As far as smartwatches go, Casio has been taking a relatively simplistic approach with its Bluetooth-equipped timepieces, happy to use its smartphone connection to provide notifications and brief previews of incoming messages and emails. The new GBA-400 goes a bit further, though, by telling you what song is playing right there on its display.
A twistable knob on the side of the watch lets you wirelessly control music playback on your Bluetooth-connected device, but the GBA-400 includes a new accompanying app that comes with SoundHound functionality built-in. It displays a song’s title on the watch’s tiny LCD display, and presumably via the app you’ll be able to find a place to buy the track once you’re poking around your smartphone again.
With a price tag of about $US224 come September, Casio’s GBA-400 isn’t considerably cheaper than the Android Wear smartwatches hitting the market. But when it comes to battery life, you don’t have to charge Casio’s offerings every single night. They can actually run for months, even over a year, before a battery swap is needed, which makes the prospect of wearing a watch again slightly more appealing. [Casio Japan via Akihabara News]