With rumours swirling for a few months now we’ve finally gotten our first look at the new Fossil line-up of Gen 6 Wear OS smartwatches. While from the outside they look remarkably similar to previous generations, inside is a different story altogether.
First and foremost the Gen 6 is the first device to ship with the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus platform, and we’re excited about that. The 4100 Plus boasts all of the same improvements as the Wear 4100 and adds an additional low power co-processor that controls low power tasks like HR monitoring and faster tilt to wake.
Overall the Wear 4100 + is expected to be more performant than even the Wear 4100 while providing longer battery life, Fossil touts the Gen 6 as a 24-hour watch. Alongside the SOC is 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, Wi-Fi, GPS and NFC. Alongside the improved battery life, Fossil is promising faster chagrins using the snap-on magnetic charger with the watching getting 80% charge in just 30 minutes.
From a health monitoring perspective, the Gen 6 platform includes Step tracking, sleep tracking an HR sensor and a new spO2 sensor for tracking blood oxygen saturations. Physically the Gen 6 are coming in 42 and 46mm variants featuring 22mm replicable bands and 3 ATM of water resistance, at launch both Fossil and Michael Kors will have devices.
The big disappointment here was well forecasted by both Google and Fossil, while the Gen 6 is Wear SO 3.0 compatible it won’t see it until at least the second half of 2022. At that point users will be offered the opportunity to upgrade, Google has hinted that such an upgrade may affect battery and performance, not an ideal situation.
In the USA the Gen 6 is selling for around $300 USD, making an Australian launch price likely around the $450 mark. No detail has been announced yet for official Australian Pricing and Availability but pre-orders are open in the USA for deliveries at the end of September.
