Rumor: Google to unveil a watch this month

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 14 Oct 2013

Android 4.4 KitKat and the fifth generation Nexus smartphone are due to be formally announced later this month, at least according to the rumors. The search giant hasn’t actually announce when they’ll be holding a press conference. Now those two products by themselves are exciting, but what if I told you there was going to be a third? According to Seth Weintraub from 9to5Google, Google will also be unveiling their first smartwatch at this press conference as well.

What does he know about the watch? Unfortunately, not a lot. He has no idea what it’s going to look like, but he does say “Google Now functionality [will] be at the center of the product.” What does he mean by that? Google Now means different things to different people, but its intended task is to serve as a collection of several nuggets of information, presented in the form of “cards”, that have information you might be interested in. Things like sports scores, the weather, traffic reports, notifications about packages you might be waiting for, and other tidbits of that sort. Instead of actively pulling down this content yourself, Google Now does it silently in the background.

Now in order for this to work, it sounds like the watch is going to have a color display, probably of the AMOLED variety, which means it may have the kind of battery life we’re used to seeing on devices like the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Translation: Horrible.

We’ll see what actually ends up happening, October is already almost half way over.