‘Fossil Smartwatches’ app used for pairing Wear OS 3 seems to be causing battery drain

Ben Schoon | Dec 7 2022 - 7:35 am PT

Wear OS 3 is a reinvention of Android’s take on smartwatches, and a big part of the update is changing how you pair to your phone. For Fossil smartwatches using Wear OS 3, users will pair the hardware with the “Fossil Smartwatches” app, but it seems that’s causing battery drain for some folks.

The Fossil Smartwatches app has existed for a while for the company’s hybrid smartwatches, but with Wear OS 3 doing away with the centralized Wear OS app for phones, Fossil is moving pairing for its various Wear OS watches over to that app. This includes the newly-released Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition, the Diesel Griffed, and other Gen 6 smartwatches updated to Wear OS 3.

In a thread on Reddit this week, several users have reported that they’ve noticed battery drain caused by the Fossil Smartwatches app on Android, while others are seeing less of an impact. Those affected are seeing upwards of 30% battery usage from the app over the course of the day, well outside of what would be expected. There are also some users in the Play Store reviews for the app noting battery drain.

It’s unclear if this is happening for everyone, but it wouldn’t be particularly surprising as a growing pain as Fossil settles into this new setup for its Wear OS hardware. That said, it’s worth noting that users of Fossil’s Hybrid watches have seen similar battery drain problems for quite some time, with similar threads as far back as 2020.

One quirk of the Fossil Smartwatches app that does affect everyone, though, is the persistent notification that the app shows by default. A constant notification, complete with a status bar icon, appears on Android phones when pairing a Fossil watch with Wear OS 3. It can’t be disabled officially, but can be turned off in Android’s notifications system.