Tag Archives: Android Wear

Fossil Watches Lose Face in New Update

Fossil produces what is possibly one of the better Smartwatches available running Android Wear or Wear OS. Their watches manage to capture the allure and feel of traditional smartwatches while bringing it into the future with modern smartwatch functionality. With their recent release of the Wear OS 3 powered Gen 6 smartwatches, it seems like a new update may have just cleaned house; removing a reported 33 watch faces from their library.

The update which was pushed through the PlayStore introduced two new watch faces: Dashboard Digital and Fitness Digital. The new watch faces come with a minimal design but seems to be focused on delivering information that might be important to the Fossil smartwatch owner. Fitness Digital, as the name suggests, focuses on the metrics related to fitness and health; while Dashboard Digital focuses on more essential details.

0823 Gen6 Learnmore Hero9 Group slide3 Desktop@2x
Source: Fossil Group

9to5 Google has reported that with the introduction of the new smartwatch faces, the Fossil Gen 5 lineup also loses 33 watch faces out of the blue. If you were using one of the watch faces listed below, it’s likely you had a rude awakening with the smartwatch reverting to its default watch face when the update was rolled out.

The list of confirmed watch faces is listed below:

  • Big Tic
  • Blue
  • Candice Huffine
  • Colorist
  • Compass
  • Cory Richards
  • Darryl Westly
  • Defender
  • Ettore
  • Flip Digital
  • Fred
  • Grant
  • KJ Apa
  • Magic 8-Ball
  • Mandy Moore
  • McKinney
  • Mechanical Digital
  • Men’s Fashion Digital
  • Minimal Dressy
  • Minimalist Analog
  • Mood
  • Movember
  • Movember Analog
  • Movember Digital
  • No Icon Digital
  • P-51
  • Rainbow
  • Robot
  • Roulette
  • Sail Dial
  • Scarlette Shimmer
  • Speedometer
  • Turn Table

It hasn’t been ascertained if older generations of Fossil smartwatches are affected. That said, the reduction in the number of watch faces could be a good thing when it comes to the Gen 5 Fossil smartwatches. It could indicate that Fossil is preparing the smartwatch for the jump to Wear OS 3. However, nothing has been confirmed by Fossil at the time of writing.

Google Just Revealed the Name of Their New Wearable Platform

Nope, it is nothing revolutionary new. They call it the Wear OS 3, and nothing more. The name of the upcoming update to Google’s Wear OS is less revealing of the updates that is coming for Google’s wearable platform though.

Google Wear OS 3 can be seen as the biggest overhaul to the platform since its introduction. It started out, at least for us, when Google and Samsung announced their collaboration and commitment to smartwatches in the 2021 edition of Google I/O. The announcement from Samsung only means that the South Korean electronics giant is abandoning Tizen OS that they have developed and nursed over the years over Google’s Wear OS.

To be fair, while that is a huge commitment from Samsung, it is also a sensible move for them. It means that Samsung gets to merge their existing developer base to Google Wear OS’ larger developer base. It only means that they get more content and potentially more features for their Samsung Galaxy Watch platform too.

Source; Google

For Google, having a partner that is considered the best in the business with plenty more accolades than themselves means a lot more than just getting a helping hand. Sure, the extra hand in developing Wear OS is great. It is also a great way to understand how Samsung made the Galaxy Watch brand the brand that it is. Their partnership with Samsung is also quite natural in a lot of ways, since Samsung has been one of Google’s strongest partner brands in the Android smartphone world. Partly, it also means that Google have one less thing spend resources for development.

Samsung announced a few weeks ago that their upcoming Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, suspected to be launching in the August 11th Galaxy Unpacked event, will be the first in their line-up and the probably the world to be running this new mash up of Google’s Wear OS and Tizen OS. They called it their One UI; of course. But One UI is just an overlay of the Operating System (OS) that is the Wear OS. At that point, it was nameless.

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Source: Samsung

Google sort of announced Wear OS 3 about 15 hours ago. While it was not a revolutionary name, it is a significant update over the older Wear OS. They have started detailing which devices will get the update, for example. Most of the older generation hardware will not be getting Wear OS 3, unfortunately. In that case, if you are running a Wear device that has existed in the market for more than a year, you might want to consider retiring it and getting a new one. Of course, we will tell you to wait for the first Google Wear OS 3 devices to hit the market first before deciding.

One of Google’s biggest Wear OS device partners, Fossil has confirmed that they will be updating some of their latest generation smartwatches to Google Wear OS 3 in the coming months. They are also promising new generation wearables later on after the launch of Wear OS 3. While not officially available in Malaysia, you might want to consider looking at Mobvoi’s latest generation smartwatches if you want something that can be updated to Wear OS 3. Of course, if you can wait until September 2021, why not just get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4?

The next big update to Wear OS, the Wear OS 3 is expected to come to watches launching in this half of the year onward. You can expect Samsung to also be among the first manufacturers to boast Google Wear OS 3, albeit in their own One UI skin. Updates to current generation smartwatches to Wear OS 3 is expected to come in in the mid of 2022 onward.

[MWC 2021] Samsung Shows Off One UI Watch for Upcoming Galaxy Watch 4

It has been nearly a month since Google’s I/O keynote. In that same time, we were reeling back from the shock we got from the keynote itself about Google and Samsung joining hands to co-develop Android Wear moving forward. That announcement also means that Samsung is abandoning their Tizen OS for future Galaxy Watches. It also seems like Samsung might give up on the idea of their own unique looking UI on their smart watches with the announcement. Now, it does not seem so.

They call it the One UI, and yes, it is based on Google’s Android Wear UI. At least according to Samsung, One UI is developed and built jointly with Google for the Galaxy Watch platform. It is meant to be a unified platform that combines the best of both Google’s wearable platform and Samsung’s Watch platform.

All this is meant to create a Galaxy Watch experience that is familiar but somewhat new to users. But at the same time, the new One UI platform is designed to be more integrated with your Android smartphones as well. That also means that you get a more unified experience between your smartphone and your Galaxy Watch.

Picture1
Source: Samsung

With the new One UI, the Galaxy Watch responds almost simultaneously with your Android smartphone. For example, if you change the information you want on your clock app on your smartphone, the changes will be reflected on your Watch as well. When you download apps with a complementing app for the Watch, your Watch downloads and installs the complementing apps at the same time too. When you block calls or messages from your smartphone, that gets directly translated on your Watch as well.

The biggest difference between the older Tizen OS powered Galaxy Watch and the new upcoming One UI powered Galaxy Watch is where you get your apps. One UI gets all its apps from Google’s trusty Play store. That should be good news to Galaxy Watch users though. It means you get access to popular apps like Google Maps, and YouTube music, finally.

Samsung is not the only one that gets the benefits of this partnership though. Samsung is bringing their clever watch face design tool for developers into the Android Wear ecosystem. That also means that designing watch faces for Android Wear is even easier now. More watch faces is always better, especially if you can get great looking watch faces from the Galaxy Watch ecosystem.

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Source: Samsung

Of course, the new One Ui unified platform from the Samsung and Google partnership will be featured in the new upcoming Samsung Galaxy Watch device. The full functionalities of One UI will also be announced and showcased in the upcoming Samsung Unpacked event. There are already leaks of how the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 floating around on the internet, and all of those gets us more excited about Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 that is coming soon.