Fossil Sport smartwatch review: Jack of all trades, master of a few 

The Fossil Sport is special in many ways. Not only does it run Wear OS, which is Google's second shot at wearables, it is also one of the first few smartwatches in the world to pack Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset. That and the fact that Google CEO Sundar Pichai wore – read, endorsed - it during his I/O 2019 keynote means, well, it ought to be special right? 

The most important thing to note about the Fossil Sport however is its price. At Rs 17,995, the Fossil Sport is on the affordable side of the smartwatch spectrum, without any major compromises one would expect from a product of its class – for what it’s worth, the Fossil Sport seems well stacked on paper. And let me tell you straight off that it also lives up to its reputation basis of its specs. It’s safe to say that the Fossil Sport maybe your best bet if you’re looking to buy a high-quality Wear OS-based smartwatch without burning a hole in your pocket. Question is, will the Fossil Sport be enough to pull Wear OS out of the rut? 

Design – function over form 

Considering that the Sport is a sport-y smartwatch, I think it’s commendable how Fossil has designed this thing. Using a combination of aluminum and nylon, Fossil has built one of the lightest smartwatches around and I can’t stress enough how important that is for a fitness wearable – it's like it’s not even there when you’re out for a run, but rest assured, it’s doing its job. A job well done.  

While it’s certainly a big boon for fitness enthusiasts, fashion conscious buyers should look elsewhere. The Sport isn’t pretty, even though Fossil has tried to jack up its youthfulness through a bevy of colour options – it's available in six colours and two case sizes (41, 43 mm), with an option to pair it with as many as 28 different straps (18, 22 mm). 

The smartwatch has a dual-tone casing, with a distinct aluminum ring at the top and a hard-plastic bottom. The nylon below that’s going to be in contact with your body always helps absorb sweat, even though it can look a little cheap, especially if you intend on buying any other colour but black and probably blue - the Sport is clearly function over form and that’s not a bad thing at all. 

On the right side you’ll find a rotating crown for scrolling through menus and two mechanical buttons that you can customize to open any app – these are built solid and offer good tactile feedback. 

Display – always-on and ticking 

The 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen display of the Fossil Sport is as good as any other AMOLED out there – with inky blacks and abundant brightness. There’s also a sunlight boost option that temporarily boosts brightness levels – when enabled – when you’re out and about in direct sunlight. My only gripe with it is the thick bezel that surrounds it, making the main display area much smaller than it is.  

The main USP of the Fossil Sport’s display however is its dedicated ambient mode that brings always-on functionality to the Wear OS-based smartwatch. It’s a first for the platform and even though Samsung’s Gear – now Galaxy – smartwatches have had this for years, it’s one of the features that deserves a mention. Remember, the Apple Watch still doesn’t have it. 

Being always-on means that the Fossil Sport can show a moving second hand as well as live-updating complications – all in colour – at all times.  

That's not to say that it is perfect though. The Sport has a tendency to switch to ambient mode rather quickly – possibly to save battery life. That can be frustrating especially when you’re on to something on the smartwatch, and in the next instance, it’s out. A manual toggle to tweak the timing would have been nice. 

Features – everything you’ll ever need  

The Fossil Sport has everything you’ll ever need which is impressive considering the price.  

- Accelerometer, Altimeter, Ambient Light, Gyroscope, Heart Rate, Microphone, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth 4.2 LE 

- 5 ATM water resistance 

- 4GB storage for playlists 

- Custom watch faces  

Performance review 

It’s no secret that Google’s Android Wear never really took off. You could say the same thing about smartwatches in general, once upon a time, but Apple and Samsung have shown all smartwatches need not be dumb – thus bringing the said product category out of a rut. So much so that smartwatches have been beginning to make sense, heck, they’ve been beginning to get exciting. Clearly, Google needed a plan B, and it needed one quickly. That’s where Wear OS comes in. 

Wear OS – first announced at Google I/O last year – isn’t just Android Wear with a new name, it’s the biggest update to Google’s wearable platform since its inception. It’s very likeable too, especially when you compare it to Android Wear.  

Google has simplified the whole thing (under its material design scheme) so it’s easier to use with special emphasis on the Google Assistant – much like how it is with any other Google product. This is achieved in two ways - 

- The whole user interface is divided into four parts. Swiping up takes you to notifications, while swiping down takes you to quick settings shortcut menu. Swiping right brings the Google Assistant feed, while swiping left takes you directly to the Google Fit app. 

- Notifications are now grouped under one scrollable menu and it is also possible to respond to certain apps directly from this menu. 

I really like the direction in which Wear OS is going but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Sadly, there are two weak links here – one's the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset and the other’s connected to a few questionable choices that Fossil has made while designing the Sport. 

Qualcomm made a big hullabaloo over the Snapdragon Wear 3100, especially its big emphasis on ensuring long-lasting battery life and while it does have its moments (that always-on ambient mode is all thanks to the Snapdragon Wear 3100’s dedicated low-power coprocessor for instance) its core hardware is same as the last-generation Snapdragon Wear 2100. Whatever under the hood changes this new processor brings on paper, well, they don’t add up in real-world usage – because performance is a big issue here. It’s inconsistent. 

The Fossil Sport has a tendency to freeze – or stutter – more often than not and this is something that’s apparent across the board – whether you’re using touchscreen or using the rotating crown. You can say that that’s a software tuning thing, but, performance-wise I am yet to see a visible difference between the Fossil Sport and a smartwatch with Snapdragon Wear 2100 like last year’s Fossil Q. This thing needs better hardware or probably more RAM (the Sport has 512MB RAM), I am not too sure. 

But something that I am sure about is how Fossil could have made the whole experience a little bit better – for fitness enthusiasts. 

- The Fossil Sport can track over forty activities, but it can’t track them automatically.   

- The one thing that it can track automatically – and something that it is good at – is your heart rate. In thirty-minute intervals. But there’s a catch. There will be instances where it will mistakenly read a quick movement on your part as an elevated heart rate. But then, this is more a smartwatch shortcoming that most brands are marred with – smartwatches just need to get smarter. 

- As activity-rich as Google Fit is, the thing can’t track swimming. And Fossil doesn’t give you a first-party option, so you’ll need to download one by yourself. 

Battery life – the Achilles heel 

Not only does the Snapdragon Wear 3100 fail to shine from a performance point of view, it isn’t exactly a battery champ either. Fossil claims more than a day’s worth of battery life, but actual figures aren’t anything to write home about. The Sport is a one-day smartwatch only and only if you’re kind to it – which is disappointing since being a fitness-focused smartwatch, you expect to take it for a ride. Its in-built battery saving mode is said to add “an additional two days of telling time” but then you’ll be stripped off to just the basics. Luckily, the Fossil Sport supports fast charging. 

Should you buy the Fossil Sport? 

The Fossil Sport is one of the best Wear OS-based smartwatches in the market today – yes, even with its fair share of shortcomings. It’s no Samsung Galaxy Watch or Apple Watch Series 4, but that’s alright. What really works for it is its entry-level pricing and the fact that there are simply more number of Android users in India. The Fossil Sport will perfectly complement those users. Even better if you’re someone looking to tap into the whole smartwatch category for the first time. That said, if you’re someone really serious about fitness tracking, you’ll be better off buying a Fitbit.  

Photos by Saurabh Singh