So, between “coming soon”, “early this year”, and “first half of this year”, it\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess. With features like this, it\u2019s not uncommon to see companies hedge on timelines. Still, if all goes well, it appears likely that Alexa compatibility will arrive before Wear OS 3. As for when the Wear OS 3 upgrades will arrive, that\u2019s up to Google. For now, both Google and Fossil haven\u2019t budged from the equally vague mid-to-late 2022 timeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It might seem curious as to why Fossil would even tease Alexa if it\u2019s not ready yet. The most likely reason is to give everyone something to look forward to while waiting for Wear OS 3, which could arrive in a few months or a whole year from now. In a briefing, Fossil told that this awkward timing did impact initial Gen 6 sales, though surprisingly, the Gen 5E sales seem to be going strong. Given all the uncertainty, it makes sense that Fossil would want to highlight Alexa compatibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For what it\u2019s worth, it is (or will be) a win for Fossil. Voice assistants are increasingly common on smartwatches, but customers don\u2019t really have a say in which assistant comes with their wearable. Wear OS watches are currently tied to Google Assistant and Apple Watches are Siri-only. Samsung has inflicted Bixby onto Galaxy Watch owners for years, and while Samsung said you\u2019d be able to opt for Google Assistant on the new Galaxy Watch 4, it has yet to officially arrive<\/a>. Some watches, like Garmin\u2019s newly announced Venu 2 Plus, simply connect you to your phone\u2019s assistant. Others hook you up with a proprietary assistant, and that\u2019s rarely a good time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, Fitbit is the only one that actually offers any sort of choice. Starting with the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3, you had the option between Alexa or Google Assistant. However, you could only do one or the other. As far as we can see on my review units, while there is an Alexa widget, that doesn\u2019t stop you from using Google Assistant as well. Granted, there are few official details and Alexa on the wrist isn\u2019t the best. However, Fossil offering a choice in assistants – or even the option to potentially use more than one – is a smart move. It\u2019d just be smarter if it was here already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although Fossil launched\u00a0two new smartwatches at CES\u00a0today, there\u2019s one big elephant in the room: the upgrade to Wear OS 3 won’t arrive for several months. To take the sting out of the wait, Fossil snuck in another new feature for its Gen 6 smartwatches: Amazon Alexa. As for when Alexa will arrive, you\u2019ll have to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,191,194,458,277],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-gadgets","category-smartwatch","category-tech","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5930"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5939,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930\/revisions\/5939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowarranty.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Alexa](\"http:\/\/blog.gowarranty.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/alexa--1024x642.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n