Motorola launches the next-gen Moto G and Moto X along with the Moto 360 and Hint

Earlier today, Motorola has revealed the much rumoured 2nd Generations of its budget Moto G as well as flagship Moto X smartphones.

Much to the surprise of fans across the globe, the company has launched the smartphones first at its event in India, despite confusing reports of a launch event on Thursday in Chicago.

Along with the smartphones Motorola has also announced that it will be retailing its Android Wear-running smartwatch, the Moto 360 in India as well.

As was expected, the phones will be launched exclusively on Flipkart only.

Another exciting product revealed is the Motorola Hint, which seems to be a really attractive take on the bluetooth headset but more on that later.

Let’s begin with Motorola’s budget offering, the rejigged version of the Moto G…

Motorola sending invites to September 4th Launch event for the Moto 360, smartphones and accessories

Since yesterday, Motorola has been sending out invitations to a media event in Chicago which will be held on the 4th of September. The not so subtle invite displays a picture of a watch (Moto 360), a smartphone with an X (maybe the Moto X+1?), a smartphone with a G ( probably the Moto G2) and a headset that’s likely some type of new wireless accessory(maybe  Whisper Successor).

We’ve also heard about new devices rumoured to be coming out of Motorola for several months now and the latest claim has been that the company is working on a new Nexus device for Google. While we do have a good idea what we might see in a few short weeks in Chi-Town, we’ll try our best to keep an open mind.

Samsung’s Wearable patent features Circular Face and Gesture Control

 

 

Samsung has a group of new patent applications it filed recently related to wearable tech (via 9to5Google), and these could describe an initial foray into Android Wear, which Samsung has said it would support in addition to its Tizen-powered Gear devices.

The filings depict a device with a circular face, much like the one featured in Motorola’s Android Wear-powered Moto360, and can work with a variety of hand gestures to trigger the activation of different tasks and features.

The patents talk about how you could move your wrist to call up different features, or tap on the screen to interact with remote controls for devices around your house. The device would also display the time when at rest inactive on your wrist, and it would be laden with sensors, including an optical one for monitoring pulse. The smartwatch could also be worn in other locations, including around the neck as a pendant, in a pocket, or on a keychain if the wrist-mounted paradigm doesn’t necessarily strike a chord with consumers.

One interesting tidbit is the ability of the smartwatch to recognize barcodes, images, objects and do optical character recognition (plus translation) for printed text. This could be a good use case for wearables, since it means instantly pointing a device you have at hand at something and finding out more about it. It removes a step from smartphone-based object recognition, and might help that tech become more generally useful.

That wouldn’t be the only party trick. The watch would also recognize wrist gestures beyond the simple screen activation you find in Samsung’s Gear line and also feature an optimized touchscreen interface and a rotating ring for tasks like scrolling.