Garmin tipped to deliver advanced digital crown hardware on future Fenix smartwatch lookalike
Garmin has released numerous devices this year, many of them smartwatches that have expanded what it considers its Outdoor Recreation and Sports & Fitness divisions. Of those that have debuted recently, the Fenix 8 Pro (curr. $1,299 on Amazon) arguably brought the most innovations to Garmin's smartwatch division, including but not limited to microLED display technology.
Additionally, the Fenix 8 Pro also expanded Garmin's LTE connectivity service. Nonetheless, it seems that Garmin is already pushing ahead with another major change for its smartwatch portfolio. Earlier this month, Gadgets & Wearables revealed details about technology Garmin was working towards integrating a digital crown within a future smartwatch.
In short, the website reported that the mechanism used a Hall effect sensor to detect rotations rather than mechanical components. Now, Gadgets & Wearables claims to have received fresh information about the same hardware innovation, albeit without indicating the smartwatch intended for its future implementation. Previously, the website suggested that Garmin would use a new Venu or Vivoactive model to debut a digital crown. However, the concept images embedded above and below look more like a future Fenix smartwatch than anything else.
Setting that aside, Gadgets & Wearables asserts that the digital crown will provide haptic feedback while also supporting inertial scrolling. Incidentally, the latter can already be found across multiple modern smartwatches like recent Apple Watch and Pixel Watch generations. Apparently, the digital crown contains a hardware button too, meaning that functionality should not be hampered compared with Garmin's current five-button layout on smartwatches like the Fenix 7 and Fenix 8 series. Unfortunately, it still remains unclear when this technology will make its way to a mass-produced device.
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