Breitling unveiled its first smartwatch, the Breitling B55 Connected Chronograph, back in March. Availability details were not announced then but the company’s CEO this week revealed that it should be out in time for Christmas. “Before the end of this year,” CEO Jean-Paul Girardin told Wareable. “Before Christmas, I would say. We don’t have the exact timing for now but probably before the end of November; certainly before the end of the year.”
It’s not quite a firm commitment. The Breitling B55 Connected Chronograph is a new breed of device for the company. While the horological components should pose no major challenges, the same cannot be said for its electronic and connected components. According to Girardin, “Nothing is easy in tech innovation, of course, but we already have the titanium, the steel, the cases. Ok, we didn’t have plastics, or communication, the range, the power consumption, the ceramic antenna, the communication between two chips; but all of these were technical issues we had to solve and that’s only one side of how to bring a good, reliable product to market.”
Based on the Breitling B50, the B55 Connected adds Bluetooth connectivity to allow a smartphone to connect to it and offer complementary functions such as managing the time, timezones, alarms and enabling night mode.
Rather than trying to cram as many features into the smartwatch as possible, Girardin also revealed that Breitling stripped functionality down to only the “most necessary functions to keep it a Breitling product.” At the same time, software updates will introduce new features and functions in the future.
The Breitling B55 Connected Chronograph is only the first smartwatch that the company will offer. Girardin promised promised that “There will be evolution, for sure.”
Source : Wareable