HTC partnered with Under Armour to bring the UA Band to market earlier this year, but with the majority of the year gone and only 2 months left, it'd be easy to assume that the HTC smartwatch is all but dead at this point since most Android Wear OEMs are sitting out the dance for the remainder of 2016. HTC has said that "when" (the operative word here) it makes a smartwatch, it will be industry head-turning, but the declaration that most Android Wear OEMs won't be making smartwatches is enough to make any diehard HTC fan or believer suspicious and skeptical about keeping their hopes up for one.
Well, some new photos just may revive your hopes for an HTC smartwatch. The smartwatch the Taiwanese phone maker is crafting, codenamed Halfbeak, has appeared in 9 photos, showing off the device's Android Wear platform as well as HTC's interesting partnership. In the same way that HTC has partnered with Under Armour for the UA Band, HTC intends to partner with UA for its Halfbeak smartwatch as well. In the first photo, both HTC and UA are branded on the back of the smartwatch.
A number of other photos show reboot screens, powering down the smartwatch, and pairing it with the Android Wear smartphone app as well as what it's like to receive phone calls with the Bluetooth-paired smartwatch and how to check your heart rate monitoring. What these photos tell us is that the HTC/UA smartwatch will come Bluetooth-only with no cellular data whatsoever (the LG Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE is the only cellular-connected smartwatch on Android Wear for now), and that the Halfbeak smartwatch will run Android Wear and have a heart rate monitor.
Apparently, the band will be rubber because one photo specifically shows a tear (that's right, a rip) in the design of the wristband. The smartwatch's durability is already in question as a direct result.
There's little other tangible evidence on the HTC smartwatch for now, but we've given our own desires for the HTC smartwatch to outrun its rival Android Wear smartwatches (Part 1 and Part 2) and hope HTC takes some of them to heart, at least.
We don't know when the HTC/UA smartwatch will arrive, but for now, take a look at the photos below and let us know what you think. Interested in the HTC/UA smartwatch? Think the Android Wear crowd is too crowded already?
