Hands-on: ZTE BlueWatch smartwatch [VIDEO]

Everyone wants to be in the smart watch arena, so we weren’t too surprised to learn that ZTE came to CES with a smart watch of their own. They’re calling this the BlueWatch, a Bluetooth 4.0 wrist-dweller that, quite honestly, doesn’t seem to do anything special.

The watch seems competently designed and should look stylish aside any ensemble of clothing you put on. The 1.26-inch x .38-inch e-Ink display will serve up the time, weather, Facebook, Twitter, texts, email and more, and will do it in varying lighting conditions. The e-Ink display also ensures the 235mAh battery isn’t taxed too heavily.

ZTE has implemented a simple 4-button user interface for easily scrolling through all the options, settings and apps you need, a relief considering touch-based e-Ink implementations are often more shoddy than helpful. ZTE also chose to forego a cable-based charging solution, instead opting for a 2-pin connector for charging the thing within a dock.

The BlueWatch honestly feels like one of those “you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen all of them” devices. I can’t think of any one standout quality that would make me want to consider one of these over something like the Pebble. It’s a prototype, but unless ZTE goes back and erases the entire drawing board we don’t see much changing.

Price could be a determining factor, of course, but we’re not quite sure where the BlueWatch stands in that category just yet. There’s also no word on the when and where with this thing. The fact that it’s still in the early prototype stages means we shouldn’t be expecting it at any point within the next few weeks or months. In the meantime, grab yourself an early look at this thing in our hands-on video above.