Fossil to introduce new category of hybrid smartwatches in coming months
Fossil has hinted it is planning to introduce a new category of hybrid smartwatches for this coming fall holiday season.
Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets
In a news release on it’s website, the company says the watches will fill a gap they’ve identified in the wearables market. The devices will sport all the functionality of fully fledged touchscreen smartwatches but with the look and feel of a traditional watches. Best of all, Fossil says the wearables will come with long battery life.
The latest devices in its portfolio are the new Carlyle HR and Julianna HR, the first watches to feature the Generation 5 smarts. In addition to the “new category”, the company says a number of its brands will release smartwatches in the coming months as well.
All these will feature the Gen 5 smarts which allows for longer battery life via four battery modes – Daily, Extended, Time-only and Custom. There’s a microphone and swimproof speaker onboard which allow you to ask help from Google Assistant and do tasks. Whats more, from this Fall iPhone users will be able to make and receive calls when tethered to their phones.
Finally, there’s also more storage space (8GB) and memory (up to 1GB RAM) allowing users to download more apps and store more media on their wrist. All of this is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip.
We did spot a few new Fossil Group branded watches at the FCC in July. This includes two watches from Michael Kors, and one each from Fossil, Diesel and Emporio Armani. All of these share the same underlying smarts, the only difference will be design and antenna placement. What we suspect could be the Fossil Sport 2 has also received certification from Bluetooth SIG recently.
“We’ve made multi-day battery life for touchscreen smartwatches possible with one touch – a disruptor for smartwatches on the Wear OS by Google platform. And, we’re leading the industry on Wear OS by Google by enabling tethered phone calls for iPhone users,” said Fossil Group Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Greg McKelvey.
“Both advancements are the result of our unrelenting focus on advancing wearable technology. We’ll continue to integrate the latest tech features our customers need with the styles they love.”
Like this article? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and never miss out!
