New Moto 360 smart watch sports an upgraded screen

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By Larry Banks

If you’re one of those people that liked the look and features of the Moto 360 smart watch, but decided not to buy one because of the fairly low display resolution, you’re in luck because the new version of the device will reportedly feature an improved 360 x 360 pixel screen.

New Moto 360 packs a better display

The existing version of the Moto 360 has a 320 x 290 display, with the extra 30 pixels making up the ‘flat tyre’ section of the screen that houses the graphics chip. From the rumours about the new version, it seems that that look will be gone in the next iteration. By way of comparison, the about-to-be-released Apple Watch has a display resolution of 272 x 340 (for the smaller 38mm watch) and 312 x 390 for the larger 42 mm version.

The Moto 360’s screen size conjecture is based on device specification logs that were spotted by an eagle-eyed app developer in the US and reported by the Phandroid website. The unknown new hardware has a codename of Smelt (a type of fish) – a theme that seems likely given that the original device had the internal nickname of Minnow.

Specifications are said to include Android Wear 5.1 and a “armeabi-v7a” CPU – which suggest an ARM v7 CPU inside the new device.

This week’s rumours are not the first time that there’s been a whiff of a new device from Motorola – several weeks ago, there were also leaked images on the Internet of a case of smart watches that looked suspiciously like a new 360.

At this point, we don’t know any details about the release date or prices, but it’s expected that there will be a wider choice of straps and sizes when it becomes available. The original Moto 360 is now a year old, so it’s reasonable to expect an update in the near future.

Images Courtesy of DepositPhotos