Fossil's improved battery modes rolling out to more watches

One of the biggest complaints about the Wear OS platform is battery life. While Google has done little to extend the battery life for watches running its wearable OS, some brands such as Fossil have introduced extended battery modes to help.

Initially, Fossil only offered its energy management modes on its lineup of fifth-generation smartwatches. However, back in August of 2019, the company promised) to roll out the power saving modes to "previous generations through a software update later in this year!" It appears Fossil missed the end of the year by about a week, but it has finally begun pushing out an update with the battery saving modes it promised.

The update includes four new power management modes to choose from, including extended battery mode, daily mode, custom mode, and a time-only mode. Depending on the mode you choose, it will disable certain features of the watch to help prolong your battery life.

This new experience offers an 'Extended Battery Mode' where users can extend to multiple days on a single charge while still enjoying essential features like notifications and heart rate. 'Daily Mode' allows users to experience most features enabled, such as always-on screen. 'Custom Mode' allows users to easily manage battery optimization settings themselves, all in one place, where 'Time-Only Mode' gives users additional hours when the watch has a low battery or if they choose to use the smartwatch to only tell time.

The update is currently rolling out to watches such as the Fossil Sport, Explorist, Venture, and Sloan HR. It will also hit many watches from Fossil's sub-brands, as long as it is powered by the Snapdragon 3100 Wear chip, such as the Misfit Vapor X and Kate Spade Sport, among others.

Along with additional battery modes, the update also features Wear OS H, which is why it weighs in at nearly 700MB. Some notable improvements with Wear OS H include tweaks to extend battery life by placing your watch to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, and a simplified two-step process to turn off the watch.