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.

Samsung's watch-phone will be able to make and receive calls without being tethered to a smartphone, something most smartwatches on the market now can't do, according to people familiar with the company's plans. It 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 fictional British spy used a wrist walkie-talkie in the movie "For Your Eyes Only.")

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.