Casio has launched the G-shock of smartwatches with its first Android Wear device that can last a month between charges.



The Smart Outdoor Watch, which was launched at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, is the first true smartwatch aimed at the outdoors that can run apps but is waterproof and shockproof to US military MIL-STD-810 standards. That means the watch will be fine in water up to 50m deep – most smartwatches can manage up to 1.5m – and will probably survive a tumble down a rocky outcrop.

The watch runs Android Wear like the Huawei Watch, the Tag Heuer Connected and Motorola Moto 360, but has two screens within one display. The first is a standard round 1.32in colour TFT LCD touchscreen, similar to that found on watches like the Moto 360, complete with a flat-tyre shape. The second display, which is visible when the colour screen is turned off, is a monochrome LCD that shows the time like a classic Casio watch.

The monochrome time-only screen. Photograph: Casio

With the monochrome display active the watch lasts around a month between charges, or over a day with the colour screen on. The watch can show directions using a compass, activity and adventure tracking, with support for third-party tracking apps such as Runkeeper and ViewRanger GPS. It does not have a built-in GPS, however, requiring a phone for location services.

But what the Casio and the New Balance running smartwatch that was also launched at CES show is that Android Wear is on the verge of becoming the default operating system for the next evolution of the digital watch. These watches are launching above feature watches – those connected watches that cannot run third-party apps – as the top of the connected watch tree.

Traditional watch manufacturers including Tag Heuer, Fossil and now Casio have embraced Google’s smartwatch platform, which means that eventually almost all digital watches could come with an Android Wear version.

That was Google’s aim, as it was with Android on smartphones, to spread Android Wear far and wide across multiple manufacturers. But it is only now, as the operating system goes beyond technology companies, that the vision may become a reality.