Samsung tipped to be partnering with a premium watchmaker for its new smartwatch

Samsung is said to be developing a round smartwatch referred to as Orbis and they are reportedly asking for help from a premium watchmaker for it. Perhaps to take on Apple and its new Apple Watch, Samsung is supposedly testing its Orbis smartwatch in France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. It’s seen as a peculiar move because they usually test new devices in Germany and Poland.

According to Sammobile, this might be because they are working with a popular premium watchmaker from France like Dior, Cartier, or Chanel to unveil a premium variant of this upcoming smartwatch. No one has be confirmed to be working with Samsung yet. These are still rumours at the moment. But if it rings true, then Apple Watch will have new competition.

Source: Sammobile

Use your Android Wear smartwatch to locate your wayward Android phone

If you’ve been using Google’s Android Device Manager to locate missing smartphones and tablets, you can now get some help with your Android smartwatch. Google has added support for Android Wear to help you find your wayward Android device. All you need to do is say, “Ok, Google. Start. Find my phone.” Or you can look for the “Find my phone” feature in the Start menu. This will have your Android device ringing at full volume and will hopefully have you reunited with it in no time. The update will be rolling out to Android Wear devices in the coming weeks.

Source: Official Android Blog

TAG Heuer, Breitling and Swatch to join smartwatch fray

Premium timepiece makers Tag-Heuer and Breitling, as well as trendy watch maker Swatch, announced their own smartwatches. TAG Heuer, renown for quality precision sportswatches, is teaming up with Intel and Google to produce its own Android Wear watch. TAG Heuer will be responsible for designing and manufacturing the watch, which will have an Intel microprocessor.

Luxury brand Breitling has a $15,000.00 connected watch. The B55 Connected has two LCD screens and is smartphone connected plus has many aviation related functionalities. 

Swatch, which owns Omega and Tissot is expected to come out with a smartwatch that will work with Android and Windows phones and will also feature mobile payments in certain countries.

Pebble encourages smartstrap development with US $1 Million funding for successful concepts

Pebble is putting their money into encouraging smartstrap development for their upcoming Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel wearables. The smartstrap allows for expanded functionality on Pebbles by making the strap a peripheral. Various concepts have been revealed including one that enables direct connection to an LTE signal. Another concept will add GPS, NFC, OLED displays and varied other components to the Pebble Time.

Pebble pledged 1 million US dollars to encourage development and commercialization of othe smartstrap projects. Interested inventors can get a team together, build a prototype and place their project on a crowfunding platform and Pebble will offer the necessary support to make sure the projects see the light of day. I'm curious to see how far the smartstrap development can go and how much it can add to the Pebble Time.