Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
Samsung reveals its next watch will be circular, opens up SDK to developers
Samsung has been involved in the smartwatch game for a while now, starting with the Galaxy Gear and moving on to Tizen-powered devices like the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, Gear S, and the list goes on. When Samsung first jumped into the market, competition was pretty mild. Fast-forwarding to today, Android Wear and the Apple Watch have certainly raised the stakes considerably. We’ve been hearing rumors for a while about how Samsung’s next move will be to introduce a more premium-designed circular watch, with a recent rumor suggesting it could be called the Gear A. Now Samsung has given us a small glimpse at its plans for the future.
Does a circular Gear have a shot at one-upping its current competition in the wearable space?
Samsung has yet to reveal its upcoming watch, but the Korean giant has now announced that it is giving interested developers the opportunity to get their hands on the SDK for the company’s “next generation of the Gear device”. This marks the first time Samsung has released its wearable SDK ahead of a product announcement, and makes it clear that Samsung is aiming big with this new device. Even more exciting than the SDK is the image that Samsung revealed with the announcement. As you can see above, Samsung is pretty obviously showcasing a circular design, and looking at the list of developers, it seems several big names are getting involved already such as Yelp, CNN, and others.
[related_videos align=”left” type=”custom” videos=”372536,373848,410086,520364″]
So does a circular Gear have a shot at one-upping its current competition in the wearable space? It is hard to say for sure. Personally, I feel that as long as Samsung keeps its platform locked down to just its own branded phones, it will always have a hard time competing. Then again, with the apparent runaway success of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge — maybe having support for just its own devices gives it more than large enough of a fanbase.
What do you think, excited by the idea of a circular Gear watch? For developers interested in getting involved, you’ll want to head on over to Samsung’s developer portal to sign up for access to the developer preview SDK.