CES 2017: Casio brings GPS to its rugged WSD-F20 Android Wear watch

By Nicole Batac

Las Vegas - Casio shows its taking its smartwatch segment seriously with the second iteration of its Android Wear-powered timepiece. Called the WSD-F20, this watch now falls under Casio’s Pro Trek Smart Series. It brings a much-needed feature: built-in GPS. What this introduces is compatibility with Glonass and Michibiki satellite systems to improve tracking further. Truly built for adventurers, it comes with coloured maps and you can download maps offline so you won’t get lost when data connection fails. Aside from that, the watch gets a new Location Memory feature. What this does is it reads your location and lets you lay down markers by hitting one of the physical buttons. You can also leave voice notes for spots you want to revisit.

This rugged smartwatch is built to military standards and is still water resistant up to 50 meters. It has a 1.32-inch dual layer LCD touchscreen (320 x 330 resolution) and has a battery life of up to a day if you have everything running and a month if you use it in normal watch mode. When you’re low on battery, it’ll go into monochrome mode. The watch also gets better activity tracking, especially for snow sports where it delivers additional data such as maximum speed for each run.

The WSD-F20 is set to get Android Wear 2.0 in the spring. But tiding you over before that is Casio’s own as well as third-party applications that make the best of its features. These include the likes of Moment Setter, an app to remind you of the best fishing times; Tool, an app that shows real-time information on changes in the natural environment; and Casio Moment Link, an Android-only app that makes use of GPS to show your location to a group of friends and letting you chat with them via text messages. The WSD-F20, though, is compatible with both Android smartphones and iPhones. It’s set to debut in the US on April 21 with a US$500 retail price.

Source: Wareable