Sony announced the Smartwatch 2, their second move in the wearables arena. The first smartwatch was a pretty bad start for Sony, hardly anyone wanted it and it came with a cheap plastic design and little functionality.
We believed Sony had scrapped the smartwatch project, until the Xperia Twitter handle started posting vague statistics about how people now want smartwatches and talking about the “heritage” Sony have with smartwatches.
The Smartwatch 2 is definitely a step up from the previous generation and Sony has taken features from the Pebble smartwatch, the Kickstarter that gained $10 million in funding, making it one of the biggest Kickstarter projects to date.
It comes with a metal and aluminium 1.6-inch 220 x 176 touchscreen with backlighting that can be adjusted. The smartwatch as a detachable strap, allowing the user to customise the watch.
The Smartwatch 2 displays the time, notifications and has a music control system. It uses Bluetooth and NFC to pair up to a smartphone or tablet and can run Android apps, although the Play Store may be smaller in size.
Sony has not announced any price points but the Smartwatch 2 will be coming in Q3 2013.
