I had a fossil before I bought my Samsung, and it was a god awful mess. Barely functional, slow and honestly kind of ugly.
Still, a shame to lose more competitors.
Same, I had the Carlisle and it was a worthless piece of trash. It was painfully slow, and it would vibrate with a notification, but then there wouldn’t be any notification to be found. I eventually just stopped wearing it and figured I’d wait for the Pixel Watch to be released, but even then, knowing how horrible Google’s first attempts at hardware usually goes, I still waited an extra year for the Pixel Watch 2. So far I’ve been happy with it, and I’ll never buy another Fossil watch again.
I’ve had 4 Fossil watches over the past 30 years and they’ve all turned out to be garbage. Beautiful garbage.
knowing how horrible Google’s first attempts at hardware usually goes
Surprisingly the pixel fold seems to have been well built for the most part, most issues I’ve heard stemming from it are either known category-wide issues (Like the crease, soft screens) or software issues which can be easily updated away. In my personal experience with it, it’s the best “Googles first hardware gen” lmfao
Honestly, fossil was a very good option for classic watches with some smart capabilities.
It’s a shame.
Well, until the back of the watch became unglued after like 6 weeks because shimmying a piece of gooey effectively double sided jello with some adhesive properties and calling it “lgtm” was a… poor choice.
Doing it for 3 (?) generations, when they admitted it was a problem during the first, was atrocious.
But yeah other than that, I liked my Fossil whatever gen 3. Oh well.
This is the first I’ve heard of that issue, I’ve had a hybrid HR fie about 3 years now and been running fine
I have a hybrid HR (not in use atm), it is not an issue on that device. Their wearos watches for a few years had this small flat ‘o-ring’ that held the damn charging receiver, and when your body heats up as it does from physical exertion, or just from a high ambient temp (I’m from AZ, USA) the gooey flat ring loses its adhesion and slides free, which means the charger receiver falls off, which means your watch is now a paperweight. First time they exchased it, second I got a refund.
Damn, i just bought one of their hybrid watches I hope this doesn’t mean an early EoL for it… I know the article spells out the wearOS models specifically, but if they kill off the hybrid line too that would spell the end of smart watches for me.
I bought a mechanical watch about five months ago and honestly, it’s been great. I’ve been through… way too many smart watches over nearly ten years and was getting tired of not getting more than two-three years out of them before something failed. It seemed wasteful. Yeah, standalone GPS tracking and what not was neat, but I nearly always have my phone on me these days. I wore watches, granted Iron Man and not mechanical, all through middle and highschool and ditched them when cellphones really started becoming ubiquitous. It’s funny how I’ve come full circle.
Have you ever tried garmin watches? They’re not as “smart” as the Apple Watch or Android wear. But they have battery life measured from weeks to months, and have a lot longer of a lifespan than the smarter ones.
They’re by far more focused on fitness tracking though, so if a regular watch is an option then they’re probably the opposite of what you’re into.
I am aware of them, but given my general lack of focused fitness I am fairly ambivalent about a fitness tracker. I do spend a decent amount of time chasing my kida outside and take the stairs/park far away at work, but my smartphone does a good enough job at tracking those activities.
A smart watch/fitness tracker makes sense if you’re actively engaging in use cases that they will enhance, but that’s not the case for me right now. I just want an easy way of knowing what time it is and I’ve learned to manage notifications on my phone so the important ones still catch my attention.
I’m not a proper “watch guy,” because I don’t have the money for it, but I’ve built up a little connection of Soviet mechanical watches, several of them space-themed. It’s a really fun way to dip into that hobby.
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It’s kind of you to ask. I never get to show them off. Here are some so-so photos in an album. I ordered custom bands for each–that was my “customization/personalization.” All less than $100 (probably with bands included, even). I like how they’ve turned out, so far:
The first one is a Sputnik watch (the letters on the gold center part spell Sputnik in Cyrillic and the little Sputnik spins), the second is a Raketa Moonphase (they have tons of cool color options throughout the years). The third is from 1975, commemorating the Apollo-Soyuz-19 collaborative mission or “space handshake.” The fourth is not space-themed, but is, I believe supposed to be based on a Soviet tank operator’s watch(?), but I’m not totally sure on it, as it’s listed elsewhere as a Gagarin pilot’s watch. It’s an old Soviet one, not one of the reissues they’ve started offering Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the movements, but they’re really cool, some have visible rubies and whatnot.
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I’m also not a proper “watch guy”. I have one watch I wear daily and two vintage watches that don’t run very well and I don’t have the $$ to repair so they sit in a drawer.
Soviet watches are a great rabbit hole. Thankfully, I’ve managed to stay on the sidelines for the most part. I do have a CCCP automatic that will only keep time for more than one day if I wind it, but that’s it. There are a whole bunch of interesting designs out there though.
I was aesthetically a fan of the Fossil watches, and was using a Fossil Sport (1st gen) for quite a while. Unfortunately the layers of proprietary-Fossil required software/watchfaces on top of the layers of proprietary-Google WearOS hampered the software experience a tiny bit, and the frankly poor hardware quality marred the experience significantly. My charging band coil in the watch completely dislodged itself (it appeared to be held in with glue), rendering the watch unusable.
Fossil’s customer support was excellent, replacing the device fully when this happened, though that was when that model was still on store shelves. I recently inquired about getting a replacement battery and was told I can just trade it in for 50% off a current-gen model, which while being far more generous an offer than I expected, still leaves me hesitant to upgrade to another device that suffers from the same problems and is in danger of being outright discontinued.
At this point I don’t really need/want a WearOS device specifically, and would actually prefer something that’s less tied to Google’s whims, the hardware OEM’s whims, and whatever the interplay is between those two companies. I’ve been eyeing more hobby-oriented projects like bangle.js or the PineTime smartwatch, but the fact that I’m even looking in that space shows that it’s become a device I would get for tinkering, not one I strictly “need”.
Android 14 has finally made using my Pebble with the phone a bad option. I’m happy with the Garmin that I replaced it with.
Have you tried Gadgetbridge? It replaces the Pebble app completely. I’m on Android 13 and it works really well (but requires a bit of tinkering to set up). Also, if it broke going from 13 to 14, I’d be interested to know what went wrong. I’m still using my Pebble every day.
What’s the problem? I’m not on Android 14 yet, but my quick search says the pebble app should work.
“ceded victory”
Less competition means everyone loses. They made Wear OS better by existing.
I love the look of fossil watches. Sorry to see them go!
I like my Galaxy Watch, been holding up for over 3 years now
I hope they’ll continue the hybrid models. Those never used WearOS anyway.
On the Skagen side, it looks like they completely stopped making the hybrids. They pretty much took down the smartwatch/hybrid section.
I have one of those and I guess that’s why the app is no longer being updated, whereas the Fossil app still gets updates.
I liked the look of my Fossil Carlisle, but it was slow as hell and after a few months wouldn’t hold a charge for more than a few hours. I honestly have been happier with my extremely feature limited Fitbit the past year purely because I’m not fighting with it constantly like I was the Fossil.
