Samsung Orbis Round Smartwatch will be named Gear A

Samsung is working on a new smartwatch with round case that will be named Samsung Gear A.

Reports about a round smartwatch from Samsung appeared in January. The internal name of the new Samsung smartwatch is Orbis. Now SamMobile claims that they can confirm that Orbis will be named Samsung Gear A.

The Gear A is supposed to come in two versions. A Gear A with Bluetooth that requires a smartphone for connectivity and a version with built-in 3G calling support.

The report includes the model numbers of the Gear A with SM-R720 and SMR730. The interesting part of leaked model numbers are that they include version for the major US carriers AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile.

There are no leaked images yet of the Gear A aka Orbis. Samsung has released already a bunch of smartwatches over the past years, but did not make a big impact. The Apple Watch is considered to marginalize Samsung’s marketshare in the first 24 hours of sales launch.

Samsung current flagship smartwatch is the Gear S with 3G Calling support, Tizen OS and curved OLED display. Samsung would have to do something like Kairos and merge a mechanical watch with smartwatch features to really stand out against the Apple Watch. For that the company would have to partner with a Swiss luxury watch maker. The round shape is not the key to win against the Apple Watch.