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Samsung’s Galaxy Gear S3 Smartwatch Unveiled At Exclusive Launch And It’s Bigger Than Ever

By Patricia Grannum
Published on: 08:06 PST, Aug 31, 2016

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear S3 smartwatch was unveiled today as a new entry into the growing world of wearable technology. As CNET reports, the new Galaxy watch comes in two versions, Frontier and Classic, and both are bigger and chunkier than their predecessor. The watch is 46 millimeters in diameter, a full 4 millimeters larger than the S2 and 8 millimeters wider than the Apple Watch.

According to Gizmodo, the size of a men’s watch is usually between 40mm and 42mm wide. For women, it’s normally between 28mm and 32 mm.

According to CNET, the reason that Samsung chose to make their new Galaxy smartwatch so bulky is because of buying trends. The data reportedly shows that more men are buying more wearable tech gadgets like smartwatches than women. There’s also the matter of fitting in all of those additional features that the Gear S3. Samsung says adding all of those components could not have been done in a smaller watch.

The Pros of The Samsung Gear S3: Key Features

The new Galaxy watch is designed to be very durable to withstand all of the “manly” pursuits that its wearers will be getting up to. According to Gizmodo, the watch face is made of Gorilla Glass 3, a chemically toughened glass designed to make mobile and computing device screens damage-proof. The Samsung Gear S3’s battery is also larger and built to last longer than the previous version.

Samsung Pay is also built into the Gear S3, making mobile payment from the watch easy. It has the latest MST technology, which lets the watch operate more like your credit card and make the watch a better payment option than the previous version.

Both the Classic and Frontier versions of the S3 smartwatch have Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities. The Frontier has LTE connectivity, which means you can add the watch as a data line to your phone line to take advantage of that. With the LTE connectivity feature, you can make phone calls, send text messages, and perform basic tasks that would normally need a data connection.

Music lovers should also love the fact that the Frontier version of Samsung’s new smartwatch lets you load up to 4GB of music or stream your tunes directly from Spotify.

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Both watches also come with the fitness tracking features we’ve come to expect from smartwatches in 2016 like calorie counters, step trackers, heart-rate monitors, an altimeter for gauging altitudes and a GPS tracker for monitoring the distance of your workout, Business Insider reports. Both models of the Samsung Gear 3 watch are completely waterproof for 30 minutes in water up to five feet.

The Cons of the Samsung Gear S3

If you have small arms and wrists, the size and bulkiness of the new Galaxy watch could be a major turnoff, unless you’re into gigantic timepieces. But there are other drawbacks to Samsung’s new addition to the Galaxy Gear series.

As Gizmodo reports, while most smartwatch manufacturers are using Google OS, Samsung is committed to running its Gear devices on its own operating system called Tizen. This means that there aren’t as many apps on the market for the Samsung Gear S3.

This also means that the new Galaxy watch will only really work with a Samsung phone. But this was the same situation with the S2, so it’s really nothing new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynTB211p1PQ

What do you think of the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3? Is it too big for you? Or does size not really matter? Let us know in the comments below.

[Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Samsung]

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