[Update: Available now] Fossil’s battery saver modes will come to older Wear OS watches

Ben Schoon | Jan 6 2020 - 6:40 pm PT

One of the best parts of Fossil’s new Gen 5 Wear OS smartwatches is the collection of special battery saver modes. If you own an older Fossil smartwatch, you’re in luck, because those modes are going to be ported to your watch later this year. Probably.

Update 1/6/2020: Several months after launching the battery modes on older hardware, Fossil is bringing the battery saver modes from its Gen 5 smartwatch to a whole lot of other models. Starting today, every Fossil watch with a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor will get access to the battery saver modes explained below.

What models are included in the list? The most notable inclusion is the Fossil Sport, pictured above, but Fossil tells us that any of its Wear OS watches with a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor will be updated. This includes watches from brands such as Diesel, Emporio Armani, Puma, Misfit, Kate Spade, and others.

In a reply on Twitter (via Droid-Life), Fossil confirmed that in an update later this year, these new battery saver modes will be added to older generations. Unfortunately, that’s as clear as the company is being for now. Presumably, the Fossil Sport will certainly be included here with its Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset, but with the slightly-less-capable 2100 in Gen 4 and other Fossil watches, we’re simply not sure.

We’ve reached out to Fossil for further clarification on which watches will get this update, and we’ll update the article when they provide an answer.

In case you missed the news, Fossil’s new battery saver modes are designed to help squeeze a bit more power out of these Wear OS smartwatches without completely killing functionality. There are four modes on the Fossil Gen 5 watches, with “Daily,” “Extended,” “Time-Only,” and “Custom.” We’ve got a full breakdown of how these all work in another post.