Fossil, progress with Wear OS 3 and new Gen 6 Venture Edition
Just this morning we were talking about the lack of alternatives in the world Wear OS 3 apart from the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and the as recent as expensive Montblanc Summit 3, and just a short distance from the weekend, positive information emerges from Fossil, one of the brands that believes most in Google’s smartwatch platform. Via a post on Reddit, the company confirmed that it is working on a new companion app that will support “our WearOS watches that will receive the WearOS 3 update later this year”.
From the sentence quoted above we can therefore guess that the wait for the “new” (it was now announced over a year ago) operating system will not be too long yet. The companion app is already in distribution, and is the 5.0 version of Fossil Smartwatches. It was released to coincide with the launch of the Gen 6 Hybrid, and many users didn’t like it.
Fossil acknowledges that compared to the old version of the app some features have been removed, for a variety of reasons – some simply weren’t completed in time for the launch window, others weren’t widely used. Fossil also says he worked closely with Google and thought a lot about Wear OS 3, and that too played a role in deciding which features to introduce, which to keep and which to delete.
It is important to remember that the official Wear OS app will not support smartwatches with version 3.0 and later of the operating system. The idea is that each manufacturer will have their own – Samsung has Galaxy Wearable, for example, and traces of the Pixel Watch app have already emerged.
Simultaneously, Fossil launched a new limited edition for its Gen 6 smartwatch: it’s called Venture Edition, and is already available for purchase also in Italy. It has a steel case with a serrated bezel, while the strap is a mix of brown eco-leather and green recycled nylon; overall, the smartwatch has a very old-school military look, which is complemented by the unique new watch face that includes compass, heart rate tracking, step tracking, altitude, exercise duration and SPO2 level.
For the moment, Fossil Gen 6 Venture Edition is available for purchase on the company’s official website; costs € 299 and shipping is free. It is reasonable to assume that it will soon also arrive on Amazon and other ecommerce platforms.
