“We’ve been hearing about a round smartwatch being in the works at Samsung for some time now, and we exclusively confirmed recently that this smartwatch – codenamed Orbis – would be announced at MWC next month,” SamMobile reports. “Today, we have some interesting info on the Orbis (that’s what we will call it from here on out) and its design – according to our sources, the Orbis will feature both a crown-shaped power button and a rotating bezel ring on top.”
“Apple has made quite a big deal of the digital crown that is featured on the Apple Watch, and while Samsung is matching Apple in the fact that the power button on the Orbis will be crown-shaped, the company is not adding any specific functionality on the crown,” SamMobile reports. “Instead, those functions will be delegated to the rotating bezel ring on the top of the watch. We’ve seen a couple of patent applications which revealed that Samsung is working on a concept smartwatch with such a bezel ring, and it looks like it will debut on the company’s upcoming smartwatch.”
SamMobile reports, “Like Apple’s digital crown, things like zooming in and out of pictures and scrolling through lists could be achieved by rotating the ring; it could also allow for functions like selecting the time when setting an alarm.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a miracle the brain-dead mimics didn’t just knock off Apple’s patented Digital Crown wholesale.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Samsung: it boggles the mind! Is there no end to your blatant, copycat style? I guess not…
What is sad is that oonce Samsung release this copy cat zooming bevel the Android crowd is going to say this was obvious, just like the pinch and zoom and slide to unlock was obvious with the iPhone. Before the iPhone phones did not have pinch and zoom and slide to unlock. History will repeat itself again. Absolute travesty. Asian manufacturers copy but do not innovate.
There is prior art for the use of zooming by rotating so it would be a mistake to call it copying.. Rather it would be hard to patent or at the same level as swipe to unlock since they can both movements can be attributed to common physical machines already in existence. One off the top of my head would be professional camera zoom lenses.. If anything I was curious why Motorola didn’t decide on implementing that gesture on their watch even if it wasn’t a physical control.
Brilliant (and true)!
Could Apple be imposing on Samsung, a “non-copycatting” clause associated with any future contracts for chip manufacturing? Hence, a rotating ring and not a digital crown.
xiaomi samsunged samsung with their ‘note’ clone. Korean Karma
Even Samsung’s copying was copied from Microsoft.