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Casio's third-gen Pro Trek smartwatch with Wear OS
Casio's third-gen Pro Trek smartwatch with Wear OS boasts a battery life of up to 1 month
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While Google is most likely still more than a month away from the official introduction of the oft-rumored Pixel 3 and 3 XL phones, as well as that largely mysterious Pixel Watch lineup, the search giant’s Wear OS platform has today managed to steal the thunder of all the handsets expected to see daylight at IFA Berlin this week.
Of course, these nichey new smartwatches from Fossil-owned Skagen, Italian fashion brand Diesel, and Casio America, the US-based subsidiary of the Japanese consumer electronics giant, are unlikely to stay in the spotlight for more than their literal 15 minutes of fame.
As the name suggests, the Casio Pro Trek Smart WSD-F30 is an evolution of last year’s WSD-F20 design, which in turn attempted to refine the looks and (marginally) improve the features of the F10 before it.
Just like its forerunners, the WSD-F30 is pretty massive (yup, even larger than Diesel’s Full Guard 2.5), although for what it’s worth, Casio did manage to make this new Wear OS timepiece 3.9 mm narrower and 0.4 mm thinner than its predecessor.
Besides, there are two good reasons why the Pro Trek Smart family needs to remain bulky. One is the rugged, outdoor-friendly aspect of the wearable device, with military-grade resistance in tow against everything from shock to vibration, extreme temperatures, humidity, and low pressure.
The other is a stellar battery life maximized by a couple of proprietary software tricks. Namely, the Extend Mode promises up to three days of usage between charges with offline color maps and GPS functionality, while the Multi Timepiece Mode can squeeze up to a month of juice by only showing you the time, altitude, and atmospheric pressure on the F30’s monochrome display.
Speaking of, Casio continues to use a nifty monochrome LCD and color OLED dual layer screen combination, the latter of which sports an upgraded 390 x 390 pixel resolution. In “normal” use, the color display can go about a day and a half without needing to recharge, with that built-in GPS chip being the main power drainer here.
NFC support and heart rate tracking are still missing from Casio’s list of smartwatch priorities, but that doesn’t make the Pro Trek Smart WSD-F30 as affordable as you might imagine. Its recommended retail price is $549, with US sales only scheduled to begin in January 2019 for black, blue, and orange color options.
