Samsung confirms its next Gear smartwatch will feature a rotating bezel for zooming, controlling apps

The pressure is on Samsung and other smartwatch makers to answer the curb appeal and functionality of the Apple Watch, and Samsung appears ready to fire its next shot.

Samsung’s next smartwatch release will likely be powered by its own Tizen operating system. The company said this morning at a Tizen developers event that a new (round) watch called the Samsung Gear A will feature a rotating bezel for navigating watch content and controlling watch functions.

The bezel may be used for some of the same functions managed by the digital crown on the Apple Watch, i.e. zooming in and out of content and controlling specific movements in apps and games.

The new Tizen watch will reportedly ship with an Exynos 3472 dual-core chip, a 360 x 360 pixel display resolution, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and a 250mAh battery.

Samsung has an event scheduled in New York August 13, in which it’s expected to unveil the new Galaxy Note 5 phablet and possibly a plus-sized Galaxy S6 Edge phone.

But, again, the time is nigh for smartwatch makers to come up with some kind of answer to the Apple Watch. So we could see the new Tizen-powered Gear A trotted out onto the stage in New York.

Hat tip: SamMobile