change with Samsung’s next offering the ‘Samsung Gear S’. If you need a quick reminder, the Samsung Gear S will come loaded with a 2″ AMOLED display (360 x 480 resolution). Inside the watch offers 512MB RAM, 4GB internal memory and powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor. The Gear S will run on a 300mAh battery and come loaded with Samsung’s Tizen operating system.
Overall, the specs do not largely sell the device on their own with the specs somewhat similar to both the Moto 360 and LG’s next offering the ‘LG G Watch R’. However, the big selling point for the Gear S is that it is designed to be able to work as a standalone device as well as in conjunction with smartphones. As such the Gear S won’t need to rely on the smartphones connection, network or data usage. However as this is a standalone device it seems to follow the logic that it will have a standalone data plan. This seems to be now confirmed by a leaked memo picked up by Phandroid. The memo is a leaked Sprint document which clearly indicates that Sprint will be charging $10 a month for the use of the Gear S as a standalone device. In fact, there seems to be two plan options available although in reality they both are priced at $10 and therefore is subjective as to which you prefer to use.
The first one is a straight up ‘connected device’ plan which in return for the $10 offers 1000 minutes, 1000 messages and 100MB data. In contrast the second $10 option will allow the Gear S to be added to a Family Share Pack and therefore sharing minutes, messages and data with other connected devices on the same plan. In terms of when used in conjunction with the smartphone, it seems the Gear S wont be charged for its own data or calls when it is connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone. As the smartwatch will be pulling form the smartphone the data used will therefore be taken and charged to the smartphone plan. At the moment there are no firm details on what the other carriers are likely to charge although in reality it is unlikely to vastly be different. So how does this sound? Were you interested in the Gear S before? Does the data options seem fair and right?
