A new Motorola-branded smartwatch, the Moto Watch 100, has been in the works for months now, with the chip shortage being a major factor in its delay. Now, the wearable is on the cusp of launch — and a new leak from Evan Blass (@evleaks on Twitter) says it may not be running Google’s Wear OS as expected.
The Moto Watch 100 is a cheap Motorola-branded watch by CE Brands that’s had some of its specifications leak earlier. As far as hardware goes, it will be quite standard, should the rumors pan out. It’ll be a light watch at 29 grams, with a 355mAh battery and support for Bluetooth 5.0. All the old familiar sensors, from accelerometers to gyroscopes, are there, and it’ll be a fitness-focused watch. What is interesting about this watch is the alleged choice of operating system. Rather than adopting Google’s Wear OS as expected, the Motorola Watch 100 will, according to Blass, run an all-new Moto Watch OS.
The Motorola smartwatch brand owner is not the only smartwatch maker to roll out its own operating system. Another prominent Android phone maker, OnePlus, has done so recently with the OnePlus Watch and its real-time operating system (RTOS). The main disadvantage with this approach is that there is a lack of third-party app support compared to more mainstream smartwatches. When one considers how smartwatches end up being used in practice, it may not be such a huge loss if the basic fitness-tracking features sync up with your smartphone.
It may be all the same to your average person, but this poses a challenge for Google despite Samsung recently returning to the fold. Smartphone makers are used to making Android phones simply because they have no real choice. With Wear OS-powered watches being massively outsold by the Apple Watch (and Google’s own lackadaisical treatment of the platform), watchmakers may try to break away from Google.
Even with Google’s Wear OS 3 being by all accounts an excellent revamp, the smartwatch market might still end up fragmented between different unrelated operating systems for the foreseeable future.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.