Smartwatch

Mobvoi has released the 4G/LTE version of its TicWatch Pro to the European region. It costs €329.99 (about US$365) in its new market. However, its SIM functions can only be activated in Germany through this country's Vodafone division.

A few weeks ago, in spite of its SoC disadvantage, the Google Pixel 4 XL destroyed the OnePlus 7T in a resource-intensive transcoding test designed to reflect real-world performance. In a longer, more brutal test, the Pixel 4 XL is pitted against the LG V50, Asus ROG Phone 2, and OnePlus 7T. The results are...well, interesting.

A new study of wearable uptake in the US shows that 56% of its participants own such a device. Furthermore, another 13% of this group reported considering the purchase of one by 2020. This study's publication also contained some recommendation for Google's next moves in this game following its Fitbit acquisition.

Google has reportedly set up partnerships, or at least talks for partnerships, with various US banks and credit unions to offer a new kind of checking account linked to the Pay service. This may help it battle Apple, not to mention other bodies such as AliPay and Samsung Pay.

As 5G networks go live in more and more markets with each month, some questions regarding the health hazards that might come with this new technology remain unanswered. However, most 5G dangers that some websites have been warning us about for years are nothing more than myths that can be easily debunked.

The Amazfit Sports Watch 3 was released in China recently. However, its series is also marketed internationally as the Stratos line of sports-focused wearables. Its 3rd generation is now set for launch across multiple European countries later in November 2019.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the Apple Watch Series 6 will mark a switch to flexible circuit boards made of liquid crystal polymer. These new circuit boards should make the Series 6 noticeable faster than the Series 5 and may breath new life into the stagnant wearable brand.

The Android and iOS-compatible smartwatch promises 15 days of battery life, a plastic case, and a 240 x 240 resolution display for just under $80 USD.

Apple continues to dominate the smartwatch market; 47.9% of smartwatches sold in Q3 2019 were from Apple. The company enjoyed a 51% year-over-year growth from Q3 2018, bumping sales to 6.8 million units during the past quarter. Samsung and Fitbit trailed behind Apple with 1.9 and 1.6 million units sold, respectively, in Q3 2019.

The Xiaomi Mi Watch is here, and it costs just 1,299 CNY (~US$170). The spitting image of the Apple Watch runs Wear OS, although the MIUI version of it and features a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset. The watch has a 570 mAh battery too that should last up to two days between charges. The Xiaomi Mi Watch will go on sale next week.

Apple continues to dominate the smartwatch market, but is its latest iteration the best device of its kind? Part fashion accessory, part lifestyle smartwatch, but not a professional fitness tracker. We expected better battery life from a device that costs a minimum of US$399 too.

Qualcomm has announced the results for its fiscal year, which ended on September 29, 2019. Its revenues came in at US$24.3 billion, or 7% more year-on-year (YoY). The company also made a total of $4.8 billion in the last quarter of this year (4Q2019), although this is a 50% reduction compared to 3Q2019.

Samsung's Developer Conference (SDC) 2019 contained numerous interesting announcements, not the least that Tizen OS for TVs can be ported to third-party devices. In addition, there are now additional developer-friendly facilities for this part of the OEM's ecosystem. They include more granular user opt-outs for ads.

The Fossil Hybrid HR is a new hybrid smartwatch that mixed the traditional face and hands of a mechanical watch with an E Ink display for notification and fitness tracking information. The watch runs proprietary software rather than Wear OS, limiting the feature set. However, the Hybrid HR can still sync with Google Fit for fitness tracking.

Xiaomi has been dropping more spec-related hints as to what the Mi TV 5 will be capable of in the run-up to its launch. According to the OEM, it will be 4K and have 108% of the NTSC color gamut. It will also have a faster processor, as well as more RAM and storage compared to the average Android TV.

Google has released a statement on its agreement to buy the wearables company Fitbit at a price of US$2.1 billion. The Mountain View may intend to use this acquisition to boost Wear OS. This deal may see the 2 companies collaborate on various aspects of these devices in the future.

A new Moto 360 smartwatch was unveiled today, but it won't be made by Motorola. Rather, a company called eBuyNow has purchased the rights to the Moto 360 brand and will manufacture the new smartwatch. The Moto 360 3rd generation will be available for preorder in November and in stores in December for US $350.

A leak from earlier in 2019 suggested that the next processor designed for Wear OS devices would be based on the Snapdragon 429, an SoC that features in low-end phones and tablets. It was hypothesized to be called the Wear 2700. However, code recently added to a Qualcomm kernel source code database suggests that it is in fact to be known as the 3300 instead.

Google’s parent company Alphabet is said to be deep in negotiations to buy fitness wearables company Fitbit. Fitbit had indicated late last month that it was interested in a sale of the company and it looks like it might likely end up either as part of Google’s product lineup or as a standalone Alphabet backed brand.

The "Mi Watch" is the likely name of Xiaomi's next wearable. The OEM has indicated that it is to be released on November 5, 2019, alongside the Mi TV 5 and Mi CC9 Pro. This new product is also projected to be a Wear OS device.

The consumer-grade security development group Nok Nok Labs has unveiled its new SDK. It asserts that it is the first such app software capable of conferring FIDO-based authentication on smartwatches. This, then, may help users depend more on their wearable for more functions typically carried out on a phone.

Does the Amazfit GTS look familiar to you? Well, while it may look like the spitting image of the Apple Watch, it is actually the latest smartwatch by Huami, Xiaomi's sister company. The device is a snip at around ~US$140 in most markets and packs plenty of features, but its software failed to impress us out of the box.

