Google buys entire Fossil smartwatch division

General Chat Tech & Gaming
1

This is extremely good news, IMO.

Pixel Watch when?

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2

Odd the consensus on here tends to be WearOS is on the way out.

Evidently not.

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3

It seems that the key to ā€œPixelā€ devices is that they are all in-house Google products, which might explain why there wasnā€™t a Pixel Watch in 2018.

This seems likely to change now. I really hope we see one this year. Itā€™s interesting because I was considering replacing my LG Watch Style with the new Fossil Sport, but Iā€™m not in any rush so Iā€™ll wait and see what Googleā€™s hardware event towards the end of the year brings, aside from the Pixel 4 which Iā€™ll most likely be picking up!

4

Producing great physical hardware is a widely solved problem these days but I think itā€™s massively overlooked how important the custom silicon is to Appleā€™s success. Theyā€™re literally years ahead of everyone.

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5

Except for Google when it comes to Pixel camera tech. The Pixel 2 from 2017 still takes better photos than the XS from 2018.

And interestingly ā€¦ Thatā€™s also down to custom silicon - the Pixel Visual Core chip (that combined with Googleā€™s incredible pace of machine learning)

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6

Iā€™m guessing that their camera advantage is far more to do with software and their processing techniques rather than anything particularly special in the visual core (Iā€™m way out of my depth here so happy to be wrong).

The fact that some of the computational photography wizardry is offloaded to the cloud kind of indicates that the visual core isnā€™t enough on its own.

In terms of watches i was referring to the S chips being miles ahead of Qualcommā€™s rubbishy Wear chips. The newest one is literally a three year old chip with an added low power core.

Itā€™s an even bigger deal on phones where size and weight are at an extreme premium.

7

I never realised fossil smartwatches existedā€¦ they look nice.

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8

I really like the look of the Sport, and the staff in the Fossil stores are very knowledgeable as well, theyā€™ve been trained well.

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I just genuinely havenā€™t seen one I like the look of yet and that has the right feature set. The Fossil Sport is the most tempting so far, but I think Iā€™d need to see one in person.

Iā€™m also kinda holding out for that fabled Pixel Watch.

11

I miss Pebble watches :disappointed:

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