What you need to know
- Montblanc Summit 3 arrives with Wear OS 3.
- It’s the first non-Samsung smartwatch to ship with Google’s Wear OS 3 platform.
- The smartwatch also features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 4100+ chipset.
The Montblanc Summit 3 is the first non-Samsung smartwatch to ship with Wear OS 3. The latest operating system was announced at Google I/O in collaboration with Samsung last year, but we have yet to receive hardware running the “stock” Wear OS 3, at least until now.
Montblanc has posted a few ‘How-to’ videos (via 9to5Google) on its YouTube channel, showcasing tutorials on using its new Wear OS 3 smartwatch and highlighting its features. The Summit 3 has many options to play around with, like watch face customizations and health features like heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring. However, the key takeaway of the Summit 3 is, of course, the Wear OS 3 UI.
It’s clear that the UI is a bit different from what appears on the Galaxy Watch 4, which has One UI Watch running on top of it. The videos point out a cleaner inference with a new booting animation and pill-shaped buttons throughout the UI, similar to what’s been spotted on the emulator and glimpses of the Pixel Watch.
One video further points out that the Summit 3 uses Google’s FastPair, which lets you pair easily with your Android devices. One tutorial video indicates that the watch uses “FastPair” to connect with a smartphone during setup. Additionally, double-pressing the crown would open the Google Wallet. There are several other crown presses and gestures that let you navigate across the new Wear OS interface.
Overall, the Montblanc Summit 3 appears to be a viable, albeit expensive option for those looking to buy Wear OS watches other than the ones made by Samsung. It’s also good to see that now we have Google’s latest Wear OS 3 shipping natively with non-Samsung smartwatches.
The Summit 3 comes with a 1.28-inches circular AMOLED display powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100+ chipset. The smartwatch packs 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. It has Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, and NFC payment connectivity options. The smartwatch also has a 5 ATM rating for water and dust resistance, meaning it should be suitable for a swim.
Summit also requires a companion app, which appears to be a requirement for Wear OS 3. The watch is also compatible with iPhones, in case the Apple Watch isn’t cutting it.
In other news, Samsung has recently announced One UI Watch 4.5 based on Wear OS 3.5. It addresses many accessibility issues and brings some new features to the Galaxy Watch 4. This new version for smartwatches is said to be coming in the third quarter of 2022, although it’s unclear if the Pixel Watch will ship with the same Wear OS version.
Meanwhile, if you can splurge a bit, the Montblanc Summit 3 costs $1,290 and is now listed (opens in new tab) on the Montblanc page, where you’ll soon be able to purchase and experience the new operating system yourself.
