Smartwatches are starting to crop up everywhere now. It seems like ever since the Pebble met with a great deal of success on Kickstarter, everyone wants in on the action. It’s rumored that companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft are among many planning to introduce a smart wristwatch to the market. It comes as no surprise then that Motorola is working on acquiring patents for a new smartwatch of their own.
The patent documents were discovered by PatentBolt, and accurately detail a Motorola smartwatch along with various features it may offer. Of course, it’s important to note that these are patent documents which means that the final product could end up being quite a bit different.
Motorola plans to develop a standalone device, that will work whether it’s paired to a handset or not. When you think about it, it makes a lot more sense than just simply tethering a smartwatch to a handset. Don’t worry though, it appears you will be able to connect device wirelessly to the watch, including a smartphone.
The documents mention that a Motorola smartwatch would support a plethora of advanced features like a wristwatch mode, desktop mode, health monitoring tools, a traditional clock mode, calendar mode, gaming mode and even a media player mode. Essentially, it’s going to be a mini smartphone that sits on your wrist if Motorola actually develops it.
Furthermore, Android is disclosed as the primary OS for such a device.
Apparently, Motorola also has plans to make the main dial of the smartwatch removable. The patents named it as a “detachable electronic module,” which would separate entirely from the wrist strap. Even more interesting is the fact that Motorola wants to implement unique technology that would allow the watch to detect when it’s covered by clothing. Perhaps, they’ll use some kind of ambient light sensor or something similar. For example, when you have your sleeve pulled down over the watch, it’s supposed to detect that and turn off the display to save the battery.
Additional features mentioned include a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 1.6-inch OLED touchscreen display (possibly flexible), mobile wireless support (CDMA, GSM, UMTS, and PTT) and 8GB of internal storage. An extra battery may even be kept inside the wrist strap.
All in all, this is starting to look like a real promising device. We’ll update with more information as soon as it’s available. Would you be interested in a smartwatch if it had all of these features?
The image above is Motorola’s current smartwatch the MOTOACTV.