Casio announces rugged Android Wear smartwatch

For its first modern smartwatch, however, Casio has stayed out of fey Apple Watch territory and designed an Android Wear watch that can take the rough with the suit. The WSD-F10 is packed with outdoor sensors including accelerometer, compass, barometer and temperature. It’s waterproof to 50m and has slip-free buttons, designed to work with gloves. Weight is 93g, and the watch measures 61.7×56.4×15.7mm.

The F10 also has a dual layer display – the ability to switch between stacked monochrome and colour LCD touchscreen displays, saving battery power. It’s a 1.32in panel, with 320×300 pixels. Casio claims roughly 24 hours of use using the colour screen, but more like a month using just the monochrome readout.

The watch comes with various Casio apps designed to track data from outdoor activities such as hiking, biking and fishing. It will also come with well-known Android apps such as Runkeeper, Viewranger and MyRadar. The Tool and App labelled buttons will let you cycle between various screens showing such handy information as tide graphs, air pressure changes and activity graphs. There are also various Casio branded watch face options, referencing its analogue and digital watches.

The WSD-F10 syncs with an app called Casio Moment Setter+, using Bluetooth LE, and the watch also has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. It comes in four colours, for US$500 – we’ve asked Casio about worldwide availability, and when we can get a sample to review.