The Sony SmartWatch 3 was announced at IFA 2014 which means that the device will turn two-years old fairly soon. Despite the fact that the wearable in question is beginning to age, so far Sony has done a great job at keeping the smartwatch’s OS up to date with fresh software releases. Android Wear on the Sony SmartWatch 3 made the jump to Marshmallow earlier this year in April, and new reports from earlier this week reveal that the smartwatch in question is currently receiving a new Android Wear update designed to improve security and stability.
The latest software update for the Sony SmartWatch 3 is identified by build number “MWD49B”, and is packaged alongside the May 1st Android security update. Aside from security improvements, the update should include a handful of fixes related to GPS issues, and some users cited by XperiaBlog claim that the new software release also improves battery life. Last but not least, it appears that the reboot option is once again available in this new release. This wraps up the changelog, which means that the update is primarily designed to improve certain aspects under the hood and is less impressive – on the face of it – than the previous major release which bumped the entire Android Wear operating system to version 1.4; also referred to as Marshmallow for Android Wear.
For smartwatch enthusiasts who may not be too familiar with the Sony SmartWatch 3, the wearable in question is the direct successor of the Sony SmartWatch 2 launched in 2013, but unlike its predecessors the third model in the series is Sony’s first smartwatch to adopt Android Wear out of the box. In terms of hardware specifications the device sports a 1.6-inch TFT display with a resolution of 320 x 320 and a pixel density of roughly 283 pixels per inch, it draws processing power from a quad-core Cortex-A7-based CPU clocked at frequencies of up to 1.2 GHz, and is equipped with 512 MB of RAM along with 4 GB of internal memory. While Sony continues to keep the SmartWatch 3 up to date with new software releases, there have also been rumors to suggest that the company may be working on a fourth-generation SmartWatch for the end of 2016. However, nothing is known officially and the rumor mill is rather still, so for the time being the Sony SmartWatch 3 remains the pinnacle of the company’s wearable lineup.