Samsung may finally have some rivalry in the Android-compatible wearables department — though it’s pretty easy at this point as the Galaxy Watch 4 is one of the few smartwatches worth buying. The competition comes from an unlikely brand.
Remember the Moto 360? No, not the Motorola-made smartwatch. I mean this Moto 360, which was a Wear OS smartwatch made by eBuyNow, a company that has described itself as “the most ubiquitous consumer electronics vertical you’ve never heard of.” Under CE Brands, the company has announced a new smartwatch, the Moto Watch 100. And although it’s compatible with Android, it is not a Wear OS device.
The $US100 (A$137) Moto Watch 100 seems to be a budget-friendly alternative for folks who want a smartwatch without spending hundreds of dollars. The device has a 42mm aluminium case and a 20mm quick-release band, which makes it easy to add a pop of colour to the otherwise bland watch chassis shown in the press images. It has a 1.3-inch circular LCD display and offers a few essential health-tracking features, including heart rate and blood oxygen level monitoring, which have become standard on the latest smartwatches. The Moto Watch 100 is also splash-proof, sweat-proof, and built to withstand 50m of atmospheric pressure. It offers water resistance of up to 5ATM.
Curiously, unlike its predecessors, the Moto Watch 100 doesn’t run Google and Samsung’s new version of Wear OS, or even Google’s old version of Wear OS. Instead, it runs something called Moto Watch OS, which appears to rely wholly on a mobile app to track your movement and serve notifications. The screenshots in the official listing show a companion Android app, though there is an iOS app launching in December.
Perhaps Moto Watch OS is what helps the watch offer such incredible battery life, as the press release claims. The Moto Watch 100 promises up to two weeks of full-time battery use from one 60-minute charge on its 355 mAh battery.
A majority of the Moto Watch 100’s specs came out less than a day ago at 91Mobiles, following previous reports that there were likely to be more Moto Watch releases on the horizon. Now that it’s officially available to preorder, it’ll be interesting to see if the Moto Watch 100 resonates with buyers. Google is in the process of overhauling its wearables software with Samsung on board, yet few watches actually run the new Wear OS. At this point, a cheap cross-platform watch with some solid health basics might be all that most people want.