Motorola might launch a new smartwatch model in a few months

Apr 3, 2015 09:01 GMT  ·  By

Motorola launched its first Moto 360 smartwatch back at IFA 2014 in September. The wearable was highly praised by reviewers and customers alike, due to its stylish design which heavily resembles a classic analog watch.

Anyway, since the Moto 360 is already about half a year old, the producing company is naturally striving towards providing a successor to it.

A while back, a photograph showing an unidentified Motorola smartwatch being transported in a briefcase made rounds online, so speculation arose that we were dealing with a possible successor to the famous timepiece.

This week, the folks at Phandroid have received an interesting tip from a popular app developer who spotted a mysterious Motorola Android Wear device pinging his developer console in Mundelein. The city is located not far from Motorola’s HQ in Chicago, Illinois, so he might be on to something here.

The next-gen Moto 360 makes a shy appearance

The wearable bears the codename “Smelt” and is apparently running Google’s latest and greatest, Android 5.1. More than that, the smartwatch seems to have a bumped-up 360 x 360 resolution (the soon-to-be-previous model only had 320 x 290) and is powered by a mysterious “armeabi-v7a.”

As far as the codename is concerned, if you Google “Smelt,” you’re told that the term is used to define a small fish species common in the North American Great Lakes and in the lakes and seas of the northern part of Europe.

Given the fact that the current Moto 360 model was codenamed “Minnow,” which refers to a small freshwater and saltwater fish, especially those used as fishing bait, we can be fairly sure that “Smelt” is a new smartwatch coming out from Motorola.

What should we expect from the next-gen Moto 360? Well, as we have already seen, its resolution will be a tad better and Motorola might decide to make the watch an all-metal affair.

Since this is Motorola’s second smartwatch, the company might choose to change the form factor as well. For example, Samsung, which is a champion in the smartwatch department, has launched wearables with square form factors, curved displays, and will soon roll out a round watch model of its own. So maybe the next-gen Moto 360 is going to be square, who knows?

Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch (4 Images)

Current Moto 360
Moto 360 promotional imageMoto 360 launched back in September
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