// THE VERGE — HARDWARE & GADGET
The Moto Watch Ultra is a return to Wear OS
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This is a standard smartwatch, and not all that Ultra.
This is a standard smartwatch, and not all that Ultra.
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Just a few months after getting back into the smartwatch game, Motorola is targeting the premium end of the market with the first Moto Watch Ultra. It comes with some upgrades from the recent Moto Watch — most obviously the jump to Wear OS — but lacks the outdoorsy features that would make it a true rival to Samsung and Apple’s Ultra watches.
While the Moto Watch ran a custom operating system, Motorola has adopted Google’s Wear OS platform for the Ultra model, with a Snapdragon W5 Plus Gen 1 chip to run it. That gives the Ultra an immediate leg up in terms of access to a wide range of apps, interoperability with the company’s Android phones, and support for NFC payments through Google Wallet. Gemini is supported too, along with Motorola’s own Qira AI assistant.
The downside is battery life. While the Moto Watch boasted an impressive 13 days of runtime, Motorola is only predicting 50 hours of life for the Ultra, and that’s with the always-on display switched off.