Samsung Gear S smart-watch hands-on

The Gear S smart-watch is the latest addition to Samsung's growing collection of wearables. Right off the bat you'll notice its distinct curved Super AMOLED display. Its resolution is 360x480, which is pretty high for a 2-inch display and amounts to a very good pixel density of 300ppi. The screen looks pretty fine - not pixelized or anything! The other key feature of the smart-watch is its SIM-card slot, which lets you have 3G access in addition to Wi-Fi. Of course, you can pair a compatible Samsung gear device via Bluetooth, but the Gear S can, theoretically, let you leave your smartphone at home, handle calls and receive messages and notifications.

The device runs on a dual-core processor with 512MB of RAM, powered by a modest 300mAh battery, and features an accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, compass, heart rate sensor, barometer, and UV light sensor. It is based on a Samsung home-grown wearable Tizen platform. Swiping the watch-face to the left gives you access to Messages, E-mail, Missed calls, Contacts, Apps, data from your smartphone, and basically all functionality at hand. We saw weather and agenda apps too, along with a news reader. There is some pretty advanced functionality built into this smart-watch, and Tizen OS seems to become a pretty adequate alternative to Android Wear as time goes by.

Although it doesn't have the LG G Watch R's incredible looks, the Gear S is an interesting device with a charm of its own. We'd love to tell you more when we get the chance to spend more time with it ticking on our wrists.