Zach’s company will also deploy smartwatches after changing its name to Meta

Foshan, Guangdong, 24th Jan 2022, ZEXPRWIRE, After Zach’s company changed its name to Meta, it showed aggressiveness in a number of areas it had not been involved in before.

In January 2022, the Dutch technology blog LetsGoDigital broke the news on the official account of the Zach’s company website: the rumors in 2021 are true, and Zach’s company is really going to make a smart watch.

Patent design exposure: multi-camera, detachable dial

According to LetsGoDigital’s revelations, on June 24, 2021, Zach’s company had submitted a patent application document to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and it was only officially released to the outside world after it was approved on January 13, 2022.

The name of the patent is a very simple “Detachable Camera Module for Wearable Devices”, from which only the most notable feature that the Meta smartwatch wants to emphasize: the watch body can be detached from the case and used alone, and the camera function.

A smartwatch with a detachable body is not the first of its kind. The Fitbit Blaze, released in 2017, also adopts the same design. However, according to Meta’s momentum, the Meta smartwatch probably won’t repeat the mistakes of the Fitbit Blaze’s poor market response.

According to the content of the patent document, there are two types of Meta smart watches, one is a square dial and the other is a round dial.

The square dial model is similar to the shape exposed by authoritative media such as Bloomberg in the summer and autumn of 2021. The front display has the usual front-facing camera, and the back is said to have a display and a 1080p autofocus camera, which can work alone after the body is detached from the stainless steel base and wrist strap.

In addition to the display on the back, the circular dial model features three cameras on the front. According to the patent document, these cameras will have one or more functions such as macro, telephoto, light change, wide angle, and fisheye.

The circular dial supports clockwise/counterclockwise rotation in the base, and due to the limitation of the magnetic fixing method, there are only five fixed rotation positions. Through a rotatable solid bezel similar to Samsung’s similar design, users can choose a combination of different camera lenses and different viewing angles.

According to the physical design and file content, the body of the Meta smart watch obviously has the function of universal interchange between the same devices. It is also mentioned in patent documents and various reports that the Meta smartwatch is equipped with a series of sensors that are necessary for current smartwatches, including heart rate, body temperature, infrared, motion, and activity recognition sensors.

Meta didn’t lose sight of the company’s focus when designing its new product. In addition to the usual audio/video calling capabilities, photos and videos captured by the Meta smartwatch will reportedly be able to be shared with one click on the company’s own social networking apps such as Zach’s company and Instagram.

And various revelations suggest that the watch body of the Meta watch is compatible with augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) functions, and can be used in conjunction with various devices in Meta’s future hardware ecosystem, such as smart An input device for glasses or a head mounted display (HMD), or an external camera for a VR fitness monitoring application with full body tracking.

It is said that Meta is negotiating with telecommunications service operators in the United States to make Meta smartwatches have LTE (Universal Mobile Communication Technology) support, so that they can run independently without a smartphone. The first generation of the Meta smartwatch will run on a custom version of Android, though it won’t be compatible with Wear OS, Android’s wearable operating system.

Start the Metaverse “Entrance Battle”

In fact, since changing its name to Meta a few months ago, a number of the social media giant’s business lines have been adjusting to the theme of the “metaverse.”

In the current blueprint description of the metaverse, AR/VR technology is probably the most closely related to the metaverse.

With the company’s name change, the original software such as Zach’s company, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus, etc., will also be transformed in a unified manner, all dedicated to the pursuit of the vision of creating and improving the metaverse. In addition, some hardware products to assist the Metaverse will be launched next year, including VR, AR and other devices, as well as related platforms and development tools.

At last year’s Connect 2021 conference, Meta showed user examples of smartwatch-like wearables in multiple scenarios in the “How to Build a Metaverse” section.

Previously, there have been rumors that Zach’s company is developing its own brand of smartwatches.

In June last year, Andrew Bosworth, Zach’s company’s vice president of AR/VR business, also responded to the “watch creation” on Twitter. While he did not confirm plans to release a smartwatch, he did not completely deny the following details:

This is just a research project at Zach’s company Labs;

Zach’s company will develop smart watches and smart glasses at the same time, and the two products will be connected;

When the time is right, this product will be launched in partnership with a third party.