Mysterious Meizu smartwatch surfaces with possible October 21 launch date

Meizu’s mysterious smartwatch made another appearance on Chinese microblogging website Weibo earlier this week. It has been more than six months since we last heard about the smartwatch, and it appears to be ready to launch this month.

The four images captured at the undisclosed event show a functioning smartwatch, though there aren’t a lot of details on internals. The ‘Meizu’ logo is on the back, and it comes with a leather black strap. It appears to be running a fully-fledged smartwatch OS with custom watch-faces.

In the third image, we see some of the features that may be tied to the smartwatch. They include low radiation, high reliable baseband, and high quality voice. It may also be dust-proof and waterproof, like almost every smartwatch, according to the source.

Surprisingly, the Meizu smartwatch will not run Android Wear. The leak did not confirm which operating system it would run, but did say it wouldn’t be Android. Meizu’s last device (developed by InWatch) ran on Android, but the Chinese company has apparently dropped the operating system.

Meizu might be partnering with Samsung’s Tizen OS, which runs on a few Gear devices. YunOS is another potential platform for wearables, especially since Alibaba just co-announced a wearable with FiiSmart. Meizu might also take a shot at building its own smartwatch OS.

The smartwatch will supposedly launch alongside the Meizu Blue Charm Metal, a new all-metal smartphone rumored to arrive on October 21. Meizu has an event planned on the day, but hasn’t hinted at a wearable announcement. Blue Charm is meant to be a premium, low-cost brand for China. The smartwatch could follow that format, with a cheap price to win over customers. We’ll keep you updated here.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1hDbXIt
David Curry