Samsung Gear S3 hands-on: Always on Display, Samsung Pay and more!

They’re rumors no longer. After a series of reports—and a not-so-subtle tease from Samsung—the Gear S3 is now official. Is your wrist looking a little bare? As far as smartwatches go, this one is probably the wearable to beat. Here’s why.

Samsung’s Gear lineup has always played with good ideas, and the Gear S3 is the sum of everything the company has learned over the past few years. With the new update, Samsung is focusing more intently on offering what people crave most, including functionality, design, and fitness features. Oh, and it supports Samsung Pay, too.

There are two different flavors of the Gear S3: Classic and Frontier. The Classic is the “plain” option, offering Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as its core features. The Gear S3 Frontier, which comes in Bluetooth and LTE options, is more rugged and designed to live outdoors; it would make a nice companion to Samsung’s Active lineup of devices.

Although the Frontier is the more rugged of the two, both versions are rated at IP68, and they also sport “military level” durability, making them resistant to fluctuations in temperature and high altitudes. The two also sport Gorilla Glass SR+, making them extra resistant to scratches; the Gear S3 will be the first to offer the technology.

Beyond the design, what made Samsung’s circular smartwatch so exciting in the first place was its take on navigation and software. There’s still a bezel around the screen that can be used for navigation, along with new widgets that are preloaded from developers. This feature will allow users to get information at a glance rather than opening an app up.

Last year, Samsung tested an Always-on Display feature that used 8 colors on the watch face. Now, the Gear S3 will use 16 million Super AMOLED colors on the device’s 1.3-inch display, taking the experience to the next level.

Although the device comes rocking Tizen, Samsung expects there to be over 10,000 apps and watch faces available by the time the Gear S3 launches at the end of this year. Hopefully, that’s a promise Samsung intends to keep, because we’re really excited to spend more time with the wearable when it becomes available.

When it launches, Samsung will offer its own strap, and third-party strap makers will offer their own, too. Additionally, Samsung says it collaborated with Arik Levy, an artist and industrial designer, to create a number of unique watch faces.

There are many more features worth chatting about, so check out the video above to see the new Gear S3 in action. The Gear S3 will launch in the fourth quarter.

Gear S3 specs: