UPDATE: AT&T will begin taking pre-orders for its LTE-enabled Gear S3 Frontier on November 4. Pricing will be set at $49.99 with a two-year contract when purchased with a Samsung Galaxy smartphone on an AT&T Next or AT&T Next Every Year plan. Alternately, you can get AT&T's Gear S3 Frontier by itself for $0 down and $17.50 per month for 20 months.
A couple of months after making its official debut, the Samsung Gear S3’s launch date and price has officially been revealed.
The Gear S3 Classic (above left) and Frontier (above right) will be available for pre-order in the US starting November 6, with a launch scheduled for November 18. Pricing will start at $349.99.
Samsung’s new smartwatches will be available for pre-order from Best Buy, Amazon, Macy’s, and Samsung. An LTE version of the Gear S3 Frontier will be sold by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and those carriers will announce their launch and price plans.
The Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier both feature 1.3-inch 360x360 Super AMOLED displays with rotating bezels, 46mm cases, dual-core processors, 4GB of RAM, and 768MB of RAM. Their 380mAh batteries are rated to last up to three days, and both watches are IP68 rated for dust and water resistance. They’re both compatible with devices running Android 4.4 and up with 1.5GB of RAM or more.
The big difference between the two watches are their cases. While the Classic has tiny ridges on its outer edge, the Frontier has a more rugged design with larger ridges. The Frontier also has differently-shaped buttons and a tachymeter.
The Gear S3 watches are notable improvements over the Gear S2, offering bigger batteries and more RAM. They’ve also got MST and NFC support, meaning that they can use Samsung Pay for mobile payments. Their large 46mm case size might turn some folks off, but if you don’t mind big watches and are in the market for a new smartwatch, the Gear S3 looks like a solid option.
