WristWatchReview.com » Fossil

S+arck’s Latest

John Biggs — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:32:43 +0000

If you want high design and low price, go with the S+arck Fossil line. They’ve been doing some great work lately and these odd cantilevered models look stunning. This and another model should be available in the Fall.

phillipe starck’s latest fossil watches [technabob]

Fossil’s OLED Watches

John Biggs — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:22:48 +0000

No real info on these guys yet, but Fossil has been playing with OLEDS a lot and here’s some live video of them in action.

Product Page

Review: Fossil FX6001 Bluetooth Watch

John Biggs — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:43:08 +0000

I wrote a review of Fossil’s Bluetooth watch over at CrunchGear.com. The watch is cool, very stylish, but it might be a bit expensive for it’s one cool feature – it gives you a called ID readout on some Symbian-based phones. It’s cool, but I’m waiting for the next incarnation.

Fossil FX6001 Bluetooth Watch Hands On [CrunchGear]

Fossil “Kinetic” Automatics

John Biggs — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:06:41 +0000

From TheSportingLife.net – Normal automatic watches usually cost a bit more than $95, but that’s how much you’ll have to part with to nab one of these Fossil watches. Fossil is known for its decent looking watches that are sub-$100, but you’d having an automatic mechanism would push the price up a bit—apparently not.

There’s about 11 styles to choose from, all hovering around $100. You could pick one up for every day of the week.

Fossil [via Treehugger]

Review: Abacus SPOT Watch

John Biggs — Wed, 24 May 2006 16:08:23 +0000

From Gizmodo.com – Let’s get one thing straight. We were about to write off SPOT. The technology, while very cool, has thus far been limited to a few geek watches and weather stations that the average Joe—the guy who might want to wear a watch rather than check the time on his cellphone—would consider picking one up.

That has changed, thanks to Microsoft’s decision to create a SPOT watch that anyone—from jock to dork to nerd to alternakid—would wear. I know that sounds like a shallow assessment, but it’s the truth. The one thing holding back SPOT was mass acceptance and understanding of the concepts behind this FM-radio based data transfer system. Now that Microsoft will have to explain the SPOT concepts to the rest of the free world, we’re might just be ready for a blossoming of the service into something ubiquitous and useful.

The latest models are designed to be fashion watches rather than geek watches. The LCD screen is much brighter, the brushed steel case is heavy and attractive, and the whole movement is 3mm thinner and has a more accurate antenna. Best of all, each new $179 comes with a 12-month subscription to Microsoft Direct, a considerable improvement over the old “Open the box and pay lots of money” scheme.

The watch also has double the memory of the previous versions which lets you download just about everything on the MSN Direct service has to offer including sports scores, lottery numbers, and traffic information. The general, yearly subscription costs $39. Outlook Sync and MSN Direct messaging services cost an extra $20 a year.

The styling is much improved over the previous models. Band is very easy to resize. All it requires is a small screwdriver and a paper clip. Plastic covers keep the bracelet pins in place and simply slip out. Overall, the metal version we test looks more like a bracelet than a watch, but that’s fine. Fossil also offers leather and cloth bands in various colors.

Another excellent improvement is the charging system. The watch comes with a USB cable that can plug into a wall adapter or USB port. The watch connects to the cable with magnets. No ugly stand, no strange prongy thing—the charger snaps into place.

These Abacus watches will be available online on June 10. These new models certainly improve our opinion of the platform on the whole and make us look forward to a SPOT-filled future.

Product Page [MSNDirect]

Geek out some more…

Fossil to Exit SPOT Market

John Biggs — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:22:00 +0000

Fossil, one of the early adopters in the SPOT race, is now bowing out as Microsoft re-tools that standard. The result? It’s pretty iffy in terms of future SPOT direction. Fossil had a huge supply chain and lots of sales and that’s definitely going to hurt things.

Fossil has made their last MSN Direct watch, at least for the foreseeable future. Coco and Glam were made in a tiny batch and sold to Tiger Direct. However we hear Fossil is no longer going to make new watches and will re-direct their technology efforts after current inventory is sold through. Microsoft has recently pulled the SPOT initiative back into R&D and appears intent on pushing the technology into other products like the weather clocks and integration with the PC and other Microsoft products.

With SPOT going back into the garage for a re-tooling, the hope is that it will emerge with more stability and functionality. Indeed, the commitment from Microsoft over the past several months has been just that, though any improvements are difficult for end users to see. In a recent post in our forums, a Microsoft representative disclosed they have been working on infrastructure improvements to make the network more reliable and efficient in bandwidth usage.

