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Samsung at IFA 2013: Galaxy Gear, Note 3, and more

Samsung introduced its IFA 2013 event with a pop band, an orchestra, and an MC, all as a lead up to three big products: the much-rumored Galaxy Gear smartwatch, a larger Galaxy Note, and a new Note Tablet. For all of the details and for our first impressions of the new products, you can follow along below.

  • Aaron Souppouris

    Sep 5, 2013

    Aaron Souppouris

    Samsung promises over 70 apps for Galaxy Gear, these are the first 12

    Now that Samsung has finally announced the Galaxy Gear, you've probably made up your mind on whether it's beautiful or hideous. What you probably don't have a great grasp of is what apps will be available on the smartphone, and how they'll work. We had a brief preview of Pocket for Galaxy Gear yesterday; it offers a complimentary experience to the Android app, effectively functioning as a remote control for the phone version. You can ask your phone to read an article aloud to you, favorite articles, or archive them, and that's about it. Other Gear apps are a little more ambitious.

    Facebook and Twitter haven't announced any plans to make Gear apps — although you'll of course be able to view notifications from the regular Android apps on the watch. The "private social network" Path, however, is pledging to support the Gear at launch. It's perhaps the most fully functional app we've heard of: in addition to rich notifications, the app lets you share photos, locations, and give feedback on other posts straight from the watch.

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  • Sep 5, 2013

    Verge Staff

    Galaxy Note 3 first phone to feature ugly new Micro USB 3 port

    With all the news coming from its big event yesterday, Samsung glazed over the importance of one new feature of its Galaxy Note 3 — it's the first phone we know of that uses USB 3.0. The benefits of the switch to the more modern standard are two-fold. The obvious plus for USB 3.0 is that it offers far faster data rates, potentially increasing the speed of transferring music, videos, and photos to and from your phone. "Potential" is an important word here: the speeds you'll actually achieve will depend on the quality of the storage Samsung has included in the Galaxy Note 3.

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  • Ross Miller

    Sep 4, 2013

    Ross Miller

    Watch this: Samsung Unpacked in under four minutes

    Did you miss Samsung's Unpacked event? Let's catch you up in about 212 seconds. For all things Note 3, Note 10.1, the Galaxy Gear smartwatch... and of course the S Pen. So many 'S' things, in fact. And those glasses! Oh, those glasses!

    (Looking for something a bit longer? Check out our replay of The Verge Live: Samsung and Sony at IFA.)

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  • Aaron Souppouris

    Sep 4, 2013

    Aaron Souppouris

    Pocket for Galaxy Gear gives a glimpse of how apps will work on Samsung's smartwatch

    Galaxy Gear apps
    Galaxy Gear apps

    Revealing its new Galaxy Gear today, Samsung proudly announced the smartwatch will have 70 apps available to users at launch. What it hasn't shown us in detail yet is how third-party apps will look and function. The popular read later service Pocket has just announced that it'll be among the first to support Galaxy Gear with a short preview of it's new app.

    The Pocket app for Galaxy Gear will work in conjunction with the regular Android app, letting you have text read aloud to you through a text-to-speech function without taking out your phone. You'll also be able to favorite and archive articles straight from the watch. The Pocket app will be available when the Galaxy Gear launches in the US this October.

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  • Sep 4, 2013

    Vlad Savov

    Samsung's Galaxy Gear is a smartwatch like no other

    Samsung Galaxy Gear (verge stock)
    Samsung Galaxy Gear (verge stock)

    The Galaxy Gear, Samsung's latest foray into the smartwatch category, is now official and it's quite unlike anything you've seen before. Yes, it's a smartphone accessory that can pick up notifications, control music playback, and keep time with a rich variety of watch faces, but Samsung takes it a few steps further by integrating a 1.9-megapixel camera, a speaker, and two microphones — allowing you to shoot short 720p movies and even conduct phone calls with the Galaxy Gear.

    Importantly, the Galaxy Gear is not a phone in its own right — it relies on a Bluetooth connection to your Samsung Galaxy device in order to do most of its connected work. When it goes on sale later this month, the Gear will be compatible with the freshly announced Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition, while software updates for the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III, and Galaxy Note II are in the works to introduce compatibility there as well. That new software should begin rolling out from October, depending on local carriers. Given that Samsung's new Galaxy slates run Android 4.3, which supports the Bluetooth Low Energy standard, Samsung may well have just tipped its hand about when it intends to distribute the 4.3 upgrade to its older Galaxy handsets.

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  • Tom Warren

    Sep 4, 2013

    Tom Warren

    Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10.1 is a high-res tablet that syncs with the Gear smartwatch

    Gallery Photo: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition hands-on photos
    Gallery Photo: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition hands-on photos

    The Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition will ship in three models: Wi-Fi only, Wi-Fi and 3G, and Wi-Fi and LTE. Samsung says it will be available in black and white in Q3, but the company isn't providing an exact release date or pricing just yet.

