Smartwatches are for the moment a niche market and not a bigger piece of the consumer pie. In earlier years only small producers like Pebble dared to venture into this territory, only in recent months the established brands like Samsung, Motorola, LG, Sony, ASUS and Apple decided to have a go at this. But truth be told, I think no one expected Alcatel to come up with such a device but now that it has, why not? The OneTouch smartwatch sports a pleasant enough design and is compatible with both iOS and Android and I find this bit interesting enough to give this device a second look. The comparison between the Moto 360 and Alcatel OneTouch is no accident as the two devices are very similar in design. And that says to me one thing: the round design for a smartwatch works.
The Alcatel OneTouch Watch isn’t your average Android Wear smartwatch either. Alcatel decided to use for this device its own in-house software which aided by a dedicated app connects to other devices. This means that the Alcatel watch has a larger area to spread among all the other Android and iOS devices and has the potential to stand against the other producers using Android Wear and even the Apple Watch. I guess that we’ll just have to wait and see here if this solution will get the support iOS and Android enjoy. Spec wise, the Alcatel OneTouch Watch is fairly decent: you get a 210 mAh battery, STM429 Microelectronics chipset, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, heart rate sensor, altimeter, accelerometer, gyroscope, and e-compass and is IP67 certified which fends off the accidental splash or dive.
Alcatel Onetouch Watch menu
The differences between the other smartwatches found on the market don’t stop here. The interface is simple, intuitive and straightforward and wakes up with a simple shake gesture revealing you a basic menu to switch features like sleep monitoring, activity tracking, heart rate monitoring, compass, phone locator, music control or weather forecast. By swiping from the bottom of the screen you can pull forth the notification tray showing you the available information from your iPhone or Android phone. Alcatel claims that the watch can run two days straight from a single charge which is done from the USB hub hidden inside the strap. When thinking that all of this $149(US version) worth is packed inside a 10.5mm thick stainless steel body I say this little bugger is worth a look. Expected to arrive in Q1 this year.