Samsung is presently in the process of developing the Gear S4, SamMobile reported Wednesday, adding how the name itself is what it presumes will be attached to the device that’s otherwise identified by the model number SM-R800. With last year’s Gear Sport launching as the SM-R600 and the Gear S3 lineup consisting of the Classic (SM-R770) and Frontier (SM-R760) models, the SM-R800 is presumed to be the next major addition to the Tizen-powered series of intelligent watches. The wearable will feature improved internal hardware and place a specific focus on enhanced health and fitness tracking functionalities enabled by Samsung’s S Health service, including more in-depth sleep monitoring, as per the same report.
The South Korean tech giant is supposedly planning to debut the Gear S4 later this year but no more specific timeframe has been provided. With the Gear Sport and Gear S3 families debuting at the last two iterations of IFA, the next flagship wearable offering from Samsung may follow the same pattern and end up being unveiled at this year’s edition of the Berlin, Germany-based electronics show. IFA 2018 is running from August 31 through September 5 and may also end up being the event that sees the announcement of the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung’s next-generation Android phablet whose predecessors were usually unveiled at the same conference.
Samsung was already expected to announce the Gear S4 last year to follow up on its 2016 Gear S3 series but ended up taking its wearable portfolio in a different direction with the Gear Sport, a versatile smartwatch that was met with a largely positive response from both critics and consumers alike, albeit one that was almost exclusively targeted at athletes and extremely active users, with the company ultimately not announcing a more traditional smartwatch with a broader target audience throughout 2017. The Seoul-based OEM is still revising its 2016 Gear S3 series, having most recently done so with a Golf Edition of the Gear S3 Frontier introduced in late 2017. Should the firm end up unveiling both the Gear S4 and Galaxy Note 9 at IFA 2018, it’s likely to dominate the German trade show even more so than it usually does and possibly even prompt other manufacturers into rescheduling their product announcements they initially planned for the late summer event.