Screenshots of Samsung’s Galaxy Altius smartwatch leak

With Apple working fast to develop the iWatch, Samsung can’t be far behind, can it? Leaked screenshots of the company’s upcoming Galaxy Altius smartwatch suggest Samsung may in fact be announcing the device soon.

Surprisingly, Samsung has not acknowledged that such a project is underway. The Altius name cropped up a few days ago and it was rumoured to be the working title for the company’s next-generation Galaxy S flagship, which could be announced on March 15.

However, it looks like Altius is the name of an OS Samsung has developed for the smartwatch, going by screenshots leaked on a Korean forum, Ruliweb. The UI looks very much like Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8’s live tiles and it looks like there is a SIM slot in the watch for cellular connectivity thanks to the indicator showing the mobile network of South Korean carrier SKT. One screenshot reveals that the OS is going to be named Altius too.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Purported screenshots of the Samsung Galaxy Altius watch

Other features of the watch-like device include a music player and the ability to display emails and messages. It also looks like there’s a Maps app built into the device. There’s also a scrollbar on the bottom, which has quite a way to go till the end, so maybe Samsung has included more smartphone-like features in the watch. It is not known how much internal storage is in the device, but a couple of the screenshots do show a memory counter increasing from 235 to 236MB and a percentage of the used space. We performed a simple math equation to arrive at 13.8GB, which looks like the user-accessible memory of the watch. So 16GB NAND Flash storage looks like the default storage.

Apple has a team of 100 people working on the iWatch to enter the wearable tech space and it looks like it is the hot technology of the year. Even Google is preparing a 2014 launch for its Google Glass wearable device, which rests on ears and projects an image in front of the user’s eye, and emits sound through a unique bone conduction technology.

Samsung is expected to make announcements at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, but the company might not announce this device or any smartphones for that matter. Samsung is also rumoured to be holding a private press event for its 2013 Galaxy range of smartphones on March 15. The Galaxy S4 is expected to be announced at this event, but perhaps Samsung has a watch or two up its sleeve, along with a new OS.