what's special about Fossil Gen 5 Julianna Smartwatch

    Fossil Gen5 Julianna Smartwatch

                        

About this item

• Smartwatches powered with wear OS by Google work with iPhone and Android phones, Compatibility: Android OS 6.0+ (EXCLUDING GO EDITION), iOS 10.0+

• Extend your battery life for multiple days with new, smart Battery modes; magnetic USB rapid Charger included; charge UP to 80 percent in under an hour

• Heart Rate & Activity Tracking using Google Fit; Built-in GPS for distance tracking; Swimproof design 3ATM; responses from Google Assistant - it’s your own personal Google, always ready to help

• This is one smartwatch - now with a speaker for Audible alerts and taking phone calls, Google assistant responses, and more; Receive smartphone notifications and alerts; Microphone; Download third party apps with 8Gb of storage and 1G ram memory capacity

• Case size: 44mm; Band size: 22mm; interchangeable with all Fossil 22mm bands; screen size: 1. 28 inch

• Your Fossil Smartwatch can tell your smartphone to play an audible alert so you can find it fast; You won't have to take your smartwatch off for long to charge it up—get up to 80% in one hour with rapid charging

Performance and battery life

• The Gen 5 manages to banish the issues of poor performance and battery life of Wear OS to the past. Performance is good, if not quite on par with the Apple Watch Series 5, with no noticeable lag or dips in speed in general usage, helped by the 1GB of RAM and newer Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor.

• Battery life is also improved, lasting at least a day with the “Daily” mode activated, which turns on all the functions. Put on my wrist at 7am with background heart rate monitoring, the Gen 5 ends the day at 11pm with at least 25% battery left – a marked improvement over most Wear OS watches that struggle to make it through a full day.

• The “Extended” battery mode, which turns off some of the features including the always-on screen, lasts more than two days between charges, while the time-only mode lasts much longer still.

• Charging takes just over an hour via the small white magnetic USB puck that attaches to a ring to the back.

• It’s worth noting that while the watch comes with a two-year warranty, Fossil said the battery cannot be replaced, meaning the watch is ultimately disposable.

Wear OS

• Wear OS has improved over the last year but simply isn’t as feature-complete or as slick as Apple’s watchOS or Samsung’s Tizen on their respective watches.

• You navigate via swipes on the screen. Left to right for Google Assistant. Right to left for various widgets for things such as timers, Google Fit, and others called Tiles. Swipe up from the bottom for notifications and other bits. Swipe down from the top for quick settings, such as airplane mode, volume, battery modes, and Google Pay. Long-press on the watch face to change it.

• Press the crown in to access a list of apps or go back to the watch face. Swipe from left to right typically works as the back button on Android. It’s fairly simple and easy to get the hang of.

• Notification handling is where Wear OS shines. Notifications pop up from the bottom and can be dismissed, expanded to read the text of emails or WhatsApps, or actioned with the same options as available via the notification shade on your phone such as archiving with Gmail or similar.

• Media controls are also great. Start playing something on your phone and they pop up on the watch to skip a track or change the volume using the crown. There’s a dedicated Spotify app too, but it won’t allow you to store music offline – for that you have to resort to Google’s Play Music app.

Health

• The biggest area of weakness in Wear OS is its built-in health tracking related functionality or lack thereof. Google Fit is the main app here. It can count your steps, movement minutes, and “heart points” just fine, it monitors your heart rate in the background occasionally, and will guide you through breathing to destress.

• But the Fit app doesn’t do much beyond the basics, not even sleep monitoring. It can track a lot of workouts, but the screens it displays for things such as running aren’t customizable. Using it for tracking workouts also affects battery life, particularly if you’re playing music to Bluetooth headphones while running.

• Overall, Google is miles behind both Apple and Samsung, let alone the likes of Fitbit or Garmin, in features and polish on health tracking and analysis, and Wear OS suffers as a result.

  Specs

Platform And Storage Features 

Operating System :Powered with Wear OS by Google

RAM : 1 GB

Processor Name : Quallcomm Snapdragon 3100

Internal Memory : 8 GB

Connectivity Features

Call Function : Yes

Bluetooth : Yes

Wi-Fi : Yes

GPS : Yes

Bluetooth Version : Bluetooth Smart Enabled / 4.2 Low Energy

Display Features

Display Resolution : 416 x 416 pixel

Display Size : 32 mm

Display Type : AMOLED

Scratch Resistant : No

Fitness And Watch Functions

Calorie Count : Yes

Step Count : Yes

Heart Rate Monitor : Yes

Date & Time Display : Yes

Calendar : Yes

Alarm Clock : Yes

Chronograph : No

Audio And Video Features

Speaker : Yes

Microphone : Yes

Voice Control : Yes

conclusion

• The Fossil Gen 5 is easily the best Wear OS watch available and bodes well for the rest of the brands within Fossil Group’s roster.

• It relegates problems with performance and sub-day battery life to the past and looks good doing it. If you want your smartwatch to look like a more traditional timepiece the Fossil is great.