HTC and Under Armour are expanding their partnership to include a connected weight scale, which was leaked on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s official product database earlier this week (it has since been removed).
The connected scale will measure weight and body fat, according to the listing, and should be able to send information to a nearby mobile device. It will connect to the mobile using Bluetooth 4.1, which offers low energy protocols.
Not much else is known about the connected scale, though we suspect it will send and receive information from Under Armour’s Record app, which tracks steps, sleep, and weight loss.
HTC delayed the Grip — a wearable designed in partnership with Under Armour — until 2016, so that it could launch an entire fitness ecosystem around the wearable. The connected scale should be the first of a few connected devices to fit into the fitness ecosystem.
We don’t have a release date for the connected scale, but the Bluetooth listing points to sometime soon. As far as we know, HTC has no events in the U.S. or Europe planned, so it might come in January next year.
The connected scale is part of HTC’s plan to diversify its product portfolio from only smartphones to newer technologies. The company has been slow to launch these new products, however, with the Nexus 9 and RE Camera being the only two non-mobile products available currently.
HTC is working with Valve to launch the Vive VR, but we still don’t have an official launch date for the virtual reality headset. December 8 is the rumored launch date, though that still hasn’t been verified. The Taiwanese company has a VR conference in Beijing on December 17-20, where we should hear more information on the VR headset.
