Samsung has not yet announced its plans for the Gear S series lineup. It has been a while since the South Korean tech firm unveiled the Gear S3, and based on the latest reports, the next iteration of the smartwear is now overdue. A recent patent leak suggests that the Samsung Gear S4 is now on its way, and its highlight will be the watch straps containing integrated battery.
As reported by Phone Arena, Samsung has included almost every premium features that a smartwatch could feature in the Gear S3, except for the fact that the wearable still has limited battery life. The tech firm is said to be looking for ways to extend the battery capacity of the next Gear S smartwatch, although it does not seem like developing a bigger battery for the Gear S4 is an option.
The recent patent leak reveals that the next Samsung Gear S wearable will have the integrated battery inside its straps. It will be a challenge for the company to fit in the battery that will power up the entire device, although the cue here is to use batteries that are flexible and thin enough to fit inside the watch straps. The patent document also states that unlike the previous Gear S devices that only have one battery, the potential Gear S4 will have two batteries, which will be placed on both sides of the watch strap.
Even as the watch straps of the Samsung Gear S4 will have integrated batteries inside of them, users are still likely to choose among different types of materials for the straps, including fiber, leather, polymer, and rubber. Considering that the battery is now moved into the straps, there will be an extra space left inside the device's main body, and the patent states that other features such as fingerprint reader, lighting sensor, and camera can be added for the battery's stead.
Meanwhile, a seperate patent leak for the Samsung Gear S4 shows that the smartwatch will feature a rotating bezel with sub-display. This additional will be very useful for the owners as they can easily access different apps on the menu screen just by rotating the bezel of the smartwatch. This design upgrade will be applied along with the possible changes in the current Tizen UI.
