New Motorola-branded smartwatches spotted with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100
Update 1 (03/02/2021 @ 1:15 PM ET): We’ve learned more details about the two upcoming Motorola smartwatches. Click here for information. The article as published on February 28, 2021, is preserved below.
Motorola has undergone several transitions to its smartphone lineup, which has inadvertently resulted in a more complicated branding and naming scheme (which is never good). But its smartwatch division has taken an interesting turn. The last time we saw a Motorola smartwatch, it wasn’t actually made by Motorola. Rather, it was made by a company called eBuyNow, and Motorola only licensed its brand name. Now, a new generation of Motorola-branded smartwatches is coming, but they’re quite different offerings compared to what we’ve seen before. Maybe that’s for the better or maybe that’s for the worse, but it’s different nonetheless.
Not gonna claim this is an exclusive since I got it from a sales presentation, but seems like a square-ish Moto Watch and a new @moto360 are coming soon. pic.twitter.com/2DWY758GWp
— Felipe Berhau (@FelipeBerhau) February 26, 2021
The first thing we should note here is that this isn’t really a leak. This news comes from a public sales presentation that was first highlighted by Felipe Berhau on Twitter. (You can see it here, via 9to5Google). Onto the watches themselves, they don’t seem to feature the previous branding anywhere (that’s why we noted that these are Moto-branded smartwatches). Instead, the presentation says “Moto Watch & One”, suggesting that we’ll have a Moto Watch and a Moto One watch.
Moto G smartwatch pic.twitter.com/dtDqdVzaTh
— Felipe Berhau (@FelipeBerhau) February 26, 2021
There’s also a third watch which will apparently be called the “Moto G” smartwatch. The Moto G series of smartphones consist of mid-range and low-end devices, so a G watch in this case may be a lower-end smartwatch. Presumably, a “Moto One” smartwatch would follow overall the same line the One series of smartphones follows, while a Moto Watch would probably be the proper flagship smartwatch in the lineup. Again, this is just speculation based on the images.
These smartwatches, just like the last Moto 360 smartwatch, are not made by Motorola in-house but will be sold under the Moto branding if they reach the market. We don’t know when these smartwatches will be reaching the market or if they’ll reach it at all, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Update: Snapdragon Wear 4100, Wireless Charging, and Wear OS
Eagle-eyed Redditors over on the /r/WearOS subreddit have discovered that the smartwatches shown in eBuyNow’s presentation have “Snapdragon Wear 4100” inscribed on the bottom. In addition, there’s also inscriptions for “NFC”, “5ATM”, and “GPS”, which suggests it’ll support contactless payments, survive at up to 5ATM of water pressure, and support location tracking. We can also see wireless charging coils in the image. All in all, this suggests that the new Motorola-branded smartwatches will have some exciting features. When it launches, it may also be one of the best-performing Wear OS smartwatches on the market thanks to the inclusion of the Snapdragon Wear 4100, which also powers the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3.
