Fossil improves Android smartwatches: New competition for the Google Assistant


Fossil brings Alexa to smartwatches with Wear OS. (Image source: GIGA)

Anyone who owns a Fossil smartwatch with Wear OS will soon be able to control it better. As the manufacturer explains, Amazon’s Alexa should also land on the smartwatches in addition to the Google Assistant. In another area of ​​software, however, there is bad news.

Fossil: Android smartwatches with Alexa support

Fossil has a broad portfolio when it comes to Android smartwatches. So far, however, it is still the case with intelligent watches that only the Google Assistant is available as a digital voice assistant. That’s the end of it, like that new Smartwatch Skagen Falster Gen 6 you can see. Amazon Alexa is already available on the watch, but cannot yet be called up (source: 9to5Google).

In a statement at the current CES 2022 trade fair, Fossil has now also confirmed that the Alexa app will be made available on its smartwatches in the first half of 2022. Initially, however, Alexa will only on the newer Gen 6 smartwatches from Fossil work, including the aforementioned Skagen Falster Gen 6, the Fossil Gen 6 and the Razer x Fossil Gen 6. It is entirely possible, but not yet confirmed, that the voice assistant will also appear on older Fossil smartwatches.

In the video: You should definitely pay attention to this when buying a smartwatch.

Fossil smartwatches continue without an update to Wear OS 3.0

While the control options on the smartwatches are certainly significantly upgraded by Alexa, there is another area no good news: Fossil did not use CES 2022 to announce a timely update to Wear OS 3.0.

With the new version of the operating system is not expected for Fossil watches until the end of 2022. It is already certain that only newer smartwatches will receive the big update.



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