Fitbit ran into some unfortunate issues with its Force fitness tracker; skin reactions eventually led the company to issue a voluntary recall and abandon sales of the productaltogether. But now it sounds like Fitbit is ready for a do-over. Gizmodo has obtained marketing materials that reveal a new Fitbit Charge — which looks more or less like a Force clone — and another model called Charge HR. The former device sounds like it's designed to match everything the Force could do: it'll measure your daily steps, distance traveled, burned calories, sleep quality, and so on. It will also carry over some super basic smartphone-connected features like caller ID, and yes, the Fitbit Charge also displays the time. So yeah, it's basically a second take on the Force, but this time hopefully without the weird skin side effects.
The Charge HR adds something new to the Fitbit formula: heart rate monitoring. The leaked materials say Fitbit's wrist wearable will continuously track your heart rate 24/7 through a new "PurePulse" system, which should prove valuable when you're out for a run or trying to push yourself at the gym. Presumably your heart activity will be stored in Fitbit's app, though we know the company has no plans of providing its data to Apple's HealthKit platform — at least for now. Fitbit hasn't officially announced either the Charge or Charge HR, but considering signage is already appearing in stores, it shouldn't be long.
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