For most of the past 5 years, I’ve worn a smart device on my wrist. I’ve cycled through Fitbit Charge HR, Garmin vivoactive 3, Motorola 360 (1st series) and for the past year, after I’d been walking around bare wristed for a year or so, I’ve been wearing a Fossil Hybrid.
I’ve always been interested in the wearable concept but have never quite been satisfied. Garmin and Fitbit were very good for sport and activity tracking, but their build qualities were terrible. The Motorola looked sleek but was lacking in so many areas. The Fossil Hybrid didn’t really feel like I was wearing a smart device at all — more if a nice looking watch albeit with simple smarts — which admittedly, matches the description of the device.
So I recently decided to give WearOS a try again. I was disappointed with Android Wear back when I had the Motorola V360. The battery life was terrible. The OS was rather slow, and functionality was very limited. When I bought my wife an Apple watch, it was no comparison to what I had with the Motorola. It made me feel like there was no point in even wearing it.
So here we are again a few years later. I’ve been eyeing the Gen5 series of Fossil smartwatches for a while, and even the sport before that. I’ve read about the supposed improvements of the new Snapdragon chip, and the performance benefit of the extra memory.
I’ve had the Fossil Carlyle HR for a couple of months now.
Overall, it’s pretty good. Not sure that it quite has the polish that Apple watches have, but it’s decent.
Pros:
- The battery lasts me the full day most days. And if I do need to put it on the charger, it charges super quick.
- When the battery does die, it switches the watch to time only mode, which provides an extra few hours of being able to tell the time.
- The phone audio feature is great. It allows me to answer calls on my watch when my phone is not within reach, though it needs to be within Bluetooth range.
- Facer enables a huge range of watch faces. I change most days.
- Find my phone has saved on many occasions.
- I have two straps — silicone and leather — and it’s great being able to change it up a bit from time to time.
- Typing on the watch is actually decent. Can reply to messages especially if swipe typing
Cons:
- I’ve mentioned it as a pro, but it’s also a con. Phone audio, whilst being a great feature, has a nasty habit of disabling itself in the settings, nearly every day. Surely this is a bug that will soon be patched.
- I’ve found that so far Google assistant is pretty useless on the watch.
- Heart rate isn’t really integrated seamlessly. It forces me into a third party app - cardiogram — which is admittedly pretty good.
- No sleep tracking. I’ve read that this can be achieved with a third party app, but that it also involves having to initiate sleep mode every night for it to work. I’m accustomed to devices that just track for you.
- Sometimes notifications can get a bit too messy if you don’t actively swipe them away throughout the day.
- Not really a WearOS issue, but my watch did pick up a significant scratch quite innocuosly within the first week. I always think that these things should be a lot more physically durable.
In summary, I don’t regret the purchase. I probably could have held out for longer in hope of that elusive pixel watch, which may never come, and will probably be prohibitively priced anyway. Hopefully Google start putting some proper attention into WearOS, as there is space for improvement. I have gathered from reading online opinions that people that have been using it for a while seem jaded by the lack of progress, so we’ll see if I change my tune after a few more months of use.
