If you saw the announcement this morning about Fossil’s new Gen 6 Wellness Edition watch that is their first to run Wear OS 3, you might have wondered what that meant on the Wear OS 3 front for the previously released Fossil Gen 6 line. I have good news – the update should start rolling out next week.
Fossil told me this afternoon that the Wear OS 3 update for the original Gen 6 will arrive when the Wellness Edition launches on October 17. Since both watches are essentially identical inside, this makes a lot of sense. In fact, these watches are identical in terms of features and specs, they simply have different external styling.
There are some items to be aware of when this big Wear OS 3 update shows up. First, it will be optional to Fossil Gen 6 owners. It’s optional because it will require you to factory reset your watch and then set it up again through Fossil’s recently updated companion app. If that’s confusing, let me explain.
With Wear OS 3, Google is basically retiring the Wear OS app that all Wear OS watches have used over the years for setup and limited controls. Wear OS 3 is requiring watchmakers to release their own companion apps that run setup, are there to adjust settings, and can even perform tasks like watch face management. For Fossil and the original Gen 6, that is also the case. You’ll still use the Wear OS app up until the point where you install the Wear OS 3 update. After that installs, you’ll then switch over to the Fossil app. Fossil doesn’t believe this will be a difficult switch or process to follow. You can download the Fossil app from Google Play here.
The second thing to know is that Google Assistant will not be included in the Wear OS 3 update. Fossil suggests that the current form of Google Assistant is not currently supported through Qualcomm’s chips and there is nothing they can do. It seems like everyone is waiting for Google or Qualcomm to figure that out. You may recall that Samsung’s own Wear OS 3 watches only recently picked up Assistant support. The Pixel Watch, of course, has access as well.
The last thing to note is that the majority of the Wellness Edition experience will join the original Gen 6 with this update, outside of some of the new watch faces. So if you were considering an upgrade to get the wellness goodness, you really shouldn’t.
We’ve asked Fossil if there will be a guide to help you update your Gen 6 and they told us that there will be an FAQ somewhere to help out or answer any questions you may have. Once we have that, we’ll update this post.
For now, prepare yourselves for the big update, Gen 6 owners. We’ll let you know once it is live.