Mobvoi’s new Wear OS smartwatches can detect different types of physical activity

Mobvoi announced its TicWatch E2 and S2 smartwatches at CES today, the first of its Wear OS watches to receive a range of features called TicMotion. The company says its watches will be able to detect motions and gestures to automatically trigger different functions. For example, if you start cycling, it’ll start tracking your ride stats automatically without making you set the watch to Cycling mode beforehand.

The E2 and S2, which stand for Express and Sport respectively, are the sequel to Mobvoi’s TicWatch E and S fitness wearables which originally launched through Kickstarter in 2015. Both watches are rugged enough for intense physical activities, equipped with 5ATM water-resistance so you can track your swimming activities. They share nearly the same specs, running on the ubiquitous yet outdated Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip with a 1.39-inch AMOLED display and a battery capacity of 415mAh. The biggest difference between the two might be that the TicWatch S2 is built to withstand more, as it’s currently pending approval for military-grade standards.

Mobvoi says TicMotion can even detect which strokes you’re practicing, which will be included along with cycle-detection out of the box. There’s a couple of other TicMotion features that’ll roll out as over-the-air updates in the future and expand to other Mobvoi wearables as well. Bringing up your wrist to look at your watch will activate Google Assistant, and gestures can be remapped to other apps. Mobvoi says it’ll also eventually add fall detection, like the Apple Watch Series 4. The watches also have the standard fitness watch features like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and heart-rate sensor.

There’s no pricing information or release date yet, but an official product launch shouldn’t be too far off.

This article is from The Verge