Actually Fitbit Has ‘No Excuse’ For Lack Of GPS

It goes without saying that there’s no technical or economical reason why top-end fitness trackers from the likes of Fitbit and Jawbone shouldn’t be packing GPS connectivity. That’s the message from Brandon Oakes, sales manager at OriginGPS.

Oakes explained that installing one of Origin’s tiny GPS modules would come at a cost of “single digit dollars”.

“I spent six years working at Garmin as a design engineer so I understand that, on the low-end, adding a few dollars of cost is a big deal and I don’t want to dismiss that but on the high-end products, in my opinion, there’s no excuse not to have it integrated today,” he told us.

“I use the Fitbit devices and the trackers that estimate distance and, as a runner, it’s just not suitable,” he added.

“It could be that they feel that there’s a percentage of the market who, for Fitbit trackers, are more interested in seeing 10,000 steps than knowing how far they’ve gone and, fair enough, serve that market but our message is certainly that there’s no technical reason, or economical reason, why it can’t be integrated – even from a size perspective.”

Fitbit, especially, has come under fire recently for a lack of additional features with its latest trackers – the Fitbit Blaze and the Fitbit Alta – both of which lack GPS connectivity.

We have already seen some high profile wearables feature built-in GPS, like the Garmin sports watches and the Sony SmartWatch 3, as well as hybrid sports trackers like the Polar M400 and the Garmin Vivoactive. Whereas it’s a feature missing from the fitness tracker form factor – to date only Microsoft has included GPS on its Bands.

The apparent reasons for the missing ingredient are size constraints and concerns over battery life, however that could all be set to change.

We spoke to Oakes, following the launch of the OriginGPS’s revolutionary Multi Micro Spider; a 5.6 mm x 5.6 mm module boasting the world’s smallest footprint within a fully integrated multi-GNSS module.

The Israeli company specialises in miniaturised GNSS modules and has already worked with the likes of OMGLife – the people behind the Autographer – to integrate modules into consumer technology. Nonetheless, there are bigger plans to extend to more mainstream products.

“Some of the biggest products that we’re working on right now are in development and have not yet been publicly released,” said Oakes. “I’m excited about where Origin is going. Between wearables and drones, there’s going to be a lot of announcements this year.”