With Samsung's recently announced Galaxy Gear Smartwatch and Apple's rumored iWatch wrist accessory, it seems like the new trend in technology is to make smartwatches less about fitness and more about augmenting a smartphone. For months we've seen smartphone tech companies take a page out of fitness tech company's book. Now Fitbit will be switching that model around and augmenting one of its fitness tracker products to work with some smartphone elements.
The company, one of the major pioneers in the fitness tracker field is pushing forward a new device called the Fitbit Force, a bracelet that combines the company's expertise in digital exercise tracking with some of the more basic smartphone functions.
The device looks like the Fitbit Flex bracelet but comes with a new OLED screen right on the band so users can easily see the time and how many steps they have taken throughout the day. According to ABC News, like the Fitbit Flex its Zip and One trackers, which you can clip to a pair of pants, the new device also tracks total distance, calories burned, the floors and stairs you've climbed and how long you've slept.
You can choose to display all of this information on the screen, or you can view it on the Fitbit app, which pairs with Bluetooth 4.0.
Since the device will be setup to Bluetooth, the company has decided to give the band a bit more functionality. If you sync it to an iPhone running iOS 7, you see incoming call notifications right on the display. Meanwhile, Android devices don't yet have that capability. However, with any NFC-equipped Android phone, you can tap the Force to the phone and it will automatically launch the Fitbit app.
The device differs from other products like the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Nike Fuel band simply in that it puts fitness before smartphone capabilities, but still contains both. The Galaxy Gear has some fitness functionality built in, but nothing to same degree as the Fitbit, and for the lower price of $129.05 it won't burn your wallet as much.
