Samsung Gear A Smartwatch Touts Exynos 3472 Processor, 250 mAh Battery, Tizen OS

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Samsung has been extremely quiet on the smartwatch front for the past year following the launch of the Gear S. After releasing a flood of smartwatches during 2013 and 2014, the company has been relatively quiet on the smartwatch front while Android Wear devices and the Apple Watch have started to gain some traction.

The lack of new product releases doesn’t mean that Samsung has abandoned the category; quite the contrary in fact. Samsung is hard at work on its Gear A “Orbis” smartwatch, which could be revealed as soon as this September at IFA in Berlin. Up until this point, all that we have learned about that device’s hardware specs is that it will feature a circular Super AMOLED display that has a resolution of 360x360.

Today, however, we’re learning a wealth of information about the Galaxy A including the fact that it will be powered by Samsung’s own 1.2GHz Exynos 3472 dual-core processor (with a Mali-400 MP4 GPU) paired with 768MB of RAM. We’ve also learned that the smartwatch will feature 4GB of onboard storage and a 250 mAh battery. For comparison, the call-capable Gear S has a 300 mAh battery, while a LG Watch Urbane (another circular-screened smartwatch) features a 410 mAh battery. You’ll also find the usual array of wireless options including Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and optional 3G/phone capabilities along with an assortment of sensors like a built-in barometer, gyroscope, heart rate sense, and GPS.

Perhaps the standout feature of the Gear A, however, will be its rotating bezel. Whereas the Apple Watch features a digital crown that can be rotated to scroll through lists and notifications, the Gear A’s entire bezel can rotate to navigate through the UI, scroll through lists, and even zoom in on pictures.

Given Samsung’s long gap between smartwatch releases, we’re hoping that the Gear A will make a huge splash in the wearables sector. After all, we’ve seen what Samsung can do when it’s firing on all cylinders (just look at the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge), so we expect nothing less than “awesome” from the Gear A.