The Moto 360 has captured the imaginations of many people looking at the nascent smartwatch product category, mainly by straying from the traditional square face design that’s been the mainstay of manufacturers like Sony, Pebble and now Samsung and LG with their Android Wear, but Samsung may be working on changing that according to designs registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
German site, MobileGeeks found the filings and the associated designs embedded within, which show that Samsung is still very much interested in continuing to incorporate a camera into their smartwatches, which will be used as the recognition point for a new gesture based system. Also surfacing in the documents are plans for a charging port in the clasp, which may go some-way to dispersing fears from consumers over issues with the charging arrangements in the Gear Live.
The Moto 360 is still the favoured design for Android Wear, at least according to the poll we ran earlier this month. Whether these designs will be for the Samsung Gear line of smartwatches, or for a future Android Wear release, isn’t clear and at this stage the designs exist only on paper, but there’s some good ideas there, head on over to MobileGeeks for a whole array of designs they’ve found from the USPTO.
The design registration was filed back in 15 March 2013 – so this is not a case of “Me Too” as many other blogs have reported. The design appears to be that the original Gear should have been, with the watchband camera etc. Maybe Samsung found the round screen as lost realestate and an inconvenience to render square/rectangle apps to a round face without either wasting space or mashing things up. I suspect Motorola is having simialr issues given the way thie Moto360 is being dragged out and aspects are limited to marketing blurbs, rendered images and “demo mode” (pre… Read more »