Fossil today announced its latest smartwatch, the Gen 5, which will let users make calls from the watch itself when connected to an iPhone (via The Verge). This has been possible with Android smartphones previously, but as of yet iPhone users who own a Fossil smartwatch have only been able to receive alerts about an incoming call.
Now, the Gen 5 will act similarly to the Apple Watch, and users will be able to talk into the smartwatch's speaker to make phone calls. The new smartwatch is launching today, but this feature for iPhones won't launch until sometime in the fall. As a note, it was confirmed that the Gen 5 watch still doesn't support Apple iMessages.
According to a Fossil spokesperson, “No action is required from your iPhone. The watch becomes another way to take your call via Bluetooth.”
Otherwise, the Gen 5 smartwatch has a longer battery life than the previous version, and can last for multiple days on a single charge. The device comes in six colors, all of which include a 1.28-inch AMOLED screen inside of a 44mm case that's 12mm thick.
It also has 8GB of storage, 1GB RAM, NFC, a heart rate sensor, GPS, and a speaker. Fossil said that the watch is waterproof up to 30 meters deep. The smartwatch runs on Google's Wear OS platform, and supports Google features like Google Fit, Google Pay, and the Google Assistant.
Fossil's Gen 5 smartwatch is available today starting at $295.
Top Rated Comments
Relative to Apple customers, Fossil's watches won't seem that appealing because Apple only wants you to use THEIR watch, and they'll do everything they can to make sure customers have a much worse experience on non-Apple hardware. Android users on the other hand, are not so locked in to their host ecosystem (quite the opposite actually) and thus can really use this product to its full potential.
The sales person asked if I was interested in looking at watches and I showed my Apple Watch and said no thank you. But do you have any AW bands? They didn’t.
I’m guessing Fossil is going to lose its Watch business entirely. This is probably one of the last gasps of a major part of their business.