Omate Launches Two New Smartwatches: Racer and Roma

This year, Omate is set to launch two of its new smartwatches to catch up with the trending fashion of e-watches. One is the ‘Racer’ and the other is the ‘Roma’; MediaTek MT2502 Aster chipset has been used in both of the watches.

Both smartwatches would run on proprietary software instead of Android Wear so not much is known regarding the specifications of the watches yet.

The Omate Racer will be available for pre-order from tomorrow till 15th of January at a price of $100, and will go to $130 after January 15; shipments are estimated to start at the end of February.

A deal has been signed between Richline Group and Omate. So in March, both smartwatches will be available for purchase in the stores of UK and US.

Omate Roma is located at the left side of the Racer in the picture. As these watches will be running on proprietary software so they will be deficient in supporting Android Wear app but will feature display notifications, activity tracking and customizable watch faces.

According to officials, the low-power chipset has a battery life that will last up to a week and has a support for 2G, so that both watches get data connection of their own. Also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection is also included.

A circular smartwach has also been announced by Alcatel, but it is not confirmed that if it will run on proprietary software also. It is hoped that CES would bring out some actual sheets of specifications.

Omate Launches Two New Smartwatches: Racer and Roma

Hands-On: Omate X Smartwatch

Omate was among the first companies to start developing premium untethered smartwatches that had their own sim cards and worked without needing a phone.

 

On August 20th, Omate announced its first notification watch, a watch that essentially acted as a second phone screen; it pushes notifications to and from Android and iOS devices and has a number of built-in apps, such as an alarm, phonebook, and music player.

 

Omate’s concept and design seemed to work on paper, but a mediocre screen and laggy software are perhaps why you should invest in a Moto 360 smartwatch instead.

 

The Omate X is equipped with fairly modest hardware: a MediaTek ARM7 processor with 128MB of RAM. It has a 1.54 inch TFT display with 240×240 resolution. It comes with a built-in speaker, camera, gyroscope, and microphone. Omate claimed one week of power on a single charge with its 400mAh battery.

What we found to be really inconvenient was how the screen automatically turned off after a short time, we constantly needed to manually activate it to look at the time. Not a deal breaker but it’s something you’ll find very annoying if you’re one of those people who need to glance at the time twice before actually knowing what the time is. Additionally, the screen was prone to smudges and fingerprints, which we didn’t find in any other high-end smartwatches.

 

The Omate X runs on a custom software platform that functions on both Android and iOS. It uses MediaTek’s Aster (MT2502) platform that was somewhat laggy when going from screen to screen, conceivably because the software is still in its early stages.

 

The Omate X’s build quality is the real selling point here, the Pebble Steel design is actually very good; it’s metal and the straps are made of genuine leather.

The Omate X is available for pre-orders from September 1^st to September 30^th for a reasonable 129$ (€99). It’s expected to start production around mid-October.

 

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.

Hands-On: Omate X Smartwatch