Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Fossil Gen 6 Review: High Speeds, Hard Specs, Soft Wear”.
In my book, the best thing the smartwatch has inherited from its traditional ancestors is the choice it gives you in styles and for years, the biggest contributor to that diversity has been fossil group. If the relentlessly repetitive rectangles of the apple watch or the simplistic circles of samsung just aren’t what you want on your wrist fossil and its partners have been there to sell you. Everything from edgy armani to bedazzled, michael kors, to pipe flange manhole cover diesel. For the past two years, those watches have been based on fossils generation five platform, but i’ve just spent the last two weeks with an early version of the sequel upon which the next generation will be built. I’M michael fisher, let’s see what there is to like and lament about the fossil generation vi smartwatch, while the retail gen 6 box will arrive with a fresher design than the one you see here. The watch itself, ships with the no frills approach familiar to fossil fans, accompanied by nothing but product literature and the newly redesigned charger that i’ll come back to in a second. The one fossil sent me did come with an interesting change of pace from the usual strap, and you know i i haven’t worn a velcro watch band in something like 25 years, so it was a fun throwback. But of course other strap styles and casing. Colors are available and in a bonus, that’ll only resonate. If you caught my samsung galaxy watch 4 review, the gen 6 uses the same 22 millimeter lugs as the past couple generations. That means, if you have bands from prior watchers, lying around they’re, more likely to fit good stuff. That’S for the 44 millimeter model here by the way, the 42 millimeter takes 18 millimeter straps as before. As for the case itself, watch design is subjective.
So i don’t mind saying i preferred the slider look of the gen 5. But if you like a beefier build the gen 6 brings it with larger lugs. That to me evoke the shoulders of a hulking linebacker and a crown guard filling the space between the pushers.
On the side, that’s similar to the one we saw on the citizen cc, smart there’s also some knurling. That suggests a rotating bezel, but no just like prior fossils, you scroll lists using the crown which packs just the right amount of slightly rubbery resistance. I love it.
The case is made of stainless steel with cover glass up front, similar to the gen fives over an identically sized amoled watch face as before as well. But the first thing i did after unboxing was to check out the back surrounding the new heart rate and blood oxygen sensor are redesigned charging rings, which are now split into twin kind of dual c-shaped circular tracks that mirrors the duplication of pins in the new charging. Puck with both changes made to give the gen 6 fast charging ability how fast well from zero to about 80 percent in about a half hour. Now, if you have an earlier puck from a prior fossil watch, yes, it will still work, but at about half that charging speed and best of all if you’ve followed, fossil’s years-long problem of charging rings coming unglued over time.
These new rings are insert molded into the case back instead of glued in which means they should finally, finally stay put specs. They still matter in the smartwatch world and gen 6 packs a doozy, it’s the first smartwatch powered by qualcomm’s top shelf snapdragon 4100, plus that suffix means the main chip has a sidekick that co-processor introduced a couple years back. That saves power by managing things like always on watch faces and always on sensors without having to wake up the more powerful main chip, but that primary processor is important too.
It does the same thing for this watch as it did for last year’s ticwatch pro 3.. It lets google’s wear os software run with consistent fluidity right out of the box, with the exception of the occasional wear os weirdness. Like this authentication problem, i had with one of my google accounts for two weeks. The gen 6 has served reliably in its intended role. As a notification depot on my wrist that tracks my steps and my pinch, will sleep serve as a phone as long as your real phone is nearby? As for battery life, it’s competitive with the admittedly watered-down expectations set by apple and samsung.
On my best day, i got 35 hours from full to empty, even with conveniences like raise to wake and the always on display turned on. It was only by going overboard with elaborate watch faces from facer and ramping up my brightness and screen timeout that i could cut that endurance in half, but it’s still at least a full day, smartwatch and fossil’s custom battery endurance improvements are all still here as well. So if you do accidentally leave your charger at home for an extended weekend away, you can muddle through by disabling the more power hungry features of the watch and still have a smarter than usual timepiece come monday. The trouble is we’ve seen this all before the gen 6 runs wear os version 2.3, which wouldn’t be so bad if we hadn’t been hearing for the past six months, just how awesome where os 3 is going to be, and we’ve now seen that version on the Samsung galaxy watch 4 and indeed it does bring some compelling conveniences, but on the samsung watch it’s also buried under so much manufacturer makeup that you almost can’t tell it’s. Wear os at all.
Oh it’ll come to the gen 6.. Don’T worry, but not until sometime. In 2022, meanwhile, watches running on the older wear.
Os 2.3 version continue to see apps and features pulled or broken by developers, some by google itself after years of perceived neglect and to make matters worse, no one will say whether that’s because of a special arrangement between google and samsung or because some element of wear Os 3 isn’t ready. Yet google has no comment on the matter. Only one thing is clear: to paraphrase kellan from droid life, it really sucks. This situation essentially gives consumers a choice that they can spend about 300 bucks on a fossil gen 6, which works well but runs on software that’ll be outdated until next year, or they can spend about 50 more for a samsung watch that runs that new platform.
Today, albeit with compromises and in a kind of disguise now toss in the complicating factor of the ticwatch pro 3 i mentioned before, which offers 3 days between charges can already be had for cheaper and which will also get updated to wear os 3.. So the gen 6 is not exactly a slam dunk for fossil group, but i’m not saying it’s unrecommendable. I do prefer its looks to the ticwatch pro 3..
It charges much faster than the samsung and, if you don’t dig this particular pair or it’s michael kors cousins, history tells us that it’ll only be a matter of time before more. Variations from fossil group partners hit the market if you’re a fossil fan with a gen 4 or earlier. This is a solid upgrade that you’ll probably really enjoy if you’re looking for the cutting edge in wear os, though well, that’s not this not yet anyway.
This video was produced following two weeks with two fossil gen sixes. The first pre-production sample failed to demonstrate the rapid charging speed fossil promised, so the company sent a replacement device that did pass that test. As always, the manufacturer had zero editorial input. It had no early preview and it provided no compensation in exchange for this video’s production. Please subscribe to the mr mobile on youtube. If you’d like to see more videos like this until next time, this has been michael fisher thanks for watching and stay mobile.
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