Casio announce the first dual display Android Wear watch

Traditional watch manufacturer Casio have announced their first Android Wear Smart Watch today, the Casio WSD-F10 Smart Outdoor Watch, yes that’s really its name. Incomprehensible name aside the Casio Outdoor, as I’m going to call it, has a trifecta of actual firsts: first Smartwatch for Casio, first ‘ruggedised’ Android Wear device and finally the first dual-display Android Wear device.

Dual Display you ask? Does it have 2 watch faces? No, it has 2 displays layered on top of each other, one a full colour and one monochrome. This allows users to use the lower power monochrome display when not using “smart” features. The description from Casio does indicate that the device can enter a power-conserving ‘Timepiece Mode’ which switches off communication to the smartphone and the colour LCD screen giving up to 30 days battery life. It is unclear if the user can select to have the monochrome screen default as the “ambient mode”.

I don’t know about you, but my wrists live a daily battle against door handles, wall corners, elevator doors and hand rails, as such my watch receives a fair amount of punishment, so seeing a more sturdy Android Wear device is both welcome and not surprising. With water resistance to 50 meters and having been engineered to the US Department of Defences MIL-STD-810 standards, it’s a safe bet that this will be one of the most durable Android Wear devices available.

Details are still a little thin regarding some of the specifications.

Two noticeable hardware absences from this device are a speaker for compatibility with the latest functions in Android Wear and a dedicated GPS. Considering this is touted as an outdoor device I would have thought that independent GPS would have been amongst the features. It is apparent that Casio is intending this to be coupled to your phone if you want to use it for anything other than a timekeeping, considering the battery performance of Android Wear it’s hard to take umbrage with this decision at this time.

In addition, to the hardware, Casio will also be releasing the Moment Setter+ app that will enhance the device with additional activity-based applications and functions. Users can select between profiles for Trekking, Cycling and Fishing. By selecting an activity, the display switches to a watch faces that display information pertinent to that activity as well as setting new default apps to launch from the TOOLs and Apps buttons.

The Casio Outdoor comes in Green, Orange, Black and Red, No information is available yet for a release date or Australian pricing/ availability. With Jason on the show floor at CES, we’ll be sure to try and track down the details.