In a year, we’ve gone to having one or two startup smartwatch companies to a sea of offerings before us, from companies as big as Google all the way down to Omate, a startup looking to make your wrist as brilliant as possible. At its core, the TrueSmart is likely one of the most powerful smartwatches on the market. Powered by Android 4.2, the TrueSmart has its own SD card and SIM card, complete… Read More
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After months of waiting and watching for the Omate TrueSmart smartwatch to appear in the wild, it’s finally appeared here at CES 2014. What we’ve got here is a smartwatch … Continue reading
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While most smartwatches like the Pebble and the Galaxy Gear can’t live up to their true potential without the assistance of a smartphone, the Omate TrueSmart is a full-fledged calling and texting machine right out of the box. We’ve seen a couple of other such smartwatches of course, but the TrueSmart sets itself apart with a design that’s both water- and scratch-resistant, a unique UI that runs full-on Android 4.2 and most intriguing to us, a partnership with Syntellia’s Fleksy keyboard so that you can actually type coherently on such a tiny screen.
We had a brief hands-on with the TrueSmart at the Glazed conference in San Francisco, and we’ll admit to a bit of skepticism that we’d be able to do much with a 1.54-inch screen. However, we did manage to flip through the four-icon menu without too much trouble. The icons were large enough for us to tap, and we simply had to slide our finger to the left to go to the previous screen. It refused to recognize our swipes on occasion, but hopefully that’s just due to it being a pre-production unit.%Gallery-slideshow99594%
Filed under: Wearables
Source: Omate
This week the team at Omate have let it be known that they’re aiming to be one of the first fully-functional wrist-based boomboxes in the world, not just one of the newest smartwatches on the market this upcoming season. Here in the latest entry in our extended interview session with Omate’s top minds, we’re speaking […]
Though the Omate TrueSmart smartwatch has only just been shown in is final form for the public, co-founder Nick N.M. Yap spoke with SlashGear this week about a wide open future for the group in all things wearable. Speaking up this week on the TrueSmart smartwatch initially, then on the company’s current wildly successful connection […]
While the masses decide whether or not they’ll be slapping a smartwatch on their wrist this upcoming wearable computers season, the team behind Omate TrueSmart are hard at work on the details. This week SlashGear presents an extended interview with Omate’s own Nick N.M. Yap, one of three of the company’s founders and major supporter […]
The Ubuntu Edge may have been the most successful crowdfunding campaign in history, but that doesn’t mean it made its goal. Meanwhile, yet another smartwatch joined the fray this week, coaxing John’s money out of his wallet by being just a tad “smarter” than the rest. Makerbot released a scanner this week called the Digitizer, which lets you scan objects to then print them, but we’re not sure we’re down with the high price tag. And last, but certainly not least, we all pretty much agree that a gold iPhone will make its way into the world come September 10.
We discuss all this and more on the latest episode of the TC Gadgets podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington, Natasha Lomas and Romain Dillet.
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Post-Pebble‘s $10.2 million Kickstarter record, the smartwatch launches keep on coming. And coming. And coming. And coming. And probably coming next month, in Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Gear’ case. The latest wrist-affixed contender to step up for a slice of smartwatch pie is called Omate TrueSmart, and is the creation of a New York based startup.
Omate Kickstarter campaigned launched yesterday — and has already blasted past the initial $100,000 funding target, with $144,000+ and counting. Not bad going for such a nascent yet crowded space.
So what’s the big deal about Omate? Notably it’s not just a smartphone accessory but includes a 3G radio so if you add a micro-SIM it can be a standalone mobile phone in its own right. Assuming you want to talk into your wrist. And even if you don’t it can function as a phone companion, using the on board Bluetooth 4.0 or Wi-Fi.
Omate also runs a relatively up-to-date version of Android, v4.2.2, skinned with a wrist-friendly UI of course, so that means four icons on the screen at once — although the platform is also open and hackable, according to its creators.
Running Android potentially means access to lots of apps — albeit, most are clearly going to need to be customised to fit its 1.54 inch screen (it’s up in the air whether Omate will have access to Google Play, at this point). The device will apparently come with a “full set of pre-qualified Android applications”, according to the listing, with no specific list as yet. Although “social media messaging” is mentioned in the listing and there’s a Facebook screenshot so that’s one heavy hint.
The Kickstarter campaign also mentions generic “sports apps”, and activity tracking is clearly a focus for Omate’s creators — likely so they can tap into the quantified health trend. The watch includes GPS — so would presumably be able to crunch basic activity data such as distance, pace etc. Add to that, it’s water-resistant (IP67) and dust-resistant so should take some rugged, outdoor use.
Also on board: a 5MP camera so you can snap up-nostril shots of yourself running to share to your social networks, presumably (Skype videocalling apparently won’t be supported).
The watch is powered by a dual-core 1.3GHz chip. Memory is 512MB with 4GB of storage, expandable by microSD up to 32GB. There’s no word on battery life if you’re actually using the watch but its 600 mAh cell is apparently good for up to 100 hours on standby. Eking decent battery life out of a wrist-mounted device remains a core challenge for smartwatches. The smartest smartwatch in the world is only going to be as useful as its useful battery life is long.
The Omate’s price tag is around the $199 mark, with all $179 early bird pledges gone and only a few remaining at the $189 level. Its makers rather ambitiously reckon they will be ready to ship the first batch to backers come October.
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