Casio, the biggest name in rugged sports watches, has dipped a cautious toe into the smartwatch space with their new WSD-F10. This watch features a dual LCD/LED touchscreen and a battery life of about a day. It also features a rugged case and band in line with Casio’s Edifice and Protrek series of sports watches. It also features an internal altimeter, barometric pressure sensor, and compass.
You’ll have noticed an interesting point in the above paragraph: a 24 hour battery. Trekking watches are designed to let users go mountaineering in the deepest, darkest wildernesses of New Jersey. Sometimes those trips last longer than 24 hours. Therefore, you’re going to want a watch that can keep up.
This $500 watch isn’t shipping until the spring so there’s some hope for Casio. However, this looks more like a smartwatch that wants to be used as an occasional trekking device versus a rugged smartwatch that you wear on the trail.
That said, there is definitely a niche that Casio could easily fill with a solid smartwatch with Android Wear. Battery life will always be an issue, but I could imaging a solar or kinetically-powered watch with a drive train that could keep things topped up in between charges. Interestingly Ariel Adams at ABlogToWatch predicted what a Casio smartwatch would look like and was pretty spot on. Now they just have to fix the bugs.
