Find out which devices are eligible and when you can download the latest software
Fossil Group smartwatches have been left in Wear OS update purgatory for a while now – but the company has now finally announced a date and eligibility for the rollout, as well as a new Gen 6 Wellness Edition.
Previously, the just-announced Pixel Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 5 and Montblanc Summit 3 were the only smartwatches able to access the latest Wear OS software.
With this development, though, owners of Gen 6 devices from Fossil, Michael Kors, Skagen or Razer will be able to download the update from 17 October.
On the same day, we’ll be treated to that new device, the $299 Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition.
From what we can tell from the release images, it looks to be a fairly typical Fossil offering, coming in a 44mm case (available in silver, gold and black) that houses a 1.28-inch always-on OLED display.
A bit disappointingly, however, it also features the last-gen Snapdragon Wear 4100+ chip.
Still, it’s the software that’s the big deal here.
Even though it’ll be incomplete in comparison to the versions running on the Pixel Watch and Samsung devices (as with the Montblanc Summit 3, Google Assistant won’t be present initially, for example), this still will dramatically boost the capabilities of devices previously left to rot on Wear OS 2.
Interestingly, as with Android OEMs, Fossil is also expected to set itself apart from the core Wear OS 3 experience with its own tweaks – kind of like we’ve already seen with Samsung’s One Watch UI skin.
The other big Fossil development here is its new Wellness app, giving users an alternative to Google Fit in which to view their workout data, SpO2 measurements, VO2 Max estimations, heart rate graphs and sleep tracking history.
It’s a bit of a bumper period for the Wear OS platform, then, all told. The only disappointment is the old-gen processor being used to power this latest Wellness Edition, but, in reality, Gen 7 devices using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5+ chip will almost certainly land in 2023.
