Taiwanese company Asus, which is best known for rolling out military grade computer peripherals such as motherboards, graphic cards and many others, has started to branch out its products into the smartphone and wearable category. Its latest smartphones include the Zenfone 2 and the Zenfoom Zoom; both devices were the first ever smartphones to house 4 GB of RAM.
Coming to the wearable side of things, it has been rumored that the company will be releasing the successor of the ZenWatch, the ZenWatch 2. According to Focus Taiwan, the ZenWatch 2 will be able to provide battery life to the user that will last up to seven days. Jonney Shih, who is the Chairman of Asus, said to Focus Taiwan that:
"As a companion device, its central processing unit and operating system should be more simplified than the current version, so that I can use it for up to seven days on one charge, rather than for just two days."
While no hardware specifications have been unearthed of the ZenWatch 2, it has been reported that the smartwatch will possess a calling feature through a SIM card slot and the company will be looking to drop the Android Wear interface. Users will be able to insert their SIM cards (form factor of the SIM card has not yet been detailed) and call whoever they wish without having to pair their smartphones to execute the same function.
In the form of competition, the ZenWatch 2 will only be the second wearable after Samsung's Gear S to support this feature. There are speculations that the ZenWatch 2 will be released during the 3<sup>rd quarter of 2015. The original ZenWatch's specifications have been detailed below along with Motorola's Moto 360.
ZenWatch
- Screen size: 1.63 inches with resolution of 320 by 320 pixels
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor
- Processor: 1.2 GHz
- RAM: 512 MB
- Storage: 4 GB
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB
- Battery: 1.4 Wh
- Functionality: Built-in health-monitoring package and "OK Google" voice command support
- Price: $299
Moto 360
- Screen size: 1.5 inches with resolution of 320 by 320 pixels
- Chipset: TI OMAP 3
- RAM: 512 MB
- Storage: 4 GB
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0
- Battery: 300 mAh
- Functionality: heart rate monitor and pedometer
- Price: $249.99
Seeing as how the ZenWatch possesses better hardware specs with a slightly higher price, the ZenWatch 2 will possess far better specifications and functionality compared to both wearables.
