Citizen suspends sales of its second-generation CZ smartwatch

Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its second-generation CZ smartwatch due to a “technical issue”. The Wear OS watch, launched in May, has a feature that relies on Watson technology from IBM and NASA to track a person’s alertness.

The decision appears to stem from negative experiences from reviewers. Michael Fisher — better known as MrMobile on YouTube — noted that Citizen said it would suspend sales after reaching out to the company about the many issues with the watch. Which was confirmed by A Wired storywhere reviewer Julian Chokkattu also detailed several bugs, such as slow screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can’t even tell the correct time.

“We are investigating the issue, recalling review forms, and will temporarily hold sales on touchscreen models while we determine the source of the problem and the best course of action for our customers and partners,” Citizen wrote in an email to the reviewers. Including yours really.

Affected models include MX1003-71X, MX1000-28X, MX1000-01X, MX1000-52X, MX1005-83X, MX1002-57X, MX1018-06X, MX1017-50X, MX1010-59X, MX1011-05X, and MX101 6-28X. according to WiredThis does not affect the CZ Smart Hybrid.

I just started testing the second generation Citizen CZ Smart last week and can confirm that my experience was similar to that of the Fisher, Chokkattu, and 9to5Google. In fact, I was in the middle of writing a troubleshooting email because I thought I had a bunk unit. Several outdoor runs I’ve tracked couldn’t find a GPS signal, froze in the middle of a workout, and ended up failing to record the workout. A two-mile run I recorded earlier this week ran 0.1 miles at about 93 minutes per mile. (I’m not the fastest runner, but neither am I that slow too.)

Screens regularly freeze, crash, or fail to register swipes. Yesterday, I took off the watch charger which had 100 percent battery at noon, and it had only 6 percent left by 10:30 PM. I also had a lot of trouble syncing my data because the watch couldn’t maintain a connection with my phone — even when they were right next to each other.

Things have gotten worse in the past two or three days. My watch had lagging screens to begin with, but at least I could pull up menus and receive notifications fairly reliably. Now, I can’t even do that anymore — it almost felt like I was experiencing Wear OS in 2016.

The last time I can remember a smartwatch having so many issues was One Plus watch – but this was a pre-production model. It’s also somewhat surprising in this case, since the second-gen CZ Smart is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 chip that we’ve seen in other OS 3 smartwatches like the Fossil Gen 6. In the end, it’s good that Citizen is holding off on sales. Temporarily . What is less good is that Many dissatisfied citizens customers Similar issues were reported three months ago.

I reached out to Citizen to explain how to get back to existing customers, how long the suspension will last, and more details about the technical issues at hand but did not immediately receive a response.