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TAG Heuer’s new luxury Connected smartwatch, which was designed and built in collaboration with Intel and Google, is now available for purchase for $1,500 following a splashy release event Nov. 9 in New York.
The Connected smartwatch, which was first announced in March by TAG Heuer and its partners, includes design and styling from TAG Heuer, a 1.6GHz Atom Z34XX dual-core processor from Intel and Google’s Android Wear operating system.
The timepiece is built inside a Grade 2 titanium case and has a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, a 1.5-inch circular LTPS LCD touch-screen display with 360-by-360 (240-ppi) resolution, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage. The smartwatch is 1.8 inches in diameter, 0.50 inches thick and weighs 1.8 ounces. It also has a single push-button control and is splash-resistant to IP67 standards.
The watch comes with a vulcanized rubber strap with a grade 2 titanium folding clasp and safety push-buttons and is available in seven strap colors: green, blue, orange, red, white, black or yellow.
The Connected smartwatch runs on a 410mAh battery that is expected to provide a minimum of about 25 hours of use on a charge, according to TAG Heuer. The device also includes Bluetooth 4.1 and WiFi connectivity and an internal gyroscope, tilt detection sensor, microphone and haptic engine.
The smartwatch is compatible with smartphones running at least Android 4.3 or Apple’s iOS 8.2 or above.
“We are incredibly proud to be unveiling the first connected watch, which brings more than 150 years of history firmly into the future,” Jean-Claude Biver, CEO of TAG Heuer and president of the LVMH Group’s Watches Division, said in a statement at the press event. “The TAG Heuer Connected watch gives you the means not only to connect to the future, but also to connect to eternity.”
The company’s first three digital watch faces, created for the Connected watch, “feature the immediately recognizable design codes of TAG Heuer’s Carrera collection, including hands, index, counters, date window and minute track,” according to the watchmaker.
The three watch faces include a traditional chronograph dial, a three-hand dial and a GMT dial, all of which display the date and are available in black, deep blue or pearl white colors. The digital hands remain visible at all times, even when the watch is in an energy-saving mode. Other watch faces will arrive in the future, the company said. Customized faces created by TAG Heuer partners are available in the Google Play store through the TAG Heuer app.
The TAG Heuer Connected includes three “interactive counters” on its face that provide pertinent information for users at a glance. Users can touch one of the counters, and it will open the information in a full screen app for perusal. The first apps to be available are Insiders (lifestyle), GolfShot Pro (golf), RaceChrono Pro (motor racing) and Viewrangers (trailing), which will be offered with free subscriptions, according to the company.
The timepiece also includes the classic watch functions of a timer, alarm and stopwatch.
The watch will work without a smartphone as long as there is a WiFi connection.
In an offer unique to TAG Heuer, buyers of the Connected smartwatch will be able to exchange it for a mechanical TAG Heuer watch with an included Swiss movement at the end of the product’s two-year warranty period after paying an exchange fee of $1,500.
The timepiece can be purchased immediately from the company’s Website or through more than 100 TAG Heuer boutiques and 150 carefully selected retailers around the world.
The luxury Swiss watchmaker’s first smartwatch now jumps into the global smartwatch fray against established competitors Apple, Pebble, Huawei, Sony, Samsung and others.