After NASA’s announcement that Alexa will be its Artemis I mission AI virtual assistant, another brand that is bringing the popular voice assistant to its device is Fossil.
After unveiling two new smartwatches at the CES, Fossil says they won’t be getting WearOS 3 upgrade any moment soon.
But even at that, the company still brought in Alexa which is expected to make it on its Gen 6 smartwatches.
According to a statement to 9to5Google, Fossil says the update should be expected in the first half of the year.
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A similar statement was made with The Verge in a CES briefing when the company’s spokesperson Robyn Sills said Alexa would come to the Gen 6 smartwatches early this year.
In fact, reporters who had a first-hand glance of the Skagen Falster 6 and the Razer x Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch noted the presence of an Alexa widget.
Tapping on it won’t summon the virtual assistant yet but display a “coming soon” message instead.
So, between “coming soon,” “early this year,” and “first half of this year,” it’s anyone’s guess.
Although I’m not a big fan of “coming soon” due to the fact that companies often lag on their deadlines sometimes and could end up shifting the timeline forward depending on their convenience.
But hopefully, if we could get an Alexa-enabled Gen 6 Fossil smartwatch with WearOS 3 update, then that’s great news.
For now, both Google and Fossil haven’t budged from the equally vague mid-to-late 2022 timeline.
Even though the sales of Gen 5E seem to be going great, Fossil said that the awkward timing of its announcement did impact initial Gen 6 sales.
The fact that the brand is teasing Alexa that is not readily available yet for its device as well as the fact that we may never get the Wear OS 3 upgrade until the end of the year – hopefully, I’m wrong.
The use of virtual assistants on smartwatches is becoming a popular phenomenon and it’s going to be a good thing if Fossil can implement such with Alexa even though Google is what comes to mind first.
Currently, most WearOS smartwatches make use of Google Assistant while Apple Watch relies on Siri. Samsung isn’t letting go of Bixby even though it promises to opt for Google Assistant on its new Galaxy Watch 4 which is yet to officially arrive.
