Other Gen 6 watches will soon get Wear OS 3
Source: Fossil
Wear OS 3 has been around for over a year at this point, but the platform has been positively slow to come to hardware. For the longest time, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 was your only option, and while that’s now joined by the Watch 5 lineup and Google’s recently launched Pixel Watch, that’s still not much choice. While there’s the Montblanc Summit 3, we were really curious when the OS would add additional third-party watches. Thankfully, Fossil is stepping in with the announcement of the Gen 6 Wellness Edition smartwatch — the very first watch to ship with Wear OS 3 — as well as plans to update other Gen 6 devices.
As the name suggests, the Gen 6 Wellness Edition isn’t all that different from the standard Gen 6, which is already one of the best smartwatches you can get. It has a Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus SoC and 1 GB of RAM, as well as 8 GB of storage (via The Verge).
While the hardware is nothing new, there are two big additions to this new edition, the biggest of which is Wear OS 3. According to Fossil, the UI itself is very similar to what the Pixel Watch has, rather than a completely custom skin like Samsung — so if you liked what you saw on the Pixel Watch, you’ll probably be fine with this. You can enjoy everything except the Google Assistant, which is currently not available from Fossil.
The second addition is the arrival of a new Wellness app, which gives you SpO2 measurements, cardio estimates with VO2 max, automatic workout detection and more.
If you already own a Gen 6 smartwatch, you’ll be happy to know that the update will eventually make landfall on all Gen 6 devices from any of Fossil’s brands, including the standard Fossil Gen 6, the Skagen Falster Gen 6 and the Michael Kors Gen 6 (via Android Central). Gen 5 and earlier hardware, meanwhile, will remain on their current Wear OS version. That rollout will begin on October 17, the same day the Wellness Edition smartwatch is released.
Keep in mind that once you update, your watch will be reset to factory settings and you’ll need to pair it with your phone again using the Fossil companion app. Keep an eye out for that update coming to your smartwatch in the coming days.