‘Samsung will soon introduce a smartwatch with a call function’

Samsung is said to be planning to introduce a Tizen smartwatch with a call function soon. That writes The Wall Street Journal Friday on the basis of sources who would be familiar with the plans of the electronics manufacturer.

The American business newspaper claims based on the sources that the new smartwatch from Samsung can be used to make calls, without the need for a phone. In addition, the ‘smart’ watch can allegedly take pictures independently, send emails and request the location via GPS. The device also has bluetooth and a heart rate monitor.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the watchphone runs on Tizen, the Linux-based OS from Samsung and Intel. The device offers space for a SIM card and will probably be announced between June and July, the newspaper knows. Talks are already underway with European, American and Korean providers about a possible release. It is not clear whether a similar watch from Samsung will also come with Android Wear, the version of Google’s mobile operating system for watches and other wearables. Samsung previously indicated that it is working on a smartwatch with Android Wear.

If the story of The Wall Street Journal is correct, it is the first time that Samsung has come up with a watch that can be operated completely independently. Earlier this year, the South Korean manufacturer already released watches such as the Gear 2 and the Fit, but they only work with a few dozen models of smartphones from Samsung itself. As a result, a large group of users of, for example, Sony, HTC or Nexus devices cannot use the current Samsung smartwatches.

It’s no secret that Samsung has been targeting the wearables market for quite some time with its smartwatches. That is not surprising, as only became clear from figures from research agency Strategy Analytics. That agency calculated that Samsung delivered half a million smartwatches worldwide in the past quarter. This gives the group a market share of 71 percent.