ASUS to Launch Three New Wearable This Year, Says ASUS CEO

A few months ago, the Taiwan-based company released their first Android Wear-powered smartwatch, the ZenWatch, but according to Jerry Shen, ASUS CEO, a successor to the ZenWatch is already in the works. Besides the 2nd gen ZenWatch, the ASUS exec also mentioned two new wearable which are focused on health and fitness tracking.

Jerry Shen also talked ASUS ZenWatch 2 release date. According to him, the new device might see the light of day in the third quarter of the year. I remind you that the original ZenWatch was introduced to the public early September at IFA 2014 Berlin tech fair and it was made available for purchase in the US sometime early November. It seems that ASUS is planning to stick to this release pattern.

For the time being, the ASUS ZenWatch is up for grabs at Best Buy at a price of $199 and, without a doubt, it’s one of the classiest looking Android Wear-powered smartwatches currently on the market. Hardware-wise, the ZenWatch arrives with a 1.6-inch AMOLED screen, quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 4 GB of internal storage, while being water-resistant with an IP55 rating.

Besides talking ASUS ZenWatch 2 release date, Shen also mentioned that the new wearable might not be so heavily reliant on being paired to a smartphone. The ASUS CEO also said that their next-gen smartwatch might also be phone calling-capable without being tethered to a smartphone. For what it’s worth, Samsung already has a smartwatch capable of doing that, the Gear S. It’s yet unknown whether the ZenWatch follow-up will be powered by Google’s Android Wear, or whether ASUS will have a similar approach as Samsung and attempt a departure from Android in terms of wearable.

As for the two new fitness bands the ASUS official talked about, there was no mention of their release date. Anyway, rumor has it that the Taiwan-based company might introduce them both this week at CES 2015 tech fair in Las Vegas.