Omate was one of the first companies (and possibly the very first) to make an untethered smartwatch — one that had its own SIM card and didn’t need a phone to connect to the outside world. The Omate Truesmart represented hard engineering, and most of the rest of the world went the easier route and put the communications intelligence in the phone and not the watch. The company raised upwards of $850,000 on Kickstarter this time last year.
Now, the company is announcing the Omate X, a notification watch that acts as a second phone screen, much the same as the Pebble, the Galaxy Gear, and everything that’s about to hit the market running Android Wear. Omate, which is based in Paris, is positioning the Truesmart as a watch for “the 10 percent of your time during of which you partake in outdoor activities.” The Omate X is for “the other 90 percent.”
Omate claims a 7-day battery life in standby mode, and runs the Android OS. No word about apps.
The Omate X is priced at $129 and will be available for preorders between September 1 and September 30. Nothing about an actual ship date.