Remember Blocks Wearables? Back at CES 2015, the company unveiled a prototype of the world’s first modular smartwatch, Blocks. Now, the startup is ready to manufacture the smartwatch, and it has turned to Kickstarter to make this possible. Interestingly, Blocks is not an Android Wear device; it will run on Android.
That’s right, Blocks will be running on a modified version of Android, not Android Wear. It can also be paired with Android (obviously) and iOS devices. In the past, Blocks wanted to support Windows Phones as well, but that didn’t seem to pan out, unfortunately.
The watchface of Blocks – also called the Core – is fully functional on its own. It has the ability to push notifications from the device it is paired to, track its users activity, and boasts 1.5 days of battery life thanks to its 400mAh cell. What makes Blocks different from other smartwatches lie in the various modules available for the wearable, which link together to become the watch’s band. These include battery, heart rate, GPS, and NFC modules, which are hot swappable.
As for Blocks’ specification, the Core features a 1.34-inch 360 x 360 resolution circular LCD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor paired with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, a microphone, and a vibration motor. It also has an IP67 rating, which allows it to be submerged down to 1m underwater for a certain period of time.
If you’re looking for something more advanced than a Pebble smartwatch and don’t fancy Android Wear devices (or even the Apple Watch), Blocks is an interesting wearable. If you’re keen to get one, you can back the Kickstarter project here, which has managed to raise US$677,000 (about RM2.8 million) at time of writing.
(Source: Blocks (Kickstarter) via Amanz)
