Samsung Altius ready to challenge Apple iWatch

Ah, Samsung and Apple. Will you ever just get along? No sooner do we read about Apple’s apparent designs for its iWatch then screens from an as yet unannounced smart watch from Samsung, called the Altius, appear.

The series of screen-grabs includes the name Galaxy Altius, which has previously been pinned to what was thought to be the much anticipated Galaxy S IV.

There is a distinct aroma of Android to the watch’s operating system and we all know how big a fan Samsung is of Google’s OS. However, it is entirely possible that something has been custom built from the ground up for the Sammy’s first smartwatch. The software in the screens is called the AltiusOS beta2 which leads me to think that this may well be the case.

Looking at the screen shots above you get to see a range of icons or tiles such as the music player, a clock, and email with a little 2 in the corner to show how many messages you’ve got left to read. The fact that the last two tiles are off to the right of the display while a bar at the bottom shows a bit of a slider thing happening, so this device will quite likely have a touchscreen display.

There’s also a reception icon in the top left, indicating that the watch will come with some form of a data connection, maybe WiFi, so wont just be a Bluetooth-linked extension to your mobile, like the Sony SmartWatch.

Each screen grab is 500 x 500 pixels which means that, in all likelihood, the display on the Galaxy Altius is working with 500 x 500 pixel resolution – but take that with a spinkling of salt as I have no guarantee that these pics haven’t been treated in someway between the original and the snaps I have. That said, such a resolution is quite possible given the current standards for smart devices – especially Samsung-made Galaxy devices.

Could we have another battle on our hands… errr… wrists… soon?