The smartwatch market and the whole wearable scene in general is blowing up this month, with announcements of a shedload of Android Wear devices at IFA 2014, a rumored iWatch from Apple (maybe…) and of course the public sale of Google Glass just the other day, as well as other manufacturers getting their wearables out there, such as Samsung’s Tizen watches.
Unfortunately, there has been one casualty in the smartwatch game, HTC’s purported smartwatch, allegedly based on an earlier Qualcomm model. The watch was apparently abandoned by the company recently, as sources have said to Pocket lint.
Apparently the watch from HTC was meant to use a colour e ink display, similar to an Amazon Kindle. E-ink creates flat, non shiny screens, sort of like an etch a sketch screen, whose opacity makes them perfect for reducing glare from bright light sources. Colored e-ink is the cutting edge of the technology, but its proven had to implement currently.
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The Qualcomm Mirasol technology was to be deployed in the Qualcomm Toq, a watch which apparently HTC were to rework for the current market. The company may have abandoned the plans to rebrand and rework the Toq after the myriad of competing products being released.
The decision may also have been due to the timing. Reworking the Toq may have been a good idea at the time, with the onboard technology and features adequate for 6 months or so ago, but in the last few months the requirements for a smartwatch to compete have been raised considerably.
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We’ve already seen LG rebrand and re-release the G Watch as the G Watch 2 to compensate for technology advancement, after the original was out for barely a month. This is how fast the wearable market is moving, and it seems that unfortunately HTC were swept off their feet with an outdated device.
There was a rumor going around that HTC were manufacturing a smartwatch in February, with HTC apparently showing a prototype device ‘accidentally’ in a video. A mock up was also prepared by evleaks when a tip came in about the watch, however now it seems the plans have been squashed for the time being. Maybe next year, HTC.
Source: Pocket Lint
Via: Stuff