Following the Pixel Watch, Fossil has announced that it will launch its first-ever Wear OS 3 watch – the Gen 6 Wellness Edition. It’s also launching a new mobile wellness app for health and fitness tracking, but unfortunately this watch doesn’t feature Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon W5 Plus platform. The Gen 6 Wellness Edition costs $299 and will be available on October 17th.
The Gen 6 Wellness Edition looks like a typical Fossil device with its stylish smartwatch aesthetic. It comes in a 44mm body with a 1.28-inch always-on OLED display along with three color options: black, silver, or rose gold. It is powered by the latest generation Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. This is the same as in the standard Gen 6.
As far as the Wellness Edition goes, Wear OS 3 is the big kahuna. So far, it’s only available for the Pixel Watch, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 lineups, and the Montblanc Summit 3. Fossil has manufactured the vast majority of Wear OS watches under its various brands (e.g. Skagen, Michael Kors, etc.) for the past several years, so it’s likely we’ll see a in a moment a lot of more Wear OS 3 options in the coming months. It also means a new user interface and watch navigation that’s likely to be similar to what we saw on the Montblanc Summit 3. The watch will also be linked to the redesigned Fossil Smartwatches app, which launched with the Gen 6 Hybrid earlier this summer.
As far as smart features go, Wear OS 3 offers a better selection of streamlined third-party apps on the Play Store. In its press release, Fossil highlighted apps like YouTube Music, Spotify, Facer, and Amazon Alexa. (Alexa was introduced on the Gen 6 earlier this year.) Loud Android Central, it doesn’t appear that the Wellness Edition will have Google Assistant. Fossil spokeswoman Robyn Wedgeworth confirmed this The edge, although the company isn’t sure when the assistant will be available for its Wear OS 3 watches. It’s an enigmatic omission that was also reflected on the Fitbit Sense 2 and Montblanc Summit 3, suggesting Google still has work to do here.
The other big update is the new Wellness app, which gives Fossil watches a boost in the health and fitness tracking department. These include SpO2 measurements, cardio fitness estimates with VO2 max, automatic workout detection, heart rate zones, improved sleep tracking, and continuous heart rate monitoring outside of workouts. Plenty of other smartwatches introduced these features ages ago, but Fossil has been a little more crippled by Wear OS 2 and older Snapdragon Wear chips. It’s encouraging to see that Wear OS 3 allows Fossil to meaningfully catch up on the health front, even if it doesn’t have the latest chip.
As the name, features and specs would suggest, this isn’t a new flagship lineup, it’s a repackaged Gen 6. It looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for the Gen 7 Lineup is arriving, hopefully with newer hardware to keep Fossil’s wearables competitive. While that’s slightly disappointing, it’s not surprising. Meanwhile, as Fossil transitioned its watches from the 3100-powered Gen 5 lineup to the 4100-powered Gen 6, it launched the budget-friendly Gen 5E and Gen 5 LTE.
The Wellness Edition will be available from October 17th Android Central quotes Fossil as saying that this is when Wear OS 3 upgrades will roll out to 4100-powered Fossil watches. These include the Michael Kors Gen 6 and the Skagen Falster Gen 6. We reached out to Google, but Wedgeworth also confirmed the timing. Google has always said the upgrade would come this fall, and there’s not much reason to wait now that the Pixel Watch is hitting shelves. In any case, it’s been a busy fall full of Wear OS 3 news – and it doesn’t look like that’s going to slow down any time soon.
Update Oct. 13 2:45pm ET: Updated to include responses from Fossil at upgrade time for Google Assistant and Wear OS 3.
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