Apple Watch is going video-capable. A new camera-enabled wrist band called the CMRA is on the way.

Hardware for easy wearable video

The CMRA features two cameras. The self-facing one is 2-megapixels. The front-facing one is 8-megapixels. Both are cable of HD photos and videos. These features alone should make the Apple Watch useful for Facetiming, Skyping, Snapchatting and Dick Tracy impersonating.

The band come with its own 8GB dedicated on-board storage. The battery promises to keep running for up to 30 solid minutes of video, and is rechargeable via a purpose-specific watch stand that simultaneously charges the watch itself.

Glide pips apple

The CMRA wrist band is a pretty big advance for the Apple Watch, which has certainly had its critiques. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s made its way to market through a third-party developer. The new Apple Watch accessory is being produced by Glide.

You may know Glide as a well-regarded video messenger app for both Apple and Android platforms.  It claims the mantle as ‘fastest video messenger app on the planet.

CMRA’s designer, Shawn Grening was previously an engineer who worked on the Apple Watch itself.

App integration

Of course, media captured through the CMRA will be immediately shareable. Currently, it’s slated to share directly to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and, of course, Glide.

At launch, it seems that the CMRA will be controlled by a dedicated CMRA app, which will be available via the App Store. It is expected that suite of compatible apps will expand quickly, with an official CMRA Developer SDK being made available. Expect more announcements about CMRA related photo and video apps in the near future.

Practicalities of launch

It looks like the CMRA will be on shelves in early 2017. They’ll be available for pre-order before that, with prices starting at just under AU$200. This discounted early-bird rate is expected to rise to over AU$300 once the product is actually released.