News & Reviews:   Alcatel OneTouch Watch specification

In the past few months, one thing was established in the wearable industry – round watches are much more popular than square ones. Now, Alcatel wants to take advantage of this popularity with its newAlcatel OneTouch Watch. Apart from being round, the OneTouch watch is said to retail for less than $150 (RM533) which will make it cheaper than other round offerings such as the LG G Watch R and theMotorola Moto 360. The watch features a 1.22-inch near circular touchscreen display. There is a small black bar at the bottom like the Moto 360 which acts as the back button. The power button is located on the right side. Inside this 10.5mm thick stainless steel body, there is a STMicroelectronics STM429 chipset which powers the watch. The 210 mAh battery onboard can provide two to five days of run time on a single charge. Other features include an altimeter, accelerometer, gyroscope, e-compass, IP67 certification, heart rate monitor, activity tracker, sleep monitor, phone locator, phone camera remote and music control. The Alcatel OneTouch Watch runs on its own proprietary software instead of Google's Android Wear and is compatible with iOS and Android devices. Apart from the original black and red watch, there are other variants too like the all-white version and the premium all-metallic version. The original model will be available for less than $150 (RM533) and the other two versions for sub-$180 (RM640) price tag. Alcatel plans to launch all the three models in Q1 2015.

As usual, every tech company is set for major announcements come CES 2015 and Alcatel OneTouch are no exception. They have also announced that they will be releasing a circular smartwatch named the Alcatel OneTouch Watch on 6 January 2015. While there is not mention of tech specs the image shows multiple (and possibly interchangeable) watch straps, a circular watch face and a mostly touchscreen and voice control interface. We're not sure if it will use Android Wear but features will include notifications, remote music playback, pedometer and other health tracking functions. While there are no Malaysia release dates or pricing details just yet, Alcatel OneTouch have said that the OneTouch Watch will have a "smart price". While it is unclear if it is smart for Alcatel OneTouch or for us, it would be great if it is priced below the usual $300 (RM1058).