Along with behind the scenes improvements, we’re getting renewed enthusiasm for the development of the traffic channel, which has hit a significant development milestone. The weather clocks also appear on target, after that front had been silent since January.

Read the whole thing here.

Review – Fossil Abacus

John Biggs — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:53:52 +0000

Phil Torrone at make rocks a full story on the Fossil Abacus, which may or may not be the last Palm watch ever.

have a bit of a fetish for gadgety watches (video). Why waste the precious wrist real estate on something that can -just- tell time. Last week on MAKE I posted my HOW TO on getting RSS feeds to a Microsoft SPOT watch (Swatch, Fossil, Suunto and few others make these watches). I’m always on the look out for the uber geek watch- wireless SPOT watches for getting RSS feeds, TV watches from Japan, binary watches that tell time in, well, binary. So when Brian Jepson sent me a link to a sale on the Palm based PDA watch for $70 (about %50 less than it was a few months ago) and I had some Tiger credit voucher thing- I thought I’d see what I could do with a PDA on my wrist.

Read the rest here.

Review – Up Close with the Asteroids Watch

John Biggs — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 17:59:40 +0000

Got my hands on a pre-production model of the Fossil Asteroids watch and was pleasantly surprised. It’s quite a beefy watch and makes interesting use of Fossils unique LCD technology. The screen is actually the Asteroids playing field complete with rolling asteroids and the little triangle spaceship.

While it’s not playable—I’m sorry, but it would be SO COOL—this pieces is quite a conversation starter. Because it wasn’t quite finished, the button above the crown didn’t do anything although it suspect it turns on a backlight in the final product. The packaging was fairly clever and the beefy buckle and strap combo are quite nice.

Generally, I can’t wait to see what else Fossil has up its sleeve. This is definitely a great start.

Fossil Asteroids Watch

John Biggs — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 14:41:30 +0000

Ah, 1979. What a year. This tribute to one of the first video games, unfortunately, isn’t playable, but it would be so cool if it was. The hands are strangely familiar, I think. I can’t remember where I saw them before. This thing is $130 and I believe Fossil is expanding into other titles as well.

Check it out here.

Review – Fossil Wrist PDA

Administrator — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 05:52:15 +0000

The biggest piece of vaporware since Windows Longhorn has finally hit the street: the Fossil Wrist PDA. Yes, it’s here, dropping mad science on all you geeks out there.

What’s inside?

8MB of storage space.

The full Palm OS 4.12

A 66Mhz processor.

A painfully small stylus in the clasp.

A mini-USB port for data transfer.

An IR port.

I’ve been wearing it off an on for the past two days and I haven’t quite gotten a handle on the goal that Fossil has with this piece. While it is an impressive bit of machinery, the PDA, especially considering the rise of PIM in phones and other network-enabled devices, seems like a poor choice. However, in terms of sheer geekery, it’s a real winner.

The screen is eminently readable and the digitizer works beautifully, althought the stylus is a bit small. The style is very retro, with a big metal body and black leather strap and it has a very comfortable wrist feel. It is quite heavy, a few ounces at least, and, like SPOT watches, you have a choice of very nice, downloadable faces.

I have my entire calender and address book in this thing, if you can believe it, and still haven’t filled up the memory. The navigation is simple. On the left, there is a Home button which drops you out of any application and can launch the backlight. On the right, at 1 o’clock, there is a Page Up button, then a three way rocker button which launches applications when pressed. Then there is a Down button. Not much else.

Yes, Virginia, you do have to recharge this beast every two days, at least. But you’ll be syncing it regularly with your desktop PIM, so that’s at least acceptable. I will wear it out today, using it as my sole appointment calendar, and give you the skinny.

UPDATE – I can now legitimately say that this is one of the best PDAs I’ve ever used. It reminds me of my numerous CES appointments with a calming chime, keeps my contacts organized, and lets me jot tiny notes to myself with ease. Once you get over a few small UI issues and the ultimate smallness of the screen, the Wrist PDA really grows on you.

As Fossil and PalmOne begin to work together on this thing, I can really see a huge number of tiny apps that will turn this watch into a must-have geek tool: tip calculator, world time clock, and a “Today” watch face featuring calendar and to-do list entires would be ideal.

UPDATE – Well, my watch just crashed. A quick reset brought it back to life, but it’s kind of funny to have to reboot my timepiece. When’s the last time your Omega showed the Blue Screen of Death?