“Fitbit Inc on Wednesday launched its latest smartwatch, the Versa 2,” dailymail.co.uk reports, “adding Amazon.com Inc’s voice assistant Alexa, online payments and music storage.” As we all know, Alexa speakers don’t listen to your conversations. Unless you say the word Alexa. Or “the.” But don’t worry! Putting a FitBit Alexa on your wrist 24/7 won’t expose you to government spying because . . .
Unlike other gadgets that integrate with Alexa, the smartwatch won’t always listen for a wake word. Instead, users will need to press a button to invoke the assistant, which will respond with text on the display.
Now that’s what I call privacy protection! Because there’s no way Uncle Sam’s minions could activate the Versa 2’s microphone remotely.
Anyway, after reassuring readers partial to tin foil headgear, fool.com rings the changes between the $200 Versa 2 and the previous gen Versa Lite, whose sales lived up it name, causing FitBit’s stock to fall down a particularly nasty flight of stairs:
Fitbit is adding a faster processor and adopting an AMOLED display, which will help improve battery life because OLED displays are more power-efficient than traditional LCDs.
Accordingly, battery life has been extended from four days to five, and Fitbit is introducing various features related to sleep tracking . . . Water resistance is unchanged at 50 meters and all Versa 2 models support Fitbit Pay, Fitbit’s fledgling mobile payments service.
Fledgling! How cute! Still, don’t count FitBit out of the smartwatch competition. With the market growing at over 20% per year, there’s everything to play for.