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.

LG G Flex 2 Tipped To Be Launching At CES 2015

LG unveiled the G Flex phablet late last year with a flexible P-OLED display and body. Back then it definitely impressed the tech community simply because the device was one of the few out there to show true innovation. After almost a year since the launch of the G Flex, it seems like the launch of its successor is drawing closer. Sources close to LG have tipped Android Authority on the release of the LG Flex 2 at its CES press conference in January next year.

Unfortunately not a lot of details regarding the phablet are available yet. But the sources did mention that the G Flex 2 is going to be a major upgrade over its predecessor. According to them the G Flex 2 will come with a similar flexible P-OLED display and a self-healing body with improvements. The resolution will be bumped to Full HD this time apparently and the overall dimensions of the device are also expected to go down in order to improve its ergonomics. Earlier reports have speculated LG might make the body of the next G flex even more flexible than the earlier model. While the new report doesn’t claim anything regarding improvement in flexibility of the components, it could probably be expected. Of course a truly bendable phone is still a few years away, but until then the LG G Flex 2 would probably be as close as it gets. The G Flex’s self-healing feature was also one of the key highlights of the device, allowing it to heal itself from minor scratches to its body. I hope LG will concentrate more on this feature with the G Flex 2 as it could really be a big selling point, even if the device isn’t aimed at being a volume seller.

The G Flex wasn’t a major success for LG in terms of sales, but then, commercial success was probably not what LG was hoping to achieve with the G Flex. The device was more of a statement to its rivals and that purpose it did manage to serve pretty well. Whether LG wants to continue with the same approach for the G Flex 2 remains to be seen. The limited supply of bendable components like the P-OLED display, body and the battery could mean that the G Flex 2 would also be available in only a handful of markets and be priced significantly higher than flagship devices from other manufacturers except Apple. The G Flex last year was priced as high as the more expensive Apple iPhone 5s variants. So the G Flex 2 would probably cost around the same as a 64GB iPhone 6 Plus or even higher depending on what hardware components it will come packed with.