14 DAY TRIAL // There are plenty of smartwatches on the market today, but some might not appeal to customers due to aesthetic reasons, while others are ridiculously overpriced. It’s the case of devices such as the Apple Watch or Samsung Gear S selling for around $349 / €278, which will certainly break your piggy bank.
But most brand vendors persist in their belief that customers want and need smartwatches. And they might as well be right if prices for these devices were to be lower.
Pipo waltzes in the smartwatch market
Like you’d expect, Chinese OEMs are also eying the smartwatch market as well and this is a good thing, since prices for these products are expected to be a lot lower. For example, Xiaomi’s MiBand fitness tracker can be purchased for $13 / €10.
On the official Pipo forum, a “knowledgeable” user has posted a few photos of what’s deemed to be Pipo’s first fitness tracker / smartwatch. We’re not sure whether it’s a fitness band or smartwatch but by the looks of it, it will be an intelligent timepiece.
We’re also not given all the specifications of the watch, but given that we have the images at our disposal, we can speculate a little bit. For starters, the display is round (it could be e-Ink), while the black strap (additional colors might be offered) is rubberized and adjustable depending on the wearer’s wrist.
Pipo’s smartwatch will be riddled with sensors that allow it to detect movement and will count calories lost, quality of sleep, the intensity of UV rays (exposing it to the sunlight for 5 seconds) and the ambient temperature.
Pipo's wearable will double as a smartphone
Like the Samsung Gear S, the watch will be able to make calls and control the playback the music. It will also be able act as a fitness tracker to help you remain healthy.
As we told you, we don’t know much about the internal specifications (hardware / software) of the first Pipo smartwatch. But the report speculates that the Pipo smartwatch will cost around $20 / €15, which is super affordable given that the cheapest smartwatch coming from a brand vendor is around $199 / €158.
It will be interesting to see how long of a battery life the Pipo smartwatch will be able to sustain; hopefully, it's going to be around 8 hours.
Pipo is a company well known for its tablet products, but will the Chinese maker be able to infiltrate itself in the already crowded smartwatch ecosystem? Time will tell.
