Here's what ZTE's first-ever Android Wear smartwatch -- the Quartz -- may look like

Kārlis Dambrāns/123rf

With Android Wear 2.0 out now, more and more manufacturers are announcing smartwatches for Google’s revamped operating system. ZTE is reportedly jumping on the bandwagon with its first-ever smartwatch running Android Wear, which may be unveiled within a few months.

According to a report from VentureBeat written by well-known leaker Evan Blass, the new ZTE watch will be called the ZTE Quartz, and it was recently spotted getting its Bluetooth certification with the model number ZW10. The news isn’t all that surprising — we heard in January that ZTE would launch a smartwatch this year from ZTE USA CEO Lixin Cheng.

Design

So what will the new watch look like? We got our first idea of the Quartz’s design back in February, when VentureBeat revealed an image from promotional materials. It showed a device that could be mistaken for a classy-looking non-smartwatch, and thanks to Android Police, we now have photos of what looks to be the real thing.

Android Police

As we can infer in these pictures, the Quartz sports a metal body with a black, textured band. There’s a small button visible on the right side of the watch, and it doesn’t appear to be a rotating dial. The charging cradle looks as though it’s of the standard, four-pin variety. We can’t verify the authenticity of the photo.

Specs

The Quartz could offer a little more functionality than most other smartwatches — according to Bluetooth SIG, the device will offer 3G cellular connectivity to complement Wi-Fi, meaning that it won’t necessarily need to be connected to your smartphone all the time to get things like notifications.

The images supplied by Android Police show the device running Android Wear 2.0, the updated version of Android Wear that launched in February. That same report alleges the Quartz lacks NFC, as well as heart-rate monitoring, which would make it akin to the LG Watch Style. Otherwise, we still don’t really know all that much else about the hardware powering the upcoming watch.

This isn’t ZTE’s first attempt at a smartwatch — just its first attempt at one running Android Wear. At MWC 2016, the company showed off the Venus 1 and Venus 2 smartwatches, but those were mainly fitness trackers that didn’t offer a fully fledged operating system.

As VentureBeat notes, ZTE actually already has a device called the Quartz — a 5.5-inch smartphone with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean launched in 2015.

This article was originally published on 02-07-2017 by Christian de Looper. Updated on 03-20-2017 by Adam Ismail: Added leaked image of the ZTE Quartz.

ZTE Quartz: News and Rumors