Among the higher-profile announcements that Samsung made today at IFA (Europe's version of CES) was news that two of the OEM's older handsets, the Galaxy S III and Galaxy S 4, would be receiving an update to Android 4.3 in October. For the record, that's only around three months after the software's introduction. Given the standard pace of Android updates, that's not half bad.

Engadget notes that the update should allow the phones to interact with Samsung's new Galaxy Gear smartwatch, which at the moment can only communicate with the just-announced Galaxy Note III and the 2014 Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet (more on all of those products from Reviews Editor Ron Amadeo soon). One of Android 4.3's chief improvements was native support for the power-sipping Bluetooth 4.0, and as we noted in our Android 4.3 review, this kind of low-power communication seems ideally suited to wearable computing devices like smartwatches and Google Glass.

The Galaxy S 4 shipped with Android 4.2, but the Galaxy S III has never received an official Android 4.2 update despite the existence of what appears to be a near-final build of the software. For Galaxy S III owners, the 4.3 update should bring not just the Galaxy Gear integration but also a handful of backported features from the newer Galaxy S 4.