Hasta La Gadget!

Newcomers like Pebble might be the current darlings when it comes to connected watches, but it doesn’t mean that established players are standing still. Back at CES, Casio showed a G-Shock watch with Bluetooth (GB-5600A) capable of receiving calls and text-message notifications (with sound and vibration), plus automatic time updates from an iPhone. Today the company announced a pair of G-Shock watches (GB-6900B / GB-X6900B) with Bluetooth 4.0 LE that extend the existing functionality to select Android handsets. In addition, both watches feature music remote control (via AVRCP, presumably) and the ability to set alarms and timers from Casio’s companion smartphone app. Battery life is a pretty impressive two years (with 12 hours of Bluetooth use per day) on a single CR2032 battery. The GB-6900B and GB-X6900B will be released in Japan on September 21st for 18,000 yen (roughly $187) and 20,000 yen (roughly $208) respectively. All that’s needed now is a retro-looking Databank or calculator watch with Bluetooth, right, Casio?

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile

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Via: Far East Gizmos

Source: Casio

Hopefully, you always take the appropriate precautions and never drink and drive. That being said, if you are worried about being sober after having a drink or two, then check out this G-Shock watch, which will let you know if you are under the influence of alcohol. While it looks pretty convincing, it was actually a hoax. Nevertheless, there are some watches like this available now.

CIROC, a maker of premium vodka, teamed up with Puff Daddy to come up with this latest hustle in entrepreneurship. This G-Shock watch features a striking transparent build, with a built-in breathalyzer, showing your blood alcohol content. It was supposed to come in three different colors, representing CIROC’s signature color gradient found on its vodka bottles.

Unfortunately, it was revealed by the G-Shock team that this watch was a fake.

Perhaps the popularity of the  Tokyoflash Intoxicated will inspire Casio to actually produce this watch someday.

[via Hypebeast via Hi Consumption]

CASIO’s famous shockproof watch “G-SHOCK” will have its 30 year anniversary in April, and in commemoration, 3 limited edition models of the “Resist Black” series (GW-5530C, DW-6930C, DW-5030C) will be released on April 19 in Japan.
Only 10,500 watches in total are available for these 3 models.
On the back-cover, there is a cool anniversary logo designed by internationally famous graphic designer, Eric Haze.
DW-5030C (21,000 yen) – Design inherited from the …

The G-Shock brand from Casio is a well known one for sure, and there are new releases being rolled from time to time, and all of them share one common feature – they are highly durable, and love getting rough and dirty with you. Well, the latest GB-5600AB and GB-6900AB shock-resistant watches from Casio do have a potential ace up its sleeve, which is the ability to communicate with an iPhone. These new additions to the G-Shock range will feature Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy Wireless Technology) connectivity, hence allowing it to communicate with the iPhone.

Not only can your new timepiece be notified of incoming calls and e-mails, it will also be able to enable the iPhone alarm function from the watch button itself. Apart from that, the timepiece is also smart enough to adjust itself to the exact time, depending on the time zone that you are in simply by synchronizing itself to the time data that the iPhone sends out. Other features include a high-brightness LED backlight, a vaunted two-year battery life and a special “G” logo which lets you know at a glance that it has Bluetooth 4.0 technology built-in. No idea on pricing though.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG’s 55″ OLED TV Will Be Arriving In The UK For £10,000, The Mycestro Is A Mouse You Can Wear On Your Finger,

Casio announced this week that its G-Shock watch with low-power Bluetooth 4.0 is shipping out to U.S. retailers now, after a delay of a year or more owing to a number of issues, including flooding in Thailand. As far as smart watches go, the Casio is a little barebones: it syncs with iPhone to provide alerts for inbound emails and phone calls, and also helps you find misplaced devices by activating their ring and vibrate functions.

The minimal features may seem a little paltry when you hold the Casio G-Shock up to standards set by smart watches like the MetaWatch Strata or the Pebble, which both offer plenty of added features via apps. But Casio’s implementation actually has a lot going for it. First of all, since it’s only using Bluetooth 4.0 and doing relatively little in terms of back-and-forth communication and transfer of data, Casio says battery life will still be at around two years, given 12 hours of Bluetooth connectivity per day.

But energy efficiency isn’t the only advantage. Casio’s smart features are well-chosen: email and call notices are practical, as are locating features, and a function that alerts a user when the phone gets out of range of the watch. It also adjusts time zones automatically based on location information fed by the iPhone. Additional features that the MetaWatch Strata provides, including weather, stocks, calendar info and more just ends up being hard to read on a tiny screen, and frustrating to sync and maintain. Plus transferring all that info means battery on both the phone and watch end of the equation suffers.

Click to view slideshow.

A kitchen sink approach to wearable computing just seems premature to me, after some experience using the MetaWatch for a little while now. Casio’s strategy of introducing a few logical features and seeing how things go, without sacrificing the things that make watches useful to begin with (i.e., a battery that doesn’t need charging every few days), seems like the way to go for now.

Casio’s Bluetooth G-Shock comes in black, gray blue, brown and white, offers 200M water resistance and shock protection, and has a number of other standard watch features including alarms, stopwatch, a countdown timer and more. Those features are smarter on a watch than many of the so-called “smart” features being pushed by others. The watch sells for $180, and is available through select U.S. retailers including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and more, and online at G-Shock’s website. Note that since it uses Bluetooth 4.0, only iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 owners need apply.