The Honor Band incorporates a 0.96-inch colour touchscreen display that operates at a resolution of 160 x 80. The fitness tracker supports NFC, along with heart rate, sleep patterns and Sp02 monitoring. The band is up to 5 ATM water-resistant too and launches at CNY 159 (~US$22), with a pre-sale starting today. The company has also unveiled the xSport Pro, a new pair of wireless in-ear headphones.

A new study into user attitudes towards wearables found that health tracking is the most popular use of this electronics category. 36% of those polled reported concerns that these functions may not live up to reality, however. 10% of the respondents also said they worried about data security on these devices.

The Huawei Watch GT 2 has now been released, with our review following in tow too. While the successor to the Watch GT is certainly appealing, it suffers from some glaring issues too.

The Pixel 4 XL's 90 Hz QHD+ AMOLED display has been hailed for its impressive quality, even winning DisplayMate's "Best Smartphone Display" award. That raises a few questions, of course, the most important being: who exactly made the phone's display?

Fitbit has expanded access to its Spotify app to the first-generation Versa and Versa Lite. The Ionic fitness watch is also included in this update. It enables these wearables to manage playback and podcasts on the music streaming platform, and to control other devices that can use the same.

1More is the ODM responsible for Xiaomi's audio wearables. However, it also releases these products under its own brand. The latest of these are truly wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC).

At its Made by Google 2019 event, Google finally took wraps off the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones. The new Pixel 4 series comes with features such as a Soli radar chip for advanced hands-free gestures, on-device AI and voice processing, and improved AI-assisted cameras. The Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL can be pre-ordered starting today and will be shipping from October 24.

The Amazfit GTS has made its way to India, having been unveiled in China earlier this year. The Apple Watch clone features a 1.65-inch and 348 x 442 AMOLED panel, which sits within a 43.25 x 36.25 x 9.4 mm chassis. The 5 ATM water-resistant smartwatch also weighs 27.2 g without a strap and is available on Amazon.in for ₹9,999 (~US$140).

The Honor Band 5 convinced us during our tests and is a good fitness tracker package at an affordable cost. The device offers more than the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 does in our opinion too, despite its shortcomings. One may have people looking elsewhere, though.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active 2 has been on the market for a weeks but its special Under Armour Edition has been MIA until now. The Apple Watch Nike challenger has finally hit the market in the US with its global rollout also underway

It was only a few days ago that Xiaomi unveiled the Mi Mix Alpha to a stunned global audience. The company has now rolled out an unboxing video that also answers the question of how the nearly all-glass, all-display device will be protected.

The PRO TREK Smart WSD-F21HR is a new Casio watch with a heart-rate monitor, as well as a range of other sensors for outdoor functions and general location management. It has a 1.32-inch dual display to save battery, a microphone and Wear OS.

The Manifest has conducted a study to find out which name was most familiar in the wearables sphere. 77% of those polled were able to name Fitbit in this context, compared to 73% for the next most recognized name ("Apple Watch"). Ironically, the latter sold a million more units in the second quarter of 2019 (2Q2019) than the former.

Xiaomi normally releases fitness bands or watches that run proprietary apps rather than a dedicated, familiar OS. A tech blog may have found evidence that this may change soon. It claims to have detected code in the Wear OS phone app that points to upcoming compatible products from this OEM.

Google has announced that future updates will make it more difficult to activate the Assistant by mistake. The company has also taken pains to reassure users that their audio data will not be collected by default in the same release. A specific opt-in determines whether the same will be analysed by humans or not.

Smart materials may prove to be the basis of the electronic components of the future. Their market's value was estimated at US$36 billion in 2017. That figure is now thought to grow until it hits $127 billion in 7 years from now.

The Huawei Watch GT 2 is this OEM's latest smartwatch. It has a 1.39-inch HD OLED display encased in "3D Glass". It comes in 42 and 46 millimeter (mm) variants, and is rated for 2 weeks of battery life.

Business Insider has published a new report that claims to offer an insight into the development of Google-brand smartwatches. It also outlines the nature of the "secret" technology purchased by this company from Fossil, which allegedly results in hybrid devices that are removed from the pure Wear OS device that may be expected of a first-gen Pixel Watch.

The PRT-B50 is a new PRO TREK model that can connect to a smartphone app via Bluetooth. Unlike some other Casio watches with this ability, however, this new product has a non-digital watchface. Its physical hands can be used to do things such as point to a saved location.

The PineTime is the latest side project of PINE64, the company behind the PineBook Pro and PinePhone. The smartwatch will integrate a Nordic nF52832 SoC and will support Bluetooth 5, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, ANT and NFC. The device will include a heart rate monitor too, along with multi-day battery life and a zinc alloy and plastic chassis. The PineTime will cost US$25, with PINE64 encouraging ARM Mbed and FreeRTOS developers to join the project too.

Huawei has more up its sleeve for its next launch event than just the Mate 30 series. In anticipation of this Thursday's event in Munich, the Chinese company has teased the successor to the Watch GT, aptly named the Watch GT 2. Read on to see what the video reveals and what we know so far about Huawei's next smartwatch.

The Google Camera app v7 has leaked out and has been torn down. This has resulted in references to a slew of new abilities that may debut in the Pixel 4 and 4XL. They include the Mountain View's versions of Samsung's Motion Blur and Audio Zoom. They may also extend to real-time HDR edits, phone astrophotography and a new form of depth-perception.

Among a host of other revelations at the recent Apple Special Event, the Cupertino company also officially announced the Apple Watch Series 5. The latest iteration of the highly successful smartwatch features an Always-On Retina display and comes in a huge range of customizable options. Prices start from US$399 for the basic 40 mm space-gray aluminum case with sport band GPS-only model (requires iPhone connection).

The Huawei Watch GT is a popular wearable in which the in-house software LiteOS had its debut. Now, the respected leaker Roland Quandt asserts that it is to get a second generation. This smartwatch will apparently have a larger battery than its predecessor.