Fossil Gen. 6 – Smart and Luxorious?
13. February 2022
- Sleek design
- Bright always-on display
- Modern processor
- super fast charging
- New health sensors
- Accurate HR-Tracking
- Compatible to Android and iOS
- Short battery life
- Still on WearOS 2.3
- Inaccurate GPS
- Very bad sleep tracking
- Limited Sports/Fitness apps
- Not too much watch faces by Fossil
Hard Facts
- Operating System: Wear OS by Google
- Processor: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Wear 4100+
- Memory: 1GB RAM, 8GB Storage
- Display: 1.28″ Color AMOLED / 416 x 416 / 326ppi
- Input: 2 Additional Push Buttons (configurable), Rotating Home Button, Touchscreen, Voice
- Sound/Actuator: Loudspeaker, Microphone, Vibration
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0 LE, GPS, NFC SE, WiFi
- Sensors: Accelerometer, Altimeter, Ambient Light, Compass, Gyroscope, Off-body IR, PPG Heart Rate, SPO2
- Water Resistance: 3 ATM
The Looks
When it comes to looks Fossil Group is probably the only manufacturer you’ll get Business style smartwatches from. The 44mm or 42mm Gen 6 Smartwatch comes in several styles. We’ll have a look at the silver one. But no worries if you prefer another color but don’t like the wristband. The 44mm Smartwatch wristbands are exchangeable with 22mm wristbands, the 42mm model takes 18mm straps. The cases of both models are made of stainless steel, which feels quite high-end.
© Lorena Garcia | CyberCrab.technology
Display
The Fossil Gen. 6 brings adjustable brightness with it. Primarily there are three stages of brightness, an automatic mode, and a brightness booster, for having sunlight directly at the screen, lighting the AMOLED display of the smartwatch. A major pro of this watch is the always-on screen which can also be turned off with different power settings.
Battery
The 300mAh battery lasts barely 20hrs. Of course, you can change the power plan for longer battery life (up to 50hrs on extended mode) but to the lower side. To be fair even tho you’ll have to recharge the battery in normal operation quite frequently, Fossil decided to revolutionize their charging cable with the 6th generation of smartwatches. So the Fossil Gen 6 comes with a Fast charging cable which brings battery levels from 0% – 80% in about 30 minutes, which makes up a little bit for the poor battery life
Sports Tracking
The sports tracking via the Google Fit App comes quite handy and frankly is quite comparable to most other smartwatches. Of course, the Fossil Gen 6 is not made for super-accurate tracking, so if you are an athlete and looking for a new smartwatch you’ll have to look elsewhere than WearOS smartwatches. For GPS tracking of runs or such the smartwatch normally needs a couple of minutes to activate the GPS and determine your position and even then tracking is rather vague, which is quite interesting because the GPS works fine and prompt with the Google Maps app on the watch, because it uses GPS data from your connected phone, which it doesn’t do during sports sessions, whyever.
© Lorena Garcia | CyberCrab.technology
Sleep Tracking
Not one review of the watch prepared me for the disappointment when it comes to sleep tracking. Yes, the watch can track your sleep. No, it’s not very precise. Normally the sleep tracking functions of comparable smartwatches track four stages: Awakeness, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM-Sleep. The Fossil Gen 6 only tracks light sleep and ‘restful’ sleep and even these stages aren’t comparable to normal sleep tracking stages, so if the watch indicates 5hrs of restful sleep it doesn’t mean that you got 5hrs of deep sleep, even tho Google Fit interprets it as such in the app.
Operating System
As of this review (Feb 2022), the Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch is running Google’s WearOS Version 2.33, although WearOS Version 3 has already been out for a while, but only for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Fossil Group announced that there will be an opt-in version for Version 3 later this year, but according to testers, not all functions will be available, which hasn’t been confirmed by neither Fossil, nor Google. One visible disadvantage for WearOS 2.3 is the app support for some apps that are already being modified for Version 3. For the time being users have to stick to Version 2.3 which runs fluently due to the modern Snapdragon™ Wear 4100+ Processor.
Compatibility
The Fossil Gen 6 is compatible with Android and iOS devices, although if you are using an iOS device, you will have to make some compromises, for example that you can’t answer calls or reply to text messages over the watch. Other than that the watch works fine with an Apple device.
Conclusion
If you are searching for a good-looking, business-like watch and don’t bother taking disadvantages, especially when it comes to tracking and battery life the Fossil Gen 6 may be right for you. It fulfills daily purposes and with its modern hardware and bright display, it will probably be working for an extended amount of time. If you are looking for a modern smartwatch with a lot of functions and up to date software I wouldn’t recommend the Fossil Gen 6
