Android Wear has been an ever-growing platform for smartwatches over the past couple of years and while in the beginning it was mostly dominated by technology companies that manufacture smartphones and other mobile devices such as Samsung, LG, Motorola, ASUS and others, slowly but surely there have been a few companies which are firmly rooted in the watch making industry who have introduced their own offerings into the smartwatch market. Fossil was one of those companies with the announcement and launch of the Fossil Q Founder Smartwatch last year, their first Android Wear offering which came in options of both steel and leather bands. Today, Fossil has announced two new Android Wear smartwatch offerings for 2016.
While the Q Founder is still available for purchase, it will be joined by both Fossil’s Q Wander which comes with a “soft, multi-finish case”, and Q Marshal which is designed to be more of a rugged design as Fossil states it has a more rugged case than the Wander and the founder offerings. The Q Wander looks strikingly similar to 2015’s Q Founder smartwatch with only subtle differences to the design, but if you look closely enough you’ll notice more spacing between the ridges on the crown as well as a noticeable design that spans around the edge of the casing that looks similar to the dial case on the Samsung Gear S2.
Fossil will be offering both the Q Wander and the Q Marshal in 44m and 46mm sizes, and each watch will start at a base cost of $275 although there will be higher prices based on the type of band and watch options chosen, such as a steel band instead of leather option or the larger size watch. Both watches will also support wireless charging and come in multiple options for the color of watch body giving consumers a little bit of variation. Since these will both be running Android Wear, users can likely expect the latest version of the Android Wear software to be running on both watches, which would mean the most up to date wrist flick gestures and other features or changes which were introduced with the most recent update to the Android Wear software. Fossil has not yet announced specific dates for the launch times of either watch, simply that they will be available “later this year.”
