The infamous Evan Blass has struck again, revealing Samsung’s Gear Fit 2 Pro ahead of its official announcement.
As originally reported over at VentureBeat, Samsung won’t just be introducing the Note 8 at their New York event on the 23rd of August – but also a backwards-compatible GearVR headset and the new Gear Fit2 Pro.
The biggest difference reported between the Gear Fit 2 Pro and its predecessor comes in the form of 5 ATM water resistance, which will allow the fitness band to be fully submerged and offer tracking during swimming workouts.
It’ll also offer offline support for Spotify Tracks and come with built-in GPS functionality.
Evan says that Samsung will be bundling in a year’s subscription to Under Armour’s ‘premium’ digital service as well.
No word yet on pricing or availability. Expect more news to come on August 23rd.
Depending on the asking price, the Gear Fit 2 Pro could see Samsung well positioned to gain ground at the expense of major players like Apple and Fitbit. Though the absence of any sort of LTE or 4G could come back to bite them, given the market’s pivot towards products that do feature that connectivity.
According to Canalys Research Analyst Mo Jia, “the hype surrounding smartwatches has been short-lived and the market must now focus on compelling use cases to stimulate demand.”
Meanwhile, IDC has estimated that smartwatches and fitness trackers will push the category to grow 20% by the end of 2017.
They say that 125.5 million wearable units will be shipped by the end of the year and that the category is on-track to reach 240 million units by 2021.
