Last year, during IFA 2014 in Berlin, ASUS entered the Android Wear arena with the ZenWatch, a good-looking smartwatch that offered useful features in a premium timepiece. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s easily one of the best-looking square smartwatches available on the market and it seems like ASUS is serious about becoming a name in the wearable technology arena. We’ve already heard that ASUS plans to release some more wearable technology this year, but now it sounds like they have big plans for their next generation ZenWatch.
According to Focus Taiwan, Johnny Shih – ASUSTek Chairman – told Press during the company’s year-end party that the ZenWatch is a device with a lot of potential. That potential according to Shih, is to increase battery life on the watch for it to last up to 7 days on a single charge. Right now, ASUS promises up to 2 days worth of life on a single charge from the current ZenWatch, which is itself not too bad. To achieve that goal, Shih says that the device would become more simplistic and live up to its name of smartphone companion, rather than become a gadget in its own right.
How ASUS hope to accomplish this is beyond us, but with dedicated chips for smartwatches it’s easy to see battery life increase, but not by this much. Right now, the majority of Android Wear watches use a Snapdragon 400, the same sort of chip found in devices like the Moto G. Sure, it’s a modified version, but it wasn’t designed for wrist-mounted computers. Going forward, dedicated chips could greatly reduce the amount of battery drain put onto these small batteries. Right now though, it’s hard to see how ASUS could achieve this in a 2015 model of the watch, but it’ll be interesting to see them try. Of course, we also need to take into account that Mr Shih is certainly the type of Chairman to dream and drum up enthusiasm among the Press and his employees, so there’s a good chance this is all just wishful thinking.