New Moto 360 and ZenWatch Wearables Looming

Android Wear has been around for roughly a year, and that means it’s about time for new devices featuring Google’s wearable operating system to start making their way to store shelves. This week, news of two such devices hit the web, though when they might actually make their retail debut is anybody’s guess.

For starters, a post on Droid-Life seems to have spotted the presence of Motorola’s follow-up to one of the buzziest smartwatches from 2014, the Moto 360. According to the post, a Motorola-made device with the model number BTMW03 appeared on Bluetooth SIG—the international body that oversees Bluetooth standard development and works with manufacturers who apply for Bluetooth licenses.

So what makes that device sound like the new Moto 360? Partly because it’s listed as an “Android” device, and the original Moto 360 had the model number BTMW01. I have no idea why Motorola would skip from 01 to 03—maybe a device known internally as BTMW02 was in development but got scratched in favor of something more advanced.

We’ve seen other bits of evidence for a new Motorola-made wearable appear on the web before, specifically back in April. At that time, a device with the codename “Smelt” pinged an app-maker’s developer console with a display and resolution that sounded a lot like another round faced smartwatch.

Then there’s the follow-up to the ZenWatch from Asus, which is a lot more definitive in terms of its development and some details. A post on FocusTaiwan (via 9to5Google) reports that Asustek’s CEO Jerry Shen briefed the press that we’ll see the next ZenWatch running Android Wear at Computex Taipai in June. That’ll be just a few days after Google I/O, so it seems possible that Google might actually have the new ZenWatch to show off at its conference. Shen didn’t say that it would debut at Computex, just that it would be showcased. The ZenWatch 2 would then go on sale in the third quarter, which is a little earlier than the first ZenWatch’s Q4 release a year earlier.

According to the report, the new ZenWatch will have a battery that’ll last up to four days on a single charge—even though Shen is shooting for a wearable that can last for seven days.

Other than that, there’s not much new to learn about the ZenWatch, other than the fact that it is, indeed, coming soon, and we’ll get our first glimpse of it in the next few weeks one way or another.

Both devices are facing some pretty stiff competition in the form of other Android Wear devices, not to mention the current king of wearables, the Apple Watch. Motorola and Asus both will have their work cut out for them if they hope to stay relevant in an industry that looks like it belongs to Apple. But maybe the huge response the Apple Watch has seen will inspire interest in wearables that wasn’t there a year ago.

[Sources: Droid-Life, FocusTaiwan]