Wearable tech is surely taking off nowadays and we are witnessing new and enhanced gadgets pertaining to the field. That is exactly why if you mention fitness tracker to anyone, especially the kind you can wear around your wrist, the immediate image that pops up is that of a ‘futuristic’ looking device wrapped around your wrist. However, a French company whose expertise lies in watch making has come up with quite an odd fitness tracker in the form of a regular watch. Withings has unveiled plans of introducing Activité, which essentially looks like a regular analog watch.
The watch is analog and has a smaller analog display dedicated to the representation of how much activity the user is performing. The Activité is classy, no doubt about it, and allows you to easily fool anyone by saying its just a watch, but in reality this watch is all the fitness tracking that you’ll need. The batteries are capable of powering it up for a year and the watch is waterproof up to a depth of 15’. The activity can be checked against the smaller display where a blue/red needle moves from 0-100 based on what the user is doing; snoozing on couch or riding a bike.
Despite its regular design, the watch sure has some wonderful engineering within it and all this is just not restricted under the hood but also on the strap. The strap is capable of identifying user’s activity and sleep patterns, oxygen in blood levels and even the user’s heart rate. All the data collected by the watch is then transmitted to the accompanying app (currently available for only iOS) via Bluetooth. Tapping the glass of the watch twice allows for seeing the time for which the alarm has been set – the watch vibrates gently to wake you up from slumber and also when you have reached you activity goals. The watch also allows its users to swap the leather strap with a plastic sports strap.
The Withings’ CEO, Cedric Hutchins, said; ‘It’s the first in a new category: a premium, high-end watch that happens to have these cool features. We tried to start with a watch.’ So what you’re looking at is a different approach from the tech titans and we think that this might help the sales for Withings take off. The gadget will be available this fall for a price of $390.
