Tag Heuer smartwatch: Swiss watch firm teases first images of their $1,400 luxury smartwatch

Luxury Swiss watch brand Tag Heuer has teased some images of their upcoming smartwatch, the Tag Heuer Connected, which is due to go on sale on 9 November.

Although they are more accustomed to mechanical, traditional timepieces, Tag Heuer have partnered with Google and Intel to create what they're calling "the world's first luxury Android Wear smartwatch."

The company have released an image of the upcoming watch, and to be honest, they're not giving much away.

All the image shows is one edge of the watch, with the rest shrouded in darkness.

We can see a bezel (which doesn't look like it rotates, unlike the Samsung Gear S2's), and a fairly hefty crown, which could well be a rotating button, in the style of the Apple Watch - which Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver has previously called "too feminine".

Granted, the Connected does look a bit more like a man's watch from the shape of its silhouette, which is slightly beefier and has less of a futuristic sleekness than most other smartwatches on the market.

We don't know anything about the watch's features yet, but there are two aspects to it that are fairly interesting.

The first is the battery life - Tag Heuer claims it will last 40 hours on a single charge, an impressive feat considering the Apple Watch usually only manages to make it through a single day.

The other is its lifespan - unlike other smartwatches, which like any other gadget, owners will usually have for two or three years before upgrading, Tag Heuer sees their smartwatches being kept in use for decades, much like their traditional mechanical watches are.

Quite how this will work with the lifespan of the electronics inside is unclear, but the company told Wareable in March that the techy elements of the watch will be upgradeable - potentially allowing owners to change the interior electronics of their watch as time goes on, while still keeping it for decades as a treasured object.

This is a fairly major and refreshing change from the disposability of most consumer tech, but with a price tag of $1,400 (£918), you'd expect it to keep working for more than a couple of years.

Luxury tech has always been a strange and niche world - Vertu, the Nokia-owned company that sells blingy lizard-skin encased luxury smartphones for £8,000, has naturally never gained mass appeal.

However, the Tag Heuer Connected's relatively modest price (a high-end Apple Watch costs £600) and upgradeable design could mean you might actually see one outside of Knightsbridge.