Omate's Lutetia is a smartwatch that women may actually like
Samsung, Pebble, LG and others may have already released a good handful of smartwatches, but most are too bulky or masculine, and we've yet to come across one that's dedicated to the ladies. That's about to change thanks to Omate, whose team of women led the designing and engineering efforts on the upcoming Lutetia. Most notably, we're looking at a near-circular, always-on transflective LCD that's similar to the one featured on the Alcatel Wave, and it's covered with a curved, sapphire-coated glass piece. The body -- available in silver, rose gold and gold -- comes in shiny stainless steel with matching beaded wristband for a premium feminine look.
Like the Omate X, the Lutetia -- named after ancient Paris -- is also powered by MediaTek's Aster MT2502 platform and runs on Nucleus RTOS, thus offering the same generous week-long battery life plus pairing capability with Android and iOS. In contrast to their TrueSmart sibling device, the X and the Lutetia serve mainly as notification watches instead of full-fledged cellular devices, but they do offer pedometer, music control, weather, stopwatch, timer and voice control features.
Omate's CEO Laurent Le Pen said that rather than competing with the likes of Pebble, Samsung and Apple, the Lutetia is instead going after its counterparts from Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Guess and D&G. The exec also acknowledged that like Michael Kors' watches, his 40mm-wide, 12mm-thick timepiece is "a big lady's watch, but not ridiculous on a woman's wrist;" and it's definitely smaller than the Moto 360.
Interestingly, the Lutetia will cost a little bit more than the X, but it'll still be relatively affordable -- just $169. If you or your other half are willing to take the plunge, you can go ahead and pre-order a Lutetia on Omate's website starting from tomorrow, with shipment expected around end of December -- a little ahead of the Apple Watch's "early next year" target. Oh, and the first 1,000 "limited edition" units will get their unique codes engraved on the back, if you're into that sort of thing.
