Hot on the heels of the Pixel Watch, Fossil has introduced it’s launching its first-ever Wear OS 3 watch — the Gen 6 Wellness Edition. It’ll additionally introduce a brand new Wellness cell app for well being and health monitoring, however sadly, this watch doesn’t characteristic Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon W5 Plus platform. The Gen 6 Wellness Edition will retail for $299, and it’s accessible beginning October seventeenth.

The Gen 6 Wellness Edition seems like your typical Fossil machine with its trend smartwatch aesthetic. It’ll are available in a 44mm case with a 1.28-inch always-on OLED show, in addition to three shade choices: black, silver, or rose gold. It’ll be powered by the last-gen Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. That’s the identical because the one in the usual Gen 6.

As for what the Wellness Edition brings to the desk, Wear OS 3 is the massive kahuna. So far, it’s solely accessible on the Pixel Watch, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 lineups, and the Montblanc Summit 3. Fossil has made the overwhelming majority of Wear OS watches lately beneath its numerous manufacturers (i.e., Skagen, Michael Kors, and so on.), so it’s seemingly we’re about to see a lot extra Wear OS 3 choices within the coming months. It additionally means a brand new UI and watch navigation that’s most likely just like what we’ve seen on Montblanc Summit 3. The watch may even hyperlink up with the redesigned Fossil Smartwatches app that launched with the Gen 6 Hybrid earlier this summer season.

As far as sensible options go, Wear OS 3 gives a greater collection of optimized third-party apps within the Play Store. In its press launch, Fossil emphasised apps like YouTube Music, Spotify, Facer, and Amazon Alexa. (Alexa was launched on the Gen 6 earlier this yr.) According to Android Central, it doesn’t seem that the Wellness Edition could have Google Assistant. If true, that’s a puzzling omission that was additionally mirrored on the Fitbit Sense 2 and Montblanc Summit 3, particularly since Fossil despatched us official pictures of the watch that clearly depicts Google Assistant performance. We’ve reached out to Fossil to make clear.

The different huge replace is the brand new Wellness app, which supplies Fossil watches a lift within the well being and health monitoring division. That contains SpO2 measurements, cardio health estimations utilizing VO2 max, computerized exercise detection, coronary heart charge zones, improved sleep monitoring, and steady coronary heart charge monitoring outdoors of exercises. Plenty of different smartwatches have already launched these options ages in the past, however Fossil has been a bit extra hamstrung by Wear OS 2 and older Snapdragon Wear chips. It’s encouraging to see that Wear OS 3 permits Fossil to catch up in a significant means on the well being entrance, even when it doesn’t have the newest chip.

As the title, options, and specs counsel, this isn’t a brand new flagship lineup a lot as a repackaged Gen 6. It seems like we’ll have to attend a bit longer earlier than the Gen 7 lineup arrives, hopefully packing newer {hardware} to maintain Fossil’s wearables aggressive. While that’s mildly disappointing, it’s not stunning. When Fossil was transitioning its watches from the 3100-powered Gen 5 lineup to the 4100-powered Gen 6, it launched the finances Gen 5E and Gen 5 LTE within the interim.

The Wellness Edition will probably be accessible beginning October seventeenth, and Android Central quotes Fossil as saying that’s when Wear OS 3 upgrades to 4100-powered Fossil watches will begin rolling out. That contains the Michael Kors Gen 6 and the Skagen Falster Gen 6. We’ve reached out to Google to substantiate whether or not that is true however didn’t obtain an instantaneous response. Google has all the time mentioned the improve would come this fall, and it’s solely believable the wait is almost over now that the Pixel Watch has hit cabinets. In any case, it’s been a busy fall stuffed with Wear OS 3 information — and it doesn’t look like that’ll be letting up anytime quickly.