Withings releases first smartwatch since Nokia split

The French company Withings has announced its new logo and a new wearable. It is the first product to appear since the company bought itself out of Nokia earlier this year.

The new wearable from Withings is the Steel HR Sport Hybrid, a 316L stainless steel sports watch with a 40mm casing that is water resistant to 50 meters. The smartwatch combines traditional hands with a small OLED screen and includes functions to track more than thirty activities, including yoga, volleyball, boxing and ice hockey.

The wearable can track heart rate and work with ‘connected GPS’ to display a traveled route on the Health Mate app for iOS and Android. In addition, the watch can keep track of the sleep rhythm. Withings provides the Sport model with the option to display notifications from apps, the previously released Steel HR wearable already got this option at the end of August.

Withings is a French health products company that was acquired by Nokia in 2016. In May this year, Nokia sold Withings because the Health division did not show the growth Nokia expected. Eric Carreel, co-founder of Withings, bought the company back.

Update 21:14: the wearable itself does not have a GPS, but uses ‘connected GPS’. This means that a smartphone with GPS must be connected to use GPS functionality.