Fossil has released a new update for their Gen 5 Wear OS smartwatches that add a variety of features to the watches that are not part of standard Wear OS, including sleep and VO2 max tracking.
Most of the new features Fossil adds here can be categorized as activity tracking enhancements, with the update promising better real-time fitness tracking (such as heart rate, pace, distance, steps, and calories) at half of it power consumption by offloading those tasks from the main processor to the QCC1110 co-processor. Fossil has also added sleep tracking – a missing feature, so prominent was the company that there was a FAQ page about it – and VO2 max tracking for your overall cardio fitness level.
Fossil also updates the battery-saving modes, allowing users to create custom profiles for specific tasks and automatically prompt them to enable “extended mode” to ensure a full 24 hours of battery life per charge. The improved battery mode settings are also an important part of how Fossil enables sleep tracking on these year-round watches.
Finally, Fossil adds an updated phone app, which adds a new tile for quick access.
While many of these features are offered to competitors such as the Apple Watch or the Fitbit smartwatches, what is most notable here is that Fossil is left to add them themselves, instead of Google encouraging these updates all over Wear OS ecosystem. In fact, compared to Wear OS ‘planned fall update – which includes moderately faster app launches and a new Weather app, Fossil’s update feels much more ambitious in its scope, especially considering it works on older hardware.
The new features should now roll out on Fossil’s Gen 5 smartwatches.
