Fossil introduces NFC payments, GPS to new line of smartwatches

American fashion company Fossil has released a series of new smartwatches with latest generation features, including NFC payments, heart rate tracking, GPS, access to Google Pay and load music.

It can be used for fast payments, for now only with Google Pay, and the GPS can track various activities and sports, so a phone is not always required to monitor fitness training. This is the company’s fourth generation of Fossil Q, at a retail price range of between $255 and $275, an improvement compared to its third generation which didn’t work as a fitness tracker.

Although the company has clearly invested in design and is trying to satisfy customer preferences, for some reason the smartwatches still run on an old  Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip, which has already been around for about two years.

The outdated chip could affect the flow of some operations and the watch’s overall security, while another inconvenience is that heart monitoring has to be manually turned on, probably during a workout monitored by Google Fit.

While it’s understandable that all companies are trying to tap into the IoT market and come up with as many high-tech gadgets that will catch the consumer’s eye, security should still be an important part of their design and strategy, especially when incorporating NFC payments. When the chip was released, it was intended for kids’ devices, but the manufacturer said they would release a chip for adult devices this year.