Wearables are the new big area of interest in the mobile market, and pretty much all of the industry leaders are working hard to release their first efforts. Sony have produced the SmartWatch and SmartWatch 2, Samsung announced their Galaxy Gear this week, and a host of companies including Apple, Google, Intel and LG are all said to be working on similar smartwatch devices.
That’s why it’s not too surprising to hear that semiconductor company Qualcomm has announced a smartwatch of their own – the Toq. Beyond the punderful name, Qualcomm have made a few interesting additions to the smartwatch formula that could allow it some success.
The first cool addition is the Mirasol display. Mirasol is a display technology, developed by Qualcomm themselves, which is designed to make LCD screens more readable in direct sunlight. Mirasol displays also consume less power than equivalent LCD or OLED screens. The display is touch-sensitive too, which should make it a bit better than the Pebble in that regard.
The Toq also includes wireless charging, another semi-popular technology for top-end smartphones and tablets. Again, it makes a lot of sense for a smart watch because you really want to make the recharging process as frictionless as possible. People have an expectation of longevity from their watches, and here the Toq is much better than the Galaxy Gear – it offers three to five days of use between charges, compared to the Gear’s 10 hours.
Otherwise, the Toq seems fairly standard. It connects to your Android 4.0.3 (or better) phone over Bluetooth, showing incoming notifications as well as running its own apps (e.g. music player, stock ticker, weather, stopwatch).
The Toq will soon be available to pre-order on the Qualcomm website, with deliveries expecting to commence in the last quarter of the year. Thus far, the Toq looks like one of the strongest entrants to the smartwatch race yet.
Image credits: Phandroid (top), Engadget (bottom).