Rumour: Wear OS and LTE could be incoming
Nokia could be about to burst back onto the wearables scene, if new rumours about a new smartwatch at MWC are to be believed.
Phone Arena has reported that Nokia has two smartwatches in the works and one could make an appearance and the company’s 23 February event.
The rumours don’t tell us too much about the new device, but it seems certain the new Nokia smartwatch will run Google’s Wear OS (formerly known as Android Wear). It’s allegedly already seen clearance from Google, according to a Twitter source cited in the Phone Arena report.
It also seems set to have eSIM support, which means it will be able to make and receive calls using your existing phone number – and have its own data plan so you can untether from your smartphone.
Being a Nokia device, it’s not surprising the company would want to offer more than a standard smartphone companion experience.
The company was last in the wearables space as the owner of Withings, which ended up being a torturous two year process of re-badging old devices as Nokia. Withings eventually split away from Nokia, which eventually said it “didn’t see a way forward for its wearables and health tech”.
And the company also attempted to create a smartwatch back in 2013/14, codenamed Moonraker. That project was canned and never saw the light of day until some pictures and details emerged in 2018.
Nokia is pretty late to the smartwatch game, but with LTE on board it could carve out a niche. It will also be interesting whether Google allows Nokia to build on top of WearOS in the way that it’s allowed Xiaomi to alter the experience with the Xiaomi Mi Watch.
