ZTE, a Chinese smartphone maker, is determined to extend its reach in all possible technical domains by the end of this year and is showing off its latest BlueWatch under the wearable tech space at CES 2014.
The International Consumer Electronics Show 2014, hosted a wide range of electronic gadgets ranging from smartphones to TVs to wearable tech. The show is the most important event for manufacturers to exhibit their plans for the year and for the consumers to see the future of tech. ZTE has made a promising debut with a range of products. Be it the modular Eco-Mobius concept phone or voice controlled flagship smartphone, ZTE is clearly making its presence felt at the event. The Chinese manufacturer also showed off its first wearable smartwatch, the BlueWatch, at the event.
ZTE's new smartwatch is a decent wearable tech with reasonable number of features, which have already debuted in last year's Pebble smartwatch. The new entry will face stiff competition from the highly successful Pebble, which has managed to push more than 300,000 units to date. ZTE says the BlueWatch is still a prototype and the final design is yet to be finalized.
The current version of the BlueWatch sports a 1.26-inches e-paper display with a 144 x 168 screen resolution and charges via a magnetically-attached cable on the left side. It features four physical buttons, with three placed on the right side and the power button on the left. Under the hood, BlueWatch is powered by a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor that is aided by a 128KB of RAM and 1GB internal storage. Apps like Facebook, Twitter work on the watch and it shows weather, calendar, email, text and call notifications from a paired smartphone, according to Slash Gear.
The pricing and the availability of the BlueWatch is yet to be announced. If the company wants to thrive in the wearable tech industry with Pebble-like features and design, it must either offer a price lower than Pebble or up the game with innovative ideas.
The news of a smartwatch does not come as a complete surprise as the company's marketing lead Lu Qianhao, in an interview with WSJ in November, had revealed plans of launching a smartwatch in the first quarter of 2014. He said that the smartwatch will hit the market as early as second quarter.
