Mobvoi is swelling the Wear OS smartwatch ranks with the unveiling of the TicWatch Pro, where it's hoping a new display approach will help give it added appeal.
The Pro appears to be a more luxury alternative to the sportier TicWatch E and S smartwatches running on Google's operating system, promising to offer fitness tracking, heart rate monitoring and the ability to make contactless payments.
Wareable verdict: Ticwatch Pro review
The headline feature here, though, is the display that sits on top of the OLED touchscreen one. Mobvoi has employed a FSTN LCD display, which is the kind you'd expected to find on budget digital watch faces. The idea is that the main OLED screen remains dedicated to when you want to interact with all things Wear OS. So notifications, Google Assistant and the likes. The secondary screen will be used to display more basic information, such as fitness data and the time, when that main screen is turned off.
That second screen also gets something called an 'Essential Mode', that when activated turns off the Wear OS-dedicated screen and will be able to display information such as your step count, heart rate as well as some other features that Mobvoi is planning to add into the future. The hope is that using this dual screen setup will help improve battery life, which is said to be two days on the TicWatch Pro and 30 days when used in Essential Mode.
Mobvoi isn't the first Wear smartwatch maker to take a dual screen approach to improve battery life, as we know. Casio's Pro Trek Smart WSD-F20 features something similar with its monochrome watch mode. But it does sound like there'll be room to access more information on that second screen through the Pro.
It's expected to be available to own in the summer, with a sub-$300 price tag and the possibility of a LTE version on the cards, too. We'll hopefully get our hands on one before then to find out if this double screen-packing Wear watch is worth getting excited about.
Source: The Verge
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.