Zero Wrist Watch

The Swatch Touch Zero One is born of Swatch’s sponsorship of beach volleyball. I was able to check out the watch at the Swatch Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals, chat with Swatch’s sponsored pro team, and meet with Carlo Giordanetti, Swatch’s Creative Director (center, above). And of course, my first question was, “volleyball?” But it was a good natured question, and I knew half the answer already. Swatch only sponsors a few sports, and none of them involve a motor. Beach volleyball is their most visible sponsorship, but they also sponsor pro surfing, snowboarding/free skiing, and slopestyle mountain biking. So it is only natural that the platform of the Swatch Touch Zero One will become the Touch Zero Two, Touch Zero Three, and so on. With this sport as the most visible sponsorship; the Olympics around the corner; and absent the challenges required to make a fitness tracker for these other, non-traditional sports, volleyball was the fit for the first iteration of the product.

Since the Swatch Touch Zero One is already here, I will focus on this watch, instead of speculating about the watches to come. So what is it? First and foremost, it is a Swatch. It is colorful, comfortable, durable, and Swiss made. Swatch did everything in house, and that meant that they created their own software platform for the watch, with their own flare. They also wanted something that could be worn for an extended period of time, so no recharging every day, or even every week, the watch had to be able to run for a couple of months on one of Swatch’s button batteries.

The only way to get the extended run time with the current battery technology was to limit some of the electronics. There is no GPS or heart rate monitor in the Touch Zero One, and the watch is designed to connect to the paired smart phone app a couple of times a day, if that. With this, there are no notifications on your wrist for incoming communications, but I am fine with that. I don’t need a second screen on my wrist. That may come in future iterations, as may some of the other power intensive features. Swatch has tremendous resources behind it, as well as a wealth of experience with outdoor watches, so what they are able to do may be surprising.

Built into the current watch is a general fitness tracker and some fun functions specific for beach volleyball, both for the player and the fan. The general tracker counts steps and distinguishes between walking and running/jogging, so when you pick up the pace, your tracker does as well. The data is stored internally and only transferred to your smart phone app when you pair it, so this would be a good option if you were going on muti-day treks and did not want to connect back to your phone for a few days. As a fan, there is a mode that will count your claps, as well as measure the power of your claps. This will come into it’s own as a feature with the next version of the watch (along with a social aspect), tied to the fan experience at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.