The starts of Samsung’s event today were the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+, but those weren’t the only goodies that Samsung announced.
First up, Samsung revealed the Keyboard Cover, which is exactly what it sounds like. The accessory places a physical keyboard at the bottom of your Galaxy Note 5 or S6 edge, complete with three Android navigation buttons. The Keyboard Cover also offers protection for the corners and rear of your phone.
When you attach the Keyboard Cover to your device, the phone will recognize the accessory and adjust its UI so that you’re not just losing a good chunk of your display. The screen underneath the keyboard senses the keys that you’re typing, which means that you don’t have to worry about Bluetooth or anything like that. Unfortunately, there’s no word yet on when the Keyboard Cover will launch or how much it’ll cost when it does.
One thing that Samsung did announce the launch date of is Samsung Pay. The payment service will arrive in Korea on August 20 and in the US on September 28, with plans to roll it out to the UK, Spain, and China, too. Samsung says that it “anticipates working with” major payment networks American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa, as well as several major banks.
The big draw of Samsung Pay is that it works “virtually anywhere you can swipe your credit card or debit card.” That’s thanks to the Magnetic Secure Transmission and Near Field Communication technologies that it utilizes. The latter tech is the same one used by Apple Pay and Google Wallet, but the former is unique in that it sends out the same signal that regular credit cards do.
Finally, Samsung today teased its new round smartwatch, the Gear S2. Samsung didn’t say much about the new wearable, though, promising to share more information at IFA next month.