Photos of the Samsung Galaxy Gear prototype, more details leaked

It’s no secret that Samsung is planning to unveil its first smartwatch— Galaxy Gear— on September 4 at IFA in Berlin alongside the Galaxy Note III. We’ve already seen various reports giving us a glimpse at some of the features and specifications on the wearable device, but now for the first time some photos of the smartwatch have surfaced online.

According to VentureBeat, which has leaked photos of a prototype Samsung sent to various developers, the Galaxy Gear is rectangular in shape with rounded corners. It comes with large bezels on the top and bottom and sports a 3-inch high-quality OLED display. The device, it is said, can connect to Samsung’s devices in its Galaxy S series and will use Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet and e-mail and will also have health related apps. The report confirms the presence of a 4-megapixel camera and a speaker in the strap.

Since VentureBeat published this story, GigaOM has published an update saying that the device seen in the photos is an early prototype meant for developers and the final version will be completely different. It has also come across some features saying that the smartwatch will use Bluetooth LE to connect to smartphones and hence is also likely to be compatible with Apple’s iPhone 5 along with other Android devices. It will run on a modified version of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and can be used for phone calls as well. One disappointing factor revealed is that the watch’s battery is said to only last for about 24 hours of light usage, which drastically comes down to 10 hours with heavy use.

Most of the other features remain consistent with what we’ve reported earlier. It will come with a 3-inch OLED display, powered by a dual-core processor and will run on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean with the keyboard feature turned off. It will have a camera, microphone and tiny speakers integrated into the strap and will connect to phones using built-in NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 LE. The smartwatch won’t have its own browser and will need the phone to tether to the Internet.