If this is the best smartwatch Fitbit can bring to the market as an Apple Watch killer, they might be in trouble

May 2, 2017 08:07 GMT  ·  By

Photos of Fitbit's first-ever smartwatch got leaked, finally revealing what the company has been working on for the past year in its attempt to release an Apple Watch killer.

Codenamed Higgs, the new Fitbit smartwatch was developed from the very beginning to be an Apple Watch rival, so features like waterproofing, HR monitoring, GPS, payment support, music playback, and a high-quality display with 1,000 nits of brightness were all supposed to be offered.

Outdated design

In terms of design, however, the smartwatch looks dull to say the least. More or less an evolved version of the Fitbit Blaze, the smartwatch was described by company employees who tried it out as “definitely not sexy,” Yahoo News reports, and for good reason.

The aluminum unibody design comes with a bulky case and two side buttons, but the most striking “feature” is the Fitbit branding engraved on the huge bezel at the bottom of the display. Fitbit is very likely to offer interchangeable bands, but this still doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to get a small display into a huge square case with bezels that serve no purpose other than hiding bulky hardware.

Previous speculation on the smartwatch claimed that Fitbit held back the launch, which was originally scheduled to take place this spring, until the fall because of design issues. The GPS antenna wasn’t installed in the correct place, sources said, so Fitbit had to redesign the internals of the device to get it strong GPS signal.

No waterproofing?

Waterproofing was also a challenge, but it’s not yet clear if the company managed to address this problem as well, so there’s a small chance that the smartwatch could launch with standard water resistance, but without support for activities likes swimming. This is a feature that Apple introduced on the Watch Series 2, so without it, the Fitbit smartwatch would hardly become an Apple Watch killer.

In addition to the smartwatch, Fitbit is also preparing a premium Bluetooth headphones codenamed Parkside and available in two versions known as Nightfall Blue and Lunar Gray (the first can be seen in the photo in the gallery).

Pricing for the smartwatch is likely to start at approximately $300, while the headphones should retail for $150. Pandora is expected to be supported for streaming music, as talks with Spotify reportedly came to no conclusion.

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