This was confirmed by Samsung’s co-CEO JK Shin who spoke to the folks at CNET. According to Shin, he claims that the next Gear VR will be coming “soon” but declined to mention any specific dates, claiming that the device’s launch will be “surprise”. We can only take that to mean that it won’t make an appearance at IFA 2015 next month since that would be pretty obvious.
As it stands the current Gear VR only plays nicely with a handful of smartphones, all of them from Samsung. This includes the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S6, and the Galaxy S6 Edge. This severely limits the adoption of the headset given that there are plenty of other brands out there used by everyone else.
In any case it will be interesting to see what kind of changes Samsung will be making to the next-gen Gear VR. Hopefully we will see the device be more adaptable to other handsets of other brands.