Under Amour-branded device shown on Chinese social network.
HTC has been signed up as an Android Wear partner since the early days of the platform, but so far we've seen no related hardware from the Taiwanese firm. Now we're getting a look at what may be an early HTC smartwatch prototype, co-branded with Under Armour. The images spotted on Chinese social network Weibo (via Engadget) show a chunky, sporty design with a rubber strap, and heart rate sensors and charging pins behind the face. The codename "Halfbeak" is revealed revealed in the "About" screen in one of the shots.
What leads us to believe this is probably an old (and possibly discontinued) prototype, and not anything likely to come to retail anytime soon is the software. The watch is running a dev-keys build of Android 5.1.1, an almost two-year-old version of the OS. It's likely any current hardware in development would be running Android Wear 2.0 (based on Android Nougat) or at the very least a current Marshmallow build.
That said, it's not impossible that HTC's partnership with Under Armour might yield a traditional smartwatch, as opposed to the more basic UA Band released earlier in the year. Time will tell — and who knows, maybe we'll see a modern version of this watch alongside HTC's next flagship.
