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Two days after hitting its larger 1.63" sibling, the Android Wear 2.0 update has made its way to the smaller (and surprisingly, more expensive) 1.45" ASUS ZenWatch 2. This is the last ZenWatch that had still been waiting to receive the update, as it's been confirmed that the first ASUS ZenWatch will not be updated to Wear 2.0.
Google launched Wear 2.0 many moons ago in early 2017, and here we are in the middle of summer and some watches are still waiting on the update after a series of delays. The ZenWatch 2 is no longer among them... at least the larger version. That watch is getting the Wear 2.0 update as we speak while the small version continues to wait.
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- Wareable.com has obtained confirmation from ASUS that the ZenWatch 3 will get the Android Wear 2.0 update on July 11th. The ZenWatch 2 will get it in two waves: one in late July, and one in early August.
When Google listed all of the watches that would receive Android 2.0, I was surprised. I only expected a handful of wearables to make the jump, but nearly all of them (besides the earliest models) were marked as compatible. Unfortunately, it's taking a while to deliver on that promise; fast forward five months later, and a few models are still waiting on an update.
In one of those not-so-surprising pieces of news this morning, Digitimes reported that Asus might be throwing in the towel on Android Wear. Despite the slight revitalization we've seen throughout this year, the sales numbers for the ZenWatch line are not looking good.
We're impatiently waiting for Android Wear 2.0 to roll to some of the most popular watches released: the second generation Moto 360 and the Huawei Watch. There are also other watches that still haven't received the update and weeks are passing by quickly without a hint of when exactly we should expect the new firmware to hit.
Both the ASUS ZenWatch 2 and 3 were confirmed to receive the Android Wear 2.0 update back earlier this month. While a few weeks of waiting are to be expected with major update rollouts, ASUS says ZenWatch owners will have to wait a while longer.
Although Android Wear 2.0 has been put off until "early 2017," ASUS isn't waiting for the update to deliver its own improvements and fixes. The company has released OTA updates for the ZenWatch 2 and ZenWatch 3, with some exciting new features (well, for ZW3 owners).
The Asus ZenWatch may be growing a bit old at this point, but it is still a capable performer. Today brings us a few deals on the last memorable square Android Wear watch, but most notably is the offering from Best Buy. You can score some versions of the watch for $100 today only, but you'll get the additional $25 off if you use Visa Checkout. An effective $75 for the ZenWatch 2 is not bad at all.If you will recall, Asus' second watch had either a 1.46" or a 1.63" AMOLED screen, an IP67 rating, and a speaker. Several color and material options were available. Not all of those are marked down as low as this, but most every model we could find was on some form of a sale.
Android was once the darling of the open source community, though you'd be forgiven for forgetting that - these days its commercial elements seem to be all that make the news. One developer is hoping that community can save the smartwatch, or at the very least, breathe a little new life into existing designs. Florent Revest, a French computer science student, released the 1.0 alpha version of AsteroidOS today. It's ready to run on multiple Android Wear devices: the original LG G Watch, the Watch Urbane, the Asus ZenWatch 2, and the Sony Smartwatch 3.
Just as several new smartwatches make their debuts on the Google Store, two (and a Chromebook) say their goodbyes. The ASUS ZenWatch 2, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch (great name, right?), and the ASUS Chromebook Flip are now unavailable for purchase from Google's hardware shop; in fact, the links to their listings now automatically redirect to the Android Wear and Chromebook landing pages, respectively.
Android Wear is in a sort of a lull now. Beside the ZenWatch 3, no new significant watches have been announced in several months (there are the specialist Nixon, Polar, Michael Kors, etc, ones, but they cater to a niche market) and Android Wear 2.0's update has been pushed over to 2017. So now is one of the best times to grab an older watch that's been on the market for a while but that's still pretty decent in terms of specs.
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- ASUS's website is also offering the watch at the same price.
