Update: The Fitbit Charge 5 is now official – check out our in-depth coverage.
We may have our first look at the Fitbit Charge 5, after a leaked image surfaced purporting to be a fitness tracker from the Google-owned company.
The image (above), obtained by 9to5Google, shows a new-look design, which is allegedly codenamed ‘Morgan’ internally at Fitbit.
It looks larger than the new Fitbit Luxe, but has a similar AMOLED display, which would signal something of a natural evolution from the Charge 4.
The Charge 4 is Fitbit’s flagship fitness tracker and has pretty much all of its top features – bar an EDA sensor and ECG found only on the Fitbit Sense. The Charge 4 introduced GPS for the first time, although the design remained unchanged from the Charge 3.
However, we did criticize the Charge 4 for its lacklustre display – and it seems that’s been addressed. Despite being the best fitness tracker on the market in terms of features, health data and the excellent ecosystem, it’s way behind in terms of the monochrome display.
That was fixed on the Luxe, which shrunk the case and boosted screen and materials for a more couture and female-friendly appearance. And now it seems the Charge 5 could follow suit.
We would expect the Fitbit Charge 5 to retain its general size and dimensions. It’s more unisex, so needs to suit male wrists, and we’d expect Fitbit to retain the 6+ days of battery life on the Charge series. The Luxe has shown that it can retain respectable battery life with an AMOLED display, with it reliably producing 5 days in our testing.
Of course, this could live outside the Charge brand altogether. In our interview with Fitbit CTO Eric Friedman, he said that the future of Fitbit devices would blur the lines of smartwatches and fitness trackers.
“We've got some trackers that actually run apps, and so are those trackers or smartwatches? I think you're gonna see an increasingly blurring between those two categories,” said Friedman.
This certainly looks like a hybrid device – although we’d be surprised to see Fitbit drop its iconic Charge flagship brand.
Watch this space.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.