There have been several leaks and rumors about the purported Moto 360 sequel being developed by Motorola and the latest speculation is that the company's next-gen smartwatch will feature a higher screen resolution, as well as come with new hardware inside.

Motorola had launched its first Moto 360 smartwatch back at IFA 2014 in September and with the wearable now already about half a year old, the company has been working on bringing out its successor.

Recently, Lenovo's CEO, Yang Yuanqing, posted an image of the all new smartwatch inside a soft briefcase to reveal radical changes in the next-gen Moto 360 smartwatch. The image posted online was quickly removed, though screenshots captured by enthusiasts showed multiple changes in the successor to the Moto 360, while the "flat-tire" black bar remained intact. The image also indicated that the next-gen Moto 360 would offer extreme customization in the form of multiple straps, interchangeable front panels and different sized bands.

In the latest news about the next-gen Moto 360 smartwatch, an app developer claims to have noticed a mysterious Motorola-built Android Wear device pinging his Android developer console from the city of Mundelein, located close to Motorola's headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Apparently, the device codenamed "Smelt" has a higher resolution display of 360 x 360, as against 320 x 290 in the current edition of the Moto 360 smartwatch.

The word "smelt" refers to molten metal, and also refers to a small silvery fish that lives in both fresh and marine water, indicating that the purported Moto 360 sequel could be an all-metal smartwatch with better resistance to water. The app developer has also revealed that the device is running Android Wear 5.1 and is powered by an "armeabi-v7a" processor, indicating ARM v7 CPU architecture inside.

With leaks about the Moto 360 sequel popping up frequently, Motorola could be quite close to announcing the smartwatch and if the rumored specifications are indeed true, then the next-gen smartwatch could be more premium or luxurious than last year's Moto 360.