The latter are based on the MediaTek MT2601, which was announced last month. The MT2601 features two Cortex-A7 cores and Mali 400MP graphics. Since the chip was designed from the ground up as a wearable solution, MediaTek claims it has 41.5% fewer components and lower power consumption than competing SoCs.

Nnotebookitalia attended a CES event at which MediaTek proudly showed off several Aster-based smartwatches, along with the first Android Wear prototypes based on the new MT2601. The prototype is bulky and it’s clearly not a production design, but Notebookitalia expects the first Android Wear watches based on MT2601 processors to launch "soon," whatever that means. 

While the prototype is clearly a work-in-progress, it gives us a faint idea of what to expect. It has a 1.6-inch 240x240 resolution display, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity sensor, optical heart rate sensor and a few more goodies.

With a tiny chip, a PCB measuring just 480mm2 and a 240x240 screen, it is obvious MediaTek-based smartwatches could end up cheaper than the current generation of Android Wear hardware, most of which are based on Qualcomm SoCs, with higher resolution screens.