HTC One Wear tipped as smart watch rival to Moto 360

sincity · May 30, 2014

Wearables are all the rage with consumer electronics companies these days, and HTC isn't about to sit on the sidelines and watch (pun intended) the likes of Motorola or Samsung bask in all the glory.

TK Tech News filed a report from Taiwan today, with sources there revealing the extent of HTC's ambitions to jump squarely into the ever-crowded smartwatch market with a device tentatively known as One Wear.

Expected to launch in late August or early September of this year, the gadget was apparently demonstrated to the lucky folks at TK, who described it as featuring a round design similar to Motorola Mobility's upcoming Moto 360.

Furthermore, HTC appears to be planning to release both "polycarbonate and metal flavors" of the One Wear, an approach that seems to be working out well for the Taiwanese manufacturer with its HTC One (M8) smartphone line.

What to Wear?

Although the initial report stopped short of revealing what HTC's smartwatch might actually look like, SlashGear did some additional digging and turned up the images above.

One appears to show part of a metallic wristband presumably attached to the One Wear, while the other shows a trio of icons for notebook, music and camera apps, although they curiously seem to be formatted for a square display.

While it seems unlikely HTC would incorporate an actual camera lens into the One Wear as Samsung did with the Galaxy Gear, the report suggests the icon could indicate some kind of "remote shutter button," presumably capable of controlling the camera of a connected HTC smartphone.

Last but not least, the followup report claims HTC One Wear will be powered by Google's fledgling Android Wear software platform - not a big surprise, given everyone but the world's largest Android hardware maker Samsung appears to be jumping on that bandwagon.