Review on 🕶️ Fossil Explorist Stainless Leather Smartwatch: Trendy and Versatile Wearable Tech by Brian Rogel

I bought this watch after choking on the price of the Apple Watch several times. All I really wanted was some apps to make air travel easier (podcasts, audiobooks, etc.) and I couldn't justify the price of the Apple Watch. It seemed like a good compromise and overall I'd say it is. But it's also extremely annoying. The watch itself is wonderful. Fossil did a great job, it's exactly what I wanted. However, Wear OS (formerly known as "Android Wear") turned out to be a joke. I'm not saying that this watch isn't great, I mean that it lacks the basic software development best practices that you find in most Apple products and most other Android products. It also lacks app support. First podcasts. I was able to get Wear Casts to work on the watch and work offline. It's one of the few apps that doesn't require you to be constantly connected to your phone and I enjoy it. This is a real lifesaver on airplanes. Put on your Bluetooth headphones and listen to podcasts. A solid win, one of the few audiobooks the average person won't win here. But I didn't earn an Audible. I was able to use Overdrive from my local library, extract MP3s from the Overdrive app and use NavExplorer to FTP the files from my computer to the watch so I could listen to them in NavBooks. NavExplorer runs an FTP server (plain old anonymous FTP, old school) on the watch and you can send files there and then link them to NavBooks to download cover art etc. It works, but the average user won't get anywhere quickly. The real problem is Wear OS and its desire to constantly break things. Since Microsoft released Windows 8, the operating system hasn't spent that much time rendering itself inoperable. A prime example is how often it "updates" the app for you to a version that immediately reports it as incompatible. An example of what is happening right now and causing me to finally write this review is that it updated the Google Play Store (!) and it no longer works. It tells me to fix it, I need to go to settings and uninstall updates for play store. This reminds me of how Windows Media Center "fixed" my TV problem by deleting all my channels and canceling all my season tickets (I think my problem was that I had a TV). This has happened to several apps and has broken all but a few apps where I can find real value. Pros: - Fairly seamless podcasts - Really nice and easy to use - Several apps are here and seem to work fine (Wear Cast, Todoist, Bring!) Cons: - "Updates" itself