The Facebook company recently announced a name change to Meta, as well as its plans to build a "metaverse" with a set of "interconnected digital spaces" — yes, it's nauseating, isn't it. While that's already worrying enough on its own, this newly rebranded company comes with equally renewed hardware aspirations that aim to bridge our digital and physical worlds, with VR and AR both in its list of priorities. As those plans begin to materialize, the company will also be involved in other hardware ventures. One such product is a smartwatch, and of course, it has a camera.
The watch was leaked by Bloomberg. It was spotted in the Facebook View app, which was made to be used with Ray-Ban Stories, the recently-launched smart glasses made in collaboration with Facebook Meta. The smartwatch looks somewhat similar to an Apple Watch, with its square display and rounded corners, but there are differences that make it immediately stand out.
The main one is the presence of a camera that lives within a notch poking out of the bottom bezel. It's obviously worrying that Meta seems to be adding cameras onto every piece of hardware it releases (the Ray-Ban Stories alone have two), but it's unsurprising seeing as many of their hardware launches revolve around video chat.
It's not uncommon to take pictures using a smartwatch by pairing it with a smartphone so you can use the camera remotely, but actually having a camera on a smartwatch is something that we've not seen too often. It could give it the edge in functionality compared to rival watches, though, as it would allow for video calls to take place without using a phone. We're not sure what the Meta smartwatch will be called — Portal Watch perhaps — but it's expected to be released at some point next year.
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