Just last week, we featured a deal for the smaller 1.45" ZenWatch 2 with a metal band. Now, we're back with another ASUS smartwatch offer; Amazon and B&H are both offering the 1.63" ZenWatch 2 with HyperCharge for just $119. Not only is this a larger, slightly newer model, but it's also $10 less than the deal from last week.$119 is an extremely small price to pay for a watch that has specs this modern. Like the current Android Wear boss, the Huawei Watch, this ZenWatch 2 sports an AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 400, half a gig of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, IP67 water resistance, and a speaker. In addition, this version comes with HyperCharge, which is an ASUS-exclusive quick charge method that allows the ZenWatch 2 to charge from 0 to 60% in just 15 minutes. Considering how rapidly non-quick charge-equipped Android Wear devices top up their batteries already, this could either be considered extremely impressive or quite useless.If you're interested, you can purchase one from either Amazon or B&H. Only the model with a brown rubber strap is available at $119 from both retailers. If you grab this from Amazon, you can get free one-day shipping if you're a Prime member, but if you buy it from B&H, you have the option of walking into their New York location and buying it in person (although you will have to pay NY sales tax). Decisions, decisions.
The ZenWatch 2 may not be the newest kid on the block (the ZenWatch 3 was announced a few weeks ago at IFA), but that only means that more deals will be available for it now. Case in point: Amazon is offering the ZenWatch 2 in the smaller 1.45-inch screen guise with a silver Milanese loop for just $129.99.The ZenWatch 2 actually still has pretty current specs; like the reigning Android Wear boss, the Huawei Watch, it features an AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 400, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and IP67 water resistance. Not bad at all for a last-generation model. Keep in mind that a decent amount of people are probably going to mistake it for an Apple Watch, since both smartwatches have rectangular bodies and are available with Milanese loops. (I actually had some people think my Moto 360 was an Apple Watch back when the fruit company's product was known as "iWatch".)If you're interested, head to Amazon to pick it up. The watch is shipped and sold by Amazon itself, so you don't have to worry about dealing with potentially problematic third-party sellers. If you've got Amazon Prime, you might even be able to get it delivered by tomorrow. How sweet is that?Source: Amazon
If you've forgotten about ASUS's ZenFone Zoom, I don't blame you. After it was announced in January 2015, it took over a year for it to be launched in the good ole US of A at a not-unreasonable price of $399. Now though, you can pick one up from B&H for $35 less than the MSRP and get a ZenWatch 2, a $50 B&H gift card, and a 10,050mAh battery thrown in at no extra cost.
Earlier this month, the Moto 360 and Moto 360 Sport started getting an update with May's security patches and a couple of Moto Body improvements, while other Wear watches got just the new security updates. And given that almost none of the other manufacturers share their update's details, we didn't know if anything else had changed in their software along with that.
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- We've known that the ASUS ZenWatch 2 has a speaker for a while, but it's now official too. The watch's Google Store page has been updated to mention the built-in speaker like the Huawei Watch. None of the other watches (Moto 360 2nd gen, LG Watch Urbane, Fossil Q Founder) show a speaker in their description.
The saga of speaker support on Android Wear has been a long one. First we spotted the speaker inside the Huawei Watch despite no mention of it in any product documentation, then the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE was released with calling and speaker support only to be quickly canceled by LG, then Google officially announced cellular support on Wear without explaining how the speaker would work in that case, and finally a test build of Wear made it onto a user's device with an activated speaker for calls, alerts, and speech-to-text.
If you have an Asus ZenWatch 2 and are in need of a spare or replacement charger, then I've got some good news for you. You can now officially buy one on the Google Store. The thing has been sitting in the Google Store for a while now as a 'coming soon' item, but now it can finally be purchased for $14.99.
Raise your hand if this comes as unexpected news to you. Crickets. Alright, we know Google isn't really revealing the most secret of secrets with its newest "Cellular support comes to Android Wear" announcement, but it is clarifying a few things we didn't know about how LTE would work on our smartwatches.
One of the best things about smartwatches is that they finally give the fashion-inclined the ability to switch out watch faces without buying another $300 bit of wrist jewelry. There have been attempts to create systems whereby end users could easily create their own digital watch faces ever since the original Pebble, with varrying degrees of success. Now Asus, which has already released dozens of custom watch faces for its ZenWatch and ZenWatch 2 customers, has created its own custom watch face maker app.