While still in retirement, Google’s former head of search Amit Singhal is joining the board of GOQii, a smart fitness startup that has already launched in India. Unlike other fitness competitors, GOQii is more focused on selling a personal coaching service than actual hardware.
Misfit, makers of popular smartphone-connected wearable fitness accessories, today announced the company is being acquired by watchmaker Fossil Group for $260 million, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Fossil plans to take the technology and integrate it into its traditional watch designs, according to the report:
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Sony has today taken the wraps off the second iteration of its fitness wearable, the SmartBand 2, which it will begin selling in 60 countries worldwide starting in September. There’s not a ton of new stuff going on here, though, so what makes it worthy of being a successor?
Jawbone announced this evening that it finally expects to begin fulfilling pre-orders of its Up3 fitness tracker on April 20th. The company expects all pre-orders to ship no later than mid-May. After pre-orders have been fulfilled, Jawbone will begin shipping new orders of the Up3. Pre-orders will ship in the order they were received.
Samsung’s new Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit wearables unveiled back in February recently went up for preorder through carrier partners and today have finally hit Amazon. The Tizen-based Samsung Gear 2 ($299) and Gear 2 Neo ($199), as well as the less expensive Gear Fit wearable ($199) recently went up for preorder through AT&T and other carrier partners alongside the Galaxy S5 with shipments expected sometime this month, but Amazon is currently listing a specific release date of April 11.
Both of the new Gear 2 devices take cues from Samsung’s previous Galaxy Gear smartwatch, with the big difference a switch to a Tizen-based OS rather than Android. Both of the new watches include a 1.63-inch touchscreen, 4Gb of internal storage, a 1GHz dual-core processor, a 300mAh battery and 512MB of RAM. The Gear 2 also features a 2MP camera with 720p video capabilities, while the Neo doesn’t include a camera at all. Gear Fit is a less expensive fitness tracker that doesn’t run Tizen or Android and offers limited functionality compared to the other smart watches.
Samsung Gear 2 ($299) and Gear 2 Neo ($199), and Gear Fit ($199) on Amazon.
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