Swatch introduces its first smartwatch, made for Beach Volleyball

Earlier this month, we told you that the Swiss purveyor of plastic watches, Swatch, was ready to enter the competitive world of smartwatches. That news came after a 180 degree flip from CEO Nick Hayek. Hayek originally saw the intelligent timepieces as being too small for communications, and too power hungry to prevent constant battery charging.

But today, Swatch officially introduced the Swatch Touch Zero One. Believe it or not, the device is aimed at those who play Beach Volleyball. Thanks to the sensors on the watch, the Touch Zero One can distinguish between attack hits, low hits, high hits, and high fives. It counts your steps and computes the distance you've traveled during the contest. All of the data is sent to an accompanying smartphone app and computes a score that is displayed on your watch. The scores rate your volleyball playing talent on a scale of 0 to 100. Graphs mark your progress over several months, and you get to see how many calories you've burned playing the game.

What you don't get is email, message notifications, or the ability to control any function on your phone. Heck, why offer features that every other smartwatch carries? The watch is based on the Swatch Touch which features a curved touchscreen, a backlight and six timing functions. And the battery will allow you to go months without recharging. Three volleyball functions are available out of the box, and downloading the Touch Zero One app will add the remaining volleyball related features to the timepiece.

No pricing or availability was mentioned. When Swatch first said that it was building a smartwatch in the early days of this month, it hinted that the timepiece would launch within three months. That means that we should expect the Swatch Touch Zero One to be released before May, just in time for the Beach Volleyball season. And by the way, since it is made for Beach Volleyball, which does require a beach, the watch is waterproof. While no platform support was mentioned on Saturday, earlier indications had the watch working with Android and Windows Phone.

source: Swatch via SlashGear