Smartwatches are getting better every year such as the Apple Watch, Moto 360 and Asus ZenWatch 2. However, these are still very expensive pieces of technology.
Hence, it’s very surprising to see the Elephone Ele smartwatch being listed on an online shopping site with a price tag of $115. That’s just a little over ₱5,000!
The Elephone Ele runs on Android Wear – Google’s dedicated operating system for smartwatches. It also has MediaTek’s MT2601 processor which was designed exclusively for these type of devices.
It has a circular LCD display with 1.5-inches in diameter, 360 x 360 pixels for resolution and no ‘flat tire’ space at the bottom.
The whole watch is dust and water resistant with an Ingress Protection rating of 67 (IP67). Both the casing and replaceable straps are made of metal.
| The Elephone Ele smartwatch on a user’s wrist. |
Smartwatches are all about sensors and serving as a ‘remote controller’ of your smartphone. Since it runs on Android Wear, the Elephone Ele can do both.
It can count the steps you’ve taken, measure your heart rate, remotely call one of your contacts, answer a call, control your music player, show notifications and reminders, serve as a calculator and of course, tell the time.
There’s 512MB of RAM to manage apps, 4GB of onboard storage space, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a 400mAh battery. What’s notably lacking is GPS.
| This is the underside of the Elephone Ele smartwatch. |
The Elephone Ele smartwatch might not make it here in the Philippines. However, a local brand might decide to re-brand it (looking at you, Cherry Mobile).
Another possibility is for other Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) to create a similar smartwatch for a local Philippine brand.
Either way, it’s nice to see the price of smartwatches going down. Few years from now, this piece of technology will be as affordable as today’s quad core smartphones.
