The Oukitel A28 Smartwatch has been creating a lot of buzz lately, mainly because of it’s compatibility with Android as well as iOS. This smartwatch does not run Android Wear, rather it runs on a custom OS which is made to run smoothly with both Android and iOS.
The Oukitel A28, is a square watch that comes with a leather band, and has a single button on the side that acts a power button. This smartwatch can take calls right on the watch itself with the on-board Microphone and Speaker. The speaker also acts as a Bluetooth speaker to play your audio, similar to Samsung’s Gear Smartwatch line. Oukitel uses a MediaTek MTK 2502 Chipset, which is really popular among the Chinese Smartphone and Smartwatch OEM’s. As MediaTek is pushing the “Wearable” market, with their dedicated SOC’s it looks really promising for MediaTek holding their share of the market.
The A28 Smartwatch connects to your smartphone using MediaTek’s ‘Smart Device’ app. This app is very generic and is made to run with all the Smart Devices that feature an MTK SOC. Currently some users on Lollipop are getting some problem but it will surely be fixed soon, MediaTek is yet to release an updated app fixing this issue. The pairing works, making calls, and getting notifications works just fine.
The watch itself is built beautifully, especially for $50. Taking a lot of it’s design inspiration from Asus, and Apple’s counterparts, it feels home for anyone who’ve used a smart-watch before. The capacitive digitizer works flawlessly on the 1.54-inch, 240*240 display. It also has a wake up gesture, which again is similar to most smart-watches out there, the screen wakes up when you lift the device up towards you, like you would do check the time on a regular watch. You can also disable the gesture, and use the power button on the side, if you prefer that.
Coming to the Apps, most of the apps will be tightly tied to your phone. But, special function apps like BT Media Control, Find My Phone, Remote Shutter, and more have to work deeply with the phone. Unfortunately, almost all of these special functions need the ‘MediaTek Smart Device’ app to run, and the App’s incompatibility with Lollipop could be a major deal breaker for some. The app, and the software are still funky, but are a lot better. MediaTek is slowly pushing more and more efforts to perfect the Smart Device hardware and software, before the Chinese market floods with more of these Smartwatches, and that is a good thing.
The Oukitel A28 Smartwatch can be bought online for just $56.99 from the online Giant Gearbest.
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