Fossil resumes Wear OS H-MR2 update with pair of Gen 5 watch downloads

Abner Li | Apr 28 2021 - 8:05 am PT

Fossil started rolling out the latest Wear OS update to various watches in December but announced that it paused the release for Gen 5 devices in February to “iron out some issues.” H-MR2 today is rolling back out to Fossil watches in a process that involves two updates.

At the tail end of last year, some Fossil owners already received H-MR2. This system update speeds up app launch and boot times by up to 20% and improves battery life. User-facing features include a new UI for changing brightness and the ability to set the screen time off limit, while Theater/Cinema Mode is persistent until you disable. Long-pressing the power button to activate Google Assistant can be turned off, while users have noticed the Tile limit has increased. Some people have been using this update since last year and have not reported any issues.

Those users on PXE2.201012.009 today are first seeing an update to PXE2.201012.028. After that, there is another download/install to build PXE2.201012.032 with the February 2021 security patch. Visit settings to get the new version, with persistently visiting the Check for update screen working to trigger.

Fossil joins other brands that have already released the H-MR2 updates:

Google recently teased another Wear OS system update, presumably H-MR3, to allow app developers to create third-party Tiles.