Fossil’s upcoming Gen 5 smartwatches will be able to take calls just like the Apple watches do. The Wear OS watch will achieve this via Bluetooth tethering. However, that feature won’t be available immediately available on the 5th. It will be provided via an app later on.
That’s a big step up from notifications that would make smartwatches much more useful and sell-able. The ability to listen to calls using a smartwatch is also convenient for activities such as corporate conference calls.
New modes enable the user to extend battery life further (by days in some cases) if they set it to ‘Extended Battery Mode’ or ‘Time-only mode’. The standard mode is called ‘Daily Mode’. ‘Time-only mode’ is perfect for use at night when users are sleeping (to avoid distractions).
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 3100-powered smartwatch will be equipped with 8GB of storage and 1GB of onboard RAM. It also has a heart rate sensor, Near-Field Communication (NFC, which requires close proximity but no contact) for contactless payment systems such as Google Pay. Another perk is water resistance up to 30m.
