Italian clothing and accessory company Diesel has announced its first smartwatch in collaboration with Fossil Group. The product is part of the Diesel On lineup which currently encompasses the hybrid watch Diesel On Time and the Diesel On Track fitness tracker, but unlike the aforementioned products, the new Diesel On smartwatch will be powered by Google’s operating system for wearables Android Wear 2.0.
The Diesel On smartwatch is equipped with an AMOLED display, but detailed specifications other than the fact that it will be an “oversized” smartwatch with a screen to boot, are currently unknown. Nevertheless, the smartwatch will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset designed specifically for wearables. The System-on-Chip sports a quad-core Cortex-A7 32-bit CPU clocked at up to 1.2 GHz per core, an Adreno 304 graphics chip with OpenGL ES 3.0 support, and includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon X5 LTE modem supporting LTE FDD, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, CDMA 1X, and GSM/EDGE, along with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE (low energy), and NFC connectivity. Otherwise, the Diesel On will run Android Wear 2.0 which will make it compatible with virtually every Android smartphones running at least Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, as well as iOS devices running iOS 9 or better. Not much else is known in regards to the Diesel On specifications, but unsurprisingly the product will attempt to differentiate itself from rivals through a striking exterior design. To that end, customers will reportedly have the option of customizing the Diesel On with a variety of straps made from a wide range of materials including silicone, leather, denim and textile alternatives.
Prospective buyers will apparently have to wait a good few more months before they will have the opportunity to purchase the Diesel On smartwatch, as the product is expected to hit the shelves in the later part of 2017 during the holiday season. Although the release timeframe is rather vague, the smartwatch’s retail price has already been set at $325. By then the Diesel On Time hybrid watch and Diesel On Track fitness tracker should hit the shelves sometime in the Fall of 2017, and Fossil Group is expected to launch numerous other hybrid models branded by Kate Spade, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, and more, throughout 2017.