DHAKA: Samsung Electronics Co. is making another run at that perennial technogeek dream, the wrist communicator, with plans in the next few months to unveil a smartwatch that works as a stand-alone phone.

However, Samsung's watch-phone will be able to make and receive calls without being tethered to a smartphone, something most of the smartwatches on the market now can't do, according to people familiar with the company's plans, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Samsung's watch-phone will also take photos, send email and come with GPS, Bluetooth and a heart monitor, the people said—a suite of features that would make the gadget-toting James Bond proud.

The South Korean technology company — currently the top seller of smartphones — is in talks with telecommunications carriers in the U.S., South Korea and Europe about the watch-phone, and hopes to unveil the gadget between June and July, the people said.

It will run on Samsung's homegrown operating system, Tizen, which was co-developed with Intel Corp.

The people declined to say what the device will be called, or whether a user will make calls by holding the watch up to his or her mouth.

Wrist communicators have been a staple of pop-culture imagery since the 1940s, when comic-book detective Dick Tracy started wearing a two-way wrist radio. Real-life iterations have been a lot rarer and short-lived, from the Sylvania two-way wrist transmitter shown in a 1953 issue of Popular Science magazine to Samsung's own first attempt at a stand-alone watch-phone, the 1999 SPH-WP10, which was pulled from the market because of lackluster demand.

The recent craze for wearables has breathed new commercial life into wrist-communication devices, with companies including Google Inc. and ZTE Corp. planning smartwatches. Apple Inc., Samsung's closest rival in smartphones, is widely expected to launch a smartwatch later this year.

Samsung has four on the market—including the Galaxy Gear, powered by Google's Android operating system, and the Gear 2, running on Tizen.

The company has been marketing them with clever ads, one of which traced the evolution of watch-type communication devices from Dick Tracy through television shows such as "Knight Rider" and Star Trek.

But all of those devices need to connect to a smartphone to make calls or browse the Internet.

Samsung's new watch-phone, which will come with a SIM card, will be one of a handful of stand-alone devices on the market, and the only one yet from a major manufacturer.

BDST: 1741 HRS, NOV 12, 2014