But maybe not the ones you wanted
Fitbit’s one of the biggest names in wearables in the world, and following its early 2021 acquisition by Google in a $2.1 billion deal, the company’s been absorbed into the Mountain View giant’s hardware division. If you were hoping for new Fitbit smartwatches this year, we have both good and bad news: It does look like new wearables are in development, but based on the evidence we’ve seen so far, they might not be the ones you’ve been expecting.
Let’s dissect the good news first: 9to5Google pored through the Fitbit app’s latest update, and found signs of a handful of upcoming devices, including codenames “Hera,” “Rhea,” and “Nyota.” Those continue the long-standing tradition of Fitbit assigning space/sci-fi-related alias for its devices, with Hera Syndulla and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura characters in Star Wars Rebels and Star Trek respectively, and Rhea being one of Jupiter’s moons.
Other conclusions can be formed based on the few available specs the app reveals. Hera and Rhea — which also happen to be cute anagrams — have display resolutions of 336×336, indicating these might be new entries in the Versa and Sense lineups. We haven’t seen new entries in this lineup since late 2020. Meanwhile, Nyota might most certainly be a new Fitbit Luxe, with the same display resolution of 124×208.
None of these offerings, however, seem to be equipped with Wear OS, at least from what the teardown revealed. All three of the codenames were found in the code for the software bridge that connects the smartwatch’s firmware to your phone — and if they were powered by Wear OS, such a bridge wouldn’t be needed. That’s something less than conclusive, but if true, that would mean Google isn’t living up to previous promises — the company earlier mentioned future Fitbit devices would run Wear OS rather than Fitbit’s platform.
We’ll hopefully learn more about these upcoming smartwatches in the next few months.
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