Samsung and Glympse have partnered up for the integration of the Gear S3’s SOS feature, bringing consumers a way for them to feel a little bit more secure in an emergency situation. Samsung’s Gear S3 smartwatch is now official and in addition to the design update for a new look and style to call its own, the Gear S3 also comes along with new features and functionality, and one of those features is the SOS that was mentioned during the announcement. If the name Glympse sounds familiar, that’s because they’re leading the way in location sharing technology and they’ve partnered up with the likes of other big name companies for the integration of their tech, such as Google with the Project Tango tablet as well as Google and Lenovo with the PHAB2 Pro, the first smartphone powered by Tango. This is in addition to the Glympse location sharing features that were added to the Gear S2 and the Galaxy S7 as Samsung and Glympse actually have an ongoing partnership.
In regards to the Gear S3 and the SOS functionality, users can send their location to their emergency contacts by utilizing a triple tap on the home button. By doing this, the location is sent to the contacts automatically to allow for a discreet way to alert people to an emergency.
Having said that that, there is actually more to it than just a location share, as tapping the home button on the watch three times will first send an automatically generated SMS message to the emergency contacts, which contains the shared location. On top of this the emergency contacts can see the location of the Gear S3 owner in real-time, and the Gear S3 owner can in turn see when the location has been viewed by any of their emergency contacts. Earlier, Samsung mentioned that they will remain committed to the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic which includes sending out an update this year to both watches that introduces new features. The SOS feature is one of those, meaning that soon Gear S2 owners will eventually be afforded the same safety enhancement.
