Fossil opens pre-orders for Generation 5 LTE watches
Fossil has opened pre-orders for two LTE enabled Generation 5 smartwatches. The company made the announcement at CES 2021.
This is important news as Fossil has a huge selection of Wear OS watches – the biggest of any brand. What’s more, it has a number of sub-brands including Puma, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, DKNY, Diesel, Kate Spade New York, Tory Burch, Chaps and Armani Exchange. It’s very likely the cellular connectivity will trickle down to them in time.
Fossil Gen 5 LTE
Those who are waiting for a Fossil Watch with the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 chip will need to exercise some more patience. The new watches are still Gen 5 with the old 3100 processor. The main news is the LTE connectivity.
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The newly acquired cellular functionality is combined with a nice 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage which should make the watch run smoothly. Internal specs include the usual gamut of fitness sensors (Accelerometer, Altimeter, Compass, Gyroscope, Off-body IR, PPG Heart Rate), NFC, GPS, loudspeaker and a microphone. All of this has a 5 ATM water resistance rating.
That design is almost the same as the standard Gen 5 look. The difference is there are slimmer buttons this time around. Fossil has fitted a 1.28″ AMOLED (416 x 416 pixel, 328ppi) into the 45mm stainless steel body. This is attached to a 18mm interchangeable strap. There are three buttons as before including a rotating crown and two configurable push-buttons.
Unfortunately battery life is still nothing to write home about. You can expect about 24 hours on a single charge. Fifty minutes on the charger will top it up to the 80% level.
Fossil started selling Gen 5 watches back in August 2019. We were expecting Gen 6 watches in the latter part of 2020 but it’s possible the situation with the coronavirus has shifted things around. They will certainly come in the months ahead, hopefully before the Summer.
Price and availability
In October we saw seven new watches added to Fossil’s website. They are all part of a lineup it refers to as Gen 5E. One way to sum them up is that they pack Gen 5 specs in a Gen 2 and 3 design. Fossil is introducing a few more Gen 5Es at CES 2021. This includes the $250 Michael Kors Access and MKGO Wear OS timepieces. There’s also a new $195 Hybrid HR designed by Skagen in the Jorn.
As far as the LTE variant, you can pre-order it now in a choice between black or blush (pink) on Fossil’s website.. Both come with the same design, the color is the only difference. The watches retail for $349 which is $50 more than the standard variant. Shiping starts on January 20th. Fossil says Gen 5 LTE watches are compatible with Verizon in the US.
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