Hublot's first smartwatch is called the Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia

Baselworld 2018: The Wear watch will be worn by refs at this summer's tournament
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Swiss watch brand has officially unveiled its first smartwatch and it's called (wait for it) the Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. Seriously.

The Swiss watch brand's connected timepiece comes running on Google's Wear OS (formerly Android Wear) and if the name didn't give it away, is a tie-in with the World Cup, which takes place in the summer.

Hands on: Hublot Big Bang Referee 2018 World Cup Russia

Those familiar with Hublot watches, will probably be familiar with the company's Big Bang watches and the aim is to stay true to those Big Bang attributes. So the 49mm watch features a titanium satin bezel and bezel lugs with a titanium crown and container. Hublot is also including an analogue mode dial to help create that illusion its smartwatch looks every bit like a traditional Big Bang. It measures in at 13.9mm thick and its water resistant up to 50 metres as well.

Taking a little inspiration from the look of the Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon smartwatch (which falls under the same LVMH parent company), it mimics the Horizon's My 24 Hours watch face displaying the flags of the 32 nations that will feature in the tournament. It comes with two interchangeable straps, the first is a sporty cuff strap that features the Hublot logo and the official 2018 FIFA World Cup emblem. The other is a more standard black rubber strap. Additional straps will also be on offer and will be available in the colours of the teams that will be out in Russia.


On the hardware front, there's a 400 x 400 resolution AMOLED touchscreen display and it's powered by an 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z34XX dual-core processor, with 512 MB of RAM. It's also packing an accelerometer, gyroscope and detector sensors along with a microphone to access Google Assistant and GPS to track your runs and rides. The 410mAh battery will give you around 1 day of battery life, and it should take one hour and 50 minutes to charge from empty.

It does come running on Wear OS, so you can expect all the usual features like the ability to download Wear apps directly from the watch and NFC is on board, which does mean there will be support for Google Pay, letting you make payments from the wrist. There's some World Cup-centric features included as well so the Big Bang will announce matches 15 minutes before kick off as well as dish out details on yellow and red cards, substitutions and it'll vibrate when a goal is scored. A dedicated dial will also show live match details including the score, number of cards awarded by the ref, goal scorers, subs and match time.

The Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia has already been tested by referees during the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup as well as the Under-17 FIFA Club World Cup. Referees will be donning the watch during the tournament, which will also be connected to goal-line technology and VAR, which will make its debut at the World Cup.

Hublot's smartwatch is going to be available from 1 May 2018 from Hublot sales outlets, with a rollout limited to 2018 pieces (see what they did there?). No official price has been revealed, but Jean-Claude Biver, head of watchmaking at Hublot's parent company LVMH, did previously suggest the Hublot smartwatch would cost around 5,000francs, which works out to around $5,200.

To put that into perspective, the most expensive Apple Watch costs around $1,400 while Tag Heuer's new Connected Modular 41 smartwatch starts at around $1,000. If you really wanted to push the boat out, the Tag Heuer Connected Full Diamonds shown off at SIHH earlier this year, will set prospective owners back a staggering $197,000.

The Hublot smartwatch is being shown off at the Baselworld watch fair and Team Wareable will be at the show to get a closer look at the Wear watch with the really long name.

Hublot's first smartwatch is called the Big Bang Referee 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia



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Michael Sawh

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Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.

He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.

Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech. 

Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.


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