While there have been quite a few Android Wear watches released lately many of them have been uninspiring and lacking of must-have features. Joining the fray today is ZTE with the release of their ZTE Quartz smartwatch running Android Wear 2.0.
We have seen leaks of the ZTE Quartz in recent weeks but have not seen the final details. Today the Quartz has appeared on the ZTE USA website with all the specifications. The watch has a 1.4″ 400 x 400 pixel AMOLED display protected by Gorilla Glass 3. It is powered by the now common-place Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 with 768MB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage. The battery life is said to be 36 hours thanks to a 500mAh battery.
The watch has most of the conectivity as other smartwatches although it is only Bluetooth 4.1 and is 3G, not LTE. Wi-Fi b/g/n and GPS/aGPS/SUPL are included along with an accelerometer, a gyroscope and barometer. It is water and dust resistant (IP67). Once again, like so many of the other new smartwatches this year, it lacks NFC, meaning one of the main features of its Android Wear 2.0 operating system, Android Pay, is rendered useless.
The watch itself is a stylish piece of kit with a 45mm casing that is just over 14mm thick. It is only available in a silver colour but various bands are available for purchase. Unfortunately at this stage it is only available through T-Mobile in the US but at under $200US we certainly hope it makes it here.
We have reached out to ZTE for comment on possible Australian availability but have yet to receive any comment from them. We will keep you informed should we hear anything further.
I was in a T-Mobile shop yesterday. If I bought one of these and brought it home to Australia would it work, or be incompatible with Australia in some way?
Limited support. The Bands supported are:
GSM/EDGE 850/1900
HSPA 850/1900/AWS
– given the 2G (GSM/EDGE) network is essentially shutting down, you’re left with 850MHz 3G which is essentially Telstra – so, it’s going to be very limited.