Even the cheapest fully-featured, colour-screened smartwatch requires a solid outlay of funds, but Alcatel Onetouch claims to be creating a new market with its first wearable: “the affordable smartwatch.”
We’ve heard overtures of this sort before; for example, the Asus ZenWatch figured to undercut its Android Wear rivals, but by the time it launched, the price wasn’t nearly as low as anticipated. However, the Alcatel Onetouch Watch will purportedly be “a fraction of the cost of competitors.”
Alcatel plans to detail its intentions at CES 2015, but here’s what we know for now. The Watch has a fully round face, lacking the partially-obscured view offered by the similarly-shaped Moto 360, and offers multiple band options – and it looks like they should be interchangeable.
The Alcatel Watch will connect to Android phones for notifications and to act as a shutter button for paired device cameras, but the watch itself doesn’t look it will run Android Wear as its OS. It promises to have hardware sensors for fitness and health tracking, with heart rate monitoring seen in the image above.
For now, all we have are vague details, a render, and promises – what we don’t have are hardware specs, extensive functionality info, or any kind of pricing or availability details. Once we have those, we’ll know whether Alcatel’s Watch really has potential to be a smartwatch for the Android-toting masses.
