Blocks, a London-based startup, has finally announced at the CES 2018 that the world’s first modular smartwatch is ready for sale. The company announced in 2015 that it has designed a smartwatch that allows wearers to choose the functionalities they need by clipping on additional modules of their choice. In October 2015 Blocks hit Kickstarter with a plan to ship to backers by May 2016. But, after suffering numerous delays, the modular smartwatch is now available to the general public.
The timepiece consists of a core circular watch face available in silver or black stainless steel casing. The smartwatch comes in a 1.4-inch colour 400 x 400 AMOLED display, with a MediaTek MTK6580M quadcore processor and 512MB of RAM. The smartwatch offers phone notifications, wifi connectivity, activity tracking, music control, a touch screen and voice control. Blocks modular smartwatch comes with the appeal of having optional modular links that users can add to the band, adding features like a sensor to monitor temperature, humidity and air pressure, heart rate sensor, extra batteries, a GPS/GLONASS module, and a LED flashlight. The modular smartwatch now runs on Android Oreo 8.0, supports third-party as well as stand-alone applications and is compatible with both Android smartphones and iPhones. Voice assistant Alexa also runs on this smartwatch. The Company had five different modules costing $30 a piece available at its launch. The wristband of the timepiece can also be formed by the modules. The wearer can add more or fewer modules depending on the size of the wrist. More plans are ongoing to make more modules available.
The finished version of the watch costs $259 for the Core base unit. While the extra modules cost $30 a piece. Although Blocks has announced the general availability of its modular smartwatch, it hasn’t offered an exact release date for the device. The company only hinted that the device should ship sometime in 2018.
You can pre-order your own Blocks smartwatch here.
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