watch

The Riley watch by Marc Jacobs was revealed in a new edition this week - complete with Wear OS. This was the first time the Marc Jacobs brand released its Riley design with Wear OS - but not the first time the Riley came as a so-called smartwatch. The first "Riley Hybrid Smartwatch" had analog parts, but a few "smart" features - like notifications and Bluetooth connectivity. This new Riley rolls with full-on Wear OS smartwatch software from Google.

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When the Apple Watch was first introduced in the year 2014, Apple revealed a Walkie-Talkie feature. That feature never really made it to prime-time. Four years later at WWDC 2018, Apple's re-revealed the Walkie-Talkie feature for Watch OS. This is watchOS 5, if you're keeping count, and it'll be the first place a Walkie-Talkie feature is available in real life on the Apple Watch, for real.

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Back at CES 2018, Misfit unveiled its new Path smartwatch. Dubbed a "hybrid smartwatch" and following a trend that we're seeing many manufacturers pursue, the Path attempts to blend the look of a standard watch with the increased functionality of a smartwatch. In a market where interest in standard smartwatches seems to be declining, hybrids like the Path might be able to find an audience.

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Apple Watch 3's release and release details appeared this week in an analyst note on Apple's singular wearable device. This note came from notoriously accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, who suggested that the 3rd-gen Apple Watch won't look particularly different from previous models. Why would it? Not when there's a whole bunch of Apple Watch straps that were designed for the look of the first-gen device.

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Even though it may seem like smartwatches could be on the way out, Louis Vuitton has decided to try its hand at the segment. Today the French designer house announced a new line of Android Wear-powered smartwatches. The Tambour Horizon line, as its being called, certainly looks impressive, but as with everything else to come out of Louis Vuitton, expect to pay quite a bit of money to own one.

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It's been nearly two years since Sony revealed its "not a smartwatch" take on the wearable market. Born from its First Flight internal crowdfunding platform, Wena promised a way to enjoy the trappings of smartwatches without actually getting a smartwatch. Like many watch makers that followed, that promise is made real via bands that enclose all the smart electronics and functionality. And, finally, those Wena bands are finally hitting the market. In Japan at least.

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If you happen to really like the look and design of the Apple Watch, but are also a tired-and-true fan of traditional mechanical watches, then here's a timepiece that's just for you. Swiss watchmaker H. Moser has announced a new watch that almost perfectly mimics the look of Apple's smartwatch, yet it's 100% mechanical, meaning there's no display, no touch input, and no health or fitness tracking — no 'smarts' of any kind.

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As a consequence of history, the smartwatch OS scene is a bit more diverse, despite Android and iOS owning the lion’s share of the market. The smartwatch market is a bit less confusing, with the line drawn between the Apple Watch and a myriad of Android Wear smartwatches. Sure, there are others, like the Samsung-only Tizen-based Gear S, but the numbers are thinning. Pebble and Vector, which each had their own OS, succumbed to Fitbit’s power. Undaunted, Swatch CEO Nick Hayek is boldly revealing that the company is making its own watch operating system to debut in a Tissot-branded smartwatch in late 2018.

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TAG Heuer's latest smartwatch may be all about interchangeable modules, but the biggest benefit of the Connected Modular 45 might well be its ability to live on after wearables lose their charm. Announced earlier today, the new watch is one of the more expensive options out there - unsurprisingly, given its old-school timepiece brand name - not to mention among the first to run Android Wear 2.0. TAG's trick is interchangeability not only of straps and virtual watch-faces, but far greater personalization.

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Here's an announcement that will likely only be of interest to a small cross-section of audiences: watch historians and/or Steve Jobs fanatics. Seiko has announced that it will be offering a limited re-release of one of its older watches made famous by a Steve Jobs portrait. The Japanese watch maker's Chariot timepiece was seen on the wrist of the Apple co-founder in the 1984 Time Magazine cover image, which featured Jobs sitting cross-legged on the floor with a Macintosh in his lap.

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A smartwatch with a touchscreen display and a set of mechanical hands is exactly what we did not expect from MyKronoz. It didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to continue to try to make smartwatches look like traditional watches in the first place, given the lack-of-market for the devices. But here they are, complete with elements from both the traditional universe and the new-age smartwatch world, made by MyKronoz.

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Next year Google will be releasing two new Android Wear smartwatches in the style of their Nexus smartphone line. There's very little to get in Google's way in the market for these devices as the only massive competition out today is the Apple Watch. According to a recent study, nobody wants a smartwatch at the moment - except some Apple fans, apparently, who all want the Apple Watch. So why would Google want to continue rolling in this market?

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