The OnePlus Watch eschewed it in favor of using RTOS but it seems that Casio is ready to continue support of Google’s wearable platform by announcing the first G-Shock smartwatch to run on Wear OS. Called the G-Squad GSW-H1000, the Wear OS toting smartwatch sports a rugged design and is the first G-Shock watch to have a color display. Priced at $700/£599, a number of details and specifications are known about the GSW-H1000, but it’s anyone’s guess as to which processor is providing the grunt.
The rugged design is exactly what you might expect to see from a G-Shock watch that boasts shock-and-water resistance to a depth of 200m and a titanium back. The GSW-H1000 is available in Black/Blue, Black, and Red colorways, although it’s only listed on G-Shock’s stores in the UK and Asia at the present time.
There’s a 1.2-inch color TFT LCD display with 360 x 360 resolution that can show maps, notifications, and everything else that Wear OS has to offer. It seems that the GSW-H1000 may have found some inspiration from Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro series in that the specifications also mention a Monotone LCD which is probably responsible for the claimed 1-month usage when using the “multi timepiece mode”. In normal, full-featured mode the battery life drops to just one-and-a-half days, which isn’t terribly great.
You’ll find a microphone, Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity, and three buttons on the side, along with built-in GPS, heart rate, compass, altitude, and air pressure sensors present.
Casio hasn’t revealed what hardware is present so there are no details on how much storage or RAM the watch has, nor which processor is beating under its hood. What we can extrapolate from this is that the GSW-H1000 smartwatch is likely to be powered by Qualcomm’s old Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset. Why? If it was the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform being used, then that would be something to shout about seeing as it would make it only the second watch to be powered by the new chip that was announced back in July 2020.
So. $700 for a Wear OS smartwatch with a TFT LCD display, 1.5 days of normal usage, and an obsolete processor? Is the G-Shock branding worth paying over the odds when you could buy the TicWatch Pro 3 for $299 and have a vastly improved Wear OS experience? Let us know in the comments below.
[G-Shock]
