Nokia's Fabled Moonraker Smartwatch Spotted in Hands-On Video

Smartwatches haven’t exactly been shining in terms of adoption since their arrival a few years ago. Nokia, the erstwhile top mobile phone maker that was bought and then subsequently written off by Microsoft last year, has been long-rumoured to have developed a smartwatch codenamed ‘Moonraker’ which never saw the light of day on a store shelf, but is now visible to the world thanks to a YouTube video.

A YouTube channel by the name ‘Nokibar’ has put up a three minute video (seen below) briefly demoing the smartwatch in a hands-on style.

The Moonraker’s face appears to be similar in appearance to the LG G Watch; one of the first Android Wear smartwatches to hit the market, while the strap is reminiscent of the Apple Watch Sport. There’s a button below the display, which appears to function the same as a home button on a smartphone. Towards the end of the video you’ll also see the golden contacts at the back of the watch, which are used to charge in conjunction with a magnetically-latching cable. There also appears to be NFC compatibility.

The user interface appears primitive, and there's no word on whether it was based on a popular OS like Android. Prior to Android Wear, Google’s official smartwatch platform, products like the Sony SmartWatch 2 ran custom interfaces based on Android. Although the demo video doesn’t tell much; the interface seemed like it supported checking email, messages, calls, Facebook etc. There’s also a step counter and the facility to ring your phone. It’s pretty obvious by the appearance and the lack of polish that the interface was incomplete.

Microsoft did pursue their own wearable efforts with the Smart Band, but ultimately called it quits recently.