Software update renders Fossil Sport essentially unusable, company working on a fix
Unveiled all the way back in the fall of 2018, the Fossil Sport wasn't exactly the game changer badly needed by Google to put its Wear OS platform on the Apple-dominated map. But as so often happens with decent products released at somewhat exaggerated prices, this sporty Android and iOS-compatible smartwatch is arguably more attractive right now than back when it was a brand-new device.
If you're thinking of purchasing the Fossil Sport at an incredibly low price of $99 (or an occasionally even lower one with various promo codes), you should probably know beforehand that a pretty serious software issue is currently afflicting many existing owners. The bug is widespread enough, not to mention sufficiently annoying, for Fossil to have already acknowledged it and started working on a fix (via Android Police).
Unfortunately, we have no idea when said fix might be ready to roll out, and what's even worse is that Fossil Sport users can't do much in the meantime to contain the glitch. Its origin seems connected to a relatively recent major update that was supposed to extend the smartwatch's otherwise mediocre battery life by only displaying the time when its juice dropped below the 10 percent mark, as well as make it easier to turn off your wearable device, and enable a feature dubbed smart app resume for all apps.
While this Wear OS H revision did tick all those boxes on the Fossil Sport, it also essentially rendered the watch unusable for a relatively large number of users, some of whom detailed their unpleasant experiences on Reddit. In a nutshell, the device is incapable of working normally for more than "a half a second", according to at least one report, almost immediately going back into its always-on display mode whenever one tries to, well, interact with the smartwatch in any way.
In other words, the Fossil Sport can currently only show the time and date, and for half a second, some other information, refusing to respond correctly to tilts, touches, or button presses. For what it's worth, at least one user claims the company offered "awesome customer service" in response to a complaint of this nature, providing a "range of other watches" as a potential replacement for a defective Fossil Sport. If you're willing to wait, though, the company still believes the bug can and will be fixed at some point with an over-the-air software update.
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