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  • Sep 4, 2013

    Vlad Savov

    Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 is bigger, faster, thinner, and lighter, but is it any better?

    samsung galaxy note 3
    samsung galaxy note 3

    Samsung's made an annual tradition of introducing a new Galaxy Note at Berlin's IFA trade show and this year's no different. The Galaxy Note 3 sticks close to the winning formula: it enlarges the Super AMOLED display of the Note II to 5.7 inches, adds a bombastic 3GB of RAM and a 2.3GHz quad-core processor, raises the camera resolution to 13 megapixels, and simultaneously trims the fat so it can be a millimeter thinner at 8.3mm and a shade lighter at 168g. Those incremental upgrades all point to a better device, but only marginally so — Samsung's hopes for attracting new buyers to its Note platform rest on a suite of new stylus-friendly software features and a physical redesign aimed at making the Note 3 look that extra bit more glamorous.

    The big novelty on the software front is called Air Command. This menu pops up any time you extract the S Pen from its silo, and can also be brought up by hovering the stylus above the display and clicking its built-in button. The latter method is thoroughly unintuitive, but once you get over the initial awkwardness and figure it out, it works pretty well. From the Air Command launcher, you can access all the central S Pen features — dubbed Action Memos, Pen Window, S Finder, and Scrapbook.

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  • Chris Welch

    Sep 4, 2013

    Chris Welch

    Samsung unveils new Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition

    Samsung has just revealed its latest revision of the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet here at IFA 2013. Dubbed the "2014 Edition," Samsung's latest tablet measures just 7.9 millimeters thick and is billed as the "ultimate productivity" device. It's also seen an uptick in resolution compared to the previous model, now featuring a a high-res 2560 x 1600 display. In fact, it's basically identical to the panel we've previously seen on Google's Nexus 10, which of course is manufactured by Samsung. That's about where the hardware similarities end, though.

    The 2014 Note 10.1 carries Samsung's 8-core Octa chipset clocked at 1.9GHz with a class-leading 3GB of RAM. In terms of appearance, the new Note 10.1 features the same faux-leather rear casing as its smaller Note III sibling. An 8-megapixel camera can be found on the tablet's backside, with your standard 2-megapixel affair up front. The Note 10.1 2014 edition will be offered in three capacities with 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB of storage.

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  • Aaron Souppouris

    Sep 4, 2013

    Aaron Souppouris

    Samsung announces the Galaxy Gear smartwatch

    After giving as an accidental glimpse prior to today's big event, Samsung has finally revealed its new smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear. First impressions: it's big, but up on stage at IFA today it looks very little like the prototype watch VentureBeat leaked last week. The basic shape is the same, but, despite having a huge 1.63-inch 320 x 320 AMOLED display up front, it's a lot more svelte than the leak may have led you to believe.

    The Galaxy Gear's front is dominated by that display, which is framed, unusually for Samsung, in metal. Its strap appears to be made of rubber, and, just as the leaks suggested, there's a camera built into the strap.

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  • Adi Robertson

    Sep 4, 2013

    Adi Robertson

    Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note 3 with larger screen, faux-leather back

    Samsung has just announced a redesigned Galaxy Note 3 with a slimmer design and larger screen. Though the phone's front looks similar to its predecessors, Samsung has made some tweaks to the design, covering the plastic back with an apparent faux-leather finish in three colors, adding a metallic sheen to the plastic sides, and redesigning the S Pen. The screen has grown to 5.7 inches from the Note II's 5.3, and it weighs in at a slightly lighter 168g. It's 8.3mm, about a millimeter thinner than its predecessor, with 3GB of RAM, a 2.3GHz quad-core processor on its LTE model — another 3G version will use a 1.9GHz octocore processor — and a 13-megapixel rear camera. Samsung has even promised that the phone can shoot 4K video.

    Samsung also touts new software and better multitasking, one of the Note's major selling points given its large form factor. A launcher called Air Command is designed to make the S Pen more useful, bringing up a menu of tools that let users organize and act on handwritten notes: one given example is jotting down a number, then using new software to save it in the address book or call it directly.

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  • Chris Welch

    Sep 4, 2013

    Chris Welch

    An early look at Galaxy Gear and Note III, courtesy of Samsung exec

    Samsung's IFA keynote hasn't kicked off just yet, but the company's executives aren't waiting to reveal what's on today's itinerary. At a New York event coinciding with Samsung's Berlin presentation, Samsung's new president of telecommunications America, Gregory Lee, has already (briefly) shown off the Galaxy Note III and Galaxy Gear smartwatch ahead of their "official" public unveiling. Lee has already confirmed the existence of both products, so his willingness to freely showcase Samsung's latest isn't too shocking.  Unfortunately he didn't delve into many details regarding the eagerly anticipated products, but we'll be finding out much more within the next hour or so.

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