The Moto 360 is a beautiful Android Wear-based smartwatch that Motorola wants to launch this year, but the company has not actually revealed many details about it when it comes to hardware. In a recent Hangouts interview, Motorola talked about design inspiration, hinted that the device will have great battery life and revealed it won’t have a microUSB charging port, but will instead rely on a secret battery-charging technology.
Meanwhile, a leaker said on Weibo that the device will actually have an OLED display protected by Sapphire glass, and said the secret battery technology is actually “magnetic induction wireless charging,” as G for Games puts it. These revelations fall in nicely with Motorola’s own statements about the smartwatch.
The company revealed that some of the things it learned with the Moto ACTV went in the Moto X, and some of the Moto X tech will be used in the Moto 360 as well. Thus, the device could have an AMOLED display just like the Moto X, which would be battery friendly, especially when it comes to showing on-screen notifications and always-on voice-based features.
As for wireless charging, it’s not clear whether the Moto 360 would use inductive wireless charging – which means the device would have to be perfectly lined up against a flat surface – or magnetic resonance, which is a smarter wireless charging method that only requires a device to be in the vicinity of the charging pad. Whatever the case, wireless charging makes sense for a smartwatch, as OEMs may be interested in using available space inside the device for something else than a power connector.
The same source said a few days ago that the Moto 360 will be available in limited quantities at first, as mass-producing the device may be a challenge because of its circular design.
Finally, even though nobody is sharing processor details for Android Wear devices, Qualcomm may provide CPUs to Motorola, LG and others in the future. Google named it as one of the first Android Wear partners, and the company confirmed on its blog that it will provide processors to some of the companies working on Android Wear devices. “We’re excited to share that we’ve been working behind the scenes with Google, and our OEM customers, to enable the development of a number of Android Wear-based devices that will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors,” the company wrote. Motorola may very well be one of them.
