Fossil has unveiled a line of Hybrid HR smartwatches that combine a permanently turned-in screen with electronic ink and conventional arrows. This allows the watch to run on a single charge for about two weeks. The watch is already available for order at a price of $ 195.

In modern smartwatches, two approaches dominate: a full-fledged clock with an OLED or LCD display, capable of displaying notifications and other content from a smartphone, and a mechanical clock with arrows that can only track activity and sleep, and the vibration is used for notification. In addition, there are separate hybrid smartwatches that combine the advantages of different approaches. For example, Pebble smartwatches used monochrome and even colour screens on electronic ink, which allowed them to work for a week on a single charge, but at the same time fulfil the functions of a full-fledged smartwatch. In addition, LG and some other manufacturers have experimented with watches that combine OLED screen with mechanical arrows, but their mixed working hours did not exceed a couple of Days.

In the new watch line, Fossil used a similar concept by combining the screen with arrows but used an electronic ink display that had extremely low power consumption. The company has introduced two MODELS, HR Charter and HR Collider, but they have minor differences, mainly the size of the strap attachment: 18 or 22 millimetres.

The watch uses a round monochrome E-ink screen with an optional backlit round neckline in the centre for the axis, which is fixed hour and minute. There are relatively large frames around the screen. The watch has no touchpad and all control is done through three buttons on the side, and button functions can be modified in the settings. The devices are also equipped with a heartbeat sensor.

The watch uses a proprietary operating system from Fossil, and not Wear OS, as previously assumed. In addition, the publication The Verge found out from an official representative of the company that the watch was not related to the technology that Google acquired from Fossil at the beginning of the year for $ 40 million. The operating system allows you to display notifications from a smartphone, weather forecasts, statistics of steps and sleep, as well as other typical information for smartwatches.

This method of displaying time and information, as well as the absence of a large operating system such as Wear OS, allowed to achieve two weeks of work from a single charge, despite the fairly small 55 milliamp-hour battery. The watch is compatible with smartphones on Android and iOS and connects via Bluetooth. The devices went on sale on November 6 for a price of $195.

There are also smartwatches that do not need to be charged from the network at all. For example, in early 2019, Matrix Industries introduced a colour screen smartwatch that receives energy from a solar panel and a thermoelectric generator.