Fossil may have given up on Wear OS watches, ceded victory to Google and Samsung
Fossil may have given up on Wear OS watches, ceded victory to Google and Samsung
I had a fossil before I bought my Samsung, and it was a god awful mess. Barely functional, slow and honestly kind of ugly.
Still, a shame to lose more competitors.
Same, I had the Carlisle and it was a worthless piece of trash. It was painfully slow, and it would vibrate with a notification, but then there wouldn't be any notification to be found. I eventually just stopped wearing it and figured I'd wait for the Pixel Watch to be released, but even then, knowing how horrible Google's first attempts at hardware usually goes, I still waited an extra year for the Pixel Watch 2. So far I've been happy with it, and I'll never buy another Fossil watch again.
I've had 4 Fossil watches over the past 30 years and they've all turned out to be garbage. Beautiful garbage.
knowing how horrible Google's first attempts at hardware usually goes
Surprisingly the pixel fold seems to have been well built for the most part, most issues I've heard stemming from it are either known category-wide issues (Like the crease, soft screens) or software issues which can be easily updated away. In my personal experience with it, it's the best "Googles first hardware gen" lmfao
Honestly, fossil was a very good option for classic watches with some smart capabilities.
It's a shame.
Well, until the back of the watch became unglued after like 6 weeks because shimmying a piece of gooey effectively double sided jello with some adhesive properties and calling it "lgtm" was a... poor choice.
Doing it for 3 (?) generations, when they admitted it was a problem during the first, was atrocious.
But yeah other than that, I liked my Fossil whatever gen 3. Oh well.
Damn, i just bought one of their hybrid watches I hope this doesn't mean an early EoL for it... I know the article spells out the wearOS models specifically, but if they kill off the hybrid line too that would spell the end of smart watches for me.
I bought a mechanical watch about five months ago and honestly, it's been great. I've been through... way too many smart watches over nearly ten years and was getting tired of not getting more than two-three years out of them before something failed. It seemed wasteful. Yeah, standalone GPS tracking and what not was neat, but I nearly always have my phone on me these days. I wore watches, granted Iron Man and not mechanical, all through middle and highschool and ditched them when cellphones really started becoming ubiquitous. It's funny how I've come full circle.
Have you ever tried garmin watches? They're not as "smart" as the Apple Watch or Android wear. But they have battery life measured from weeks to months, and have a lot longer of a lifespan than the smarter ones.
They're by far more focused on fitness tracking though, so if a regular watch is an option then they're probably the opposite of what you're into.
I was aesthetically a fan of the Fossil watches, and was using a Fossil Sport (1st gen) for quite a while. Unfortunately the layers of proprietary-Fossil required software/watchfaces on top of the layers of proprietary-Google WearOS hampered the software experience a tiny bit, and the frankly poor hardware quality marred the experience significantly. My charging band coil in the watch completely dislodged itself (it appeared to be held in with glue), rendering the watch unusable.
Fossil's customer support was excellent, replacing the device fully when this happened, though that was when that model was still on store shelves. I recently inquired about getting a replacement battery and was told I can just trade it in for 50% off a current-gen model, which while being far more generous an offer than I expected, still leaves me hesitant to upgrade to another device that suffers from the same problems and is in danger of being outright discontinued.
At this point I don't really need/want a WearOS device specifically, and would actually prefer something that's less tied to Google's whims, the hardware OEM's whims, and whatever the interplay is between those two companies. I've been eyeing more hobby-oriented projects like bangle.js or the PineTime smartwatch, but the fact that I'm even looking in that space shows that it's become a device I would get for tinkering, not one I strictly "need".
Android 14 has finally made using my Pebble with the phone a bad option. I'm happy with the Garmin that I replaced it with.
Have you tried Gadgetbridge? It replaces the Pebble app completely. I'm on Android 13 and it works really well (but requires a bit of tinkering to set up). Also, if it broke going from 13 to 14, I'd be interested to know what went wrong. I'm still using my Pebble every day.
What's the problem? I'm not on Android 14 yet, but my quick search says the pebble app should work.
I love the look of fossil watches. Sorry to see them go!
I hope they'll continue the hybrid models. Those never used WearOS anyway.
On the Skagen side, it looks like they completely stopped making the hybrids. They pretty much took down the smartwatch/hybrid section.
I have one of those and I guess that's why the app is no longer being updated, whereas the Fossil app still gets updates.
"ceded victory"
Less competition means everyone loses. They made Wear OS better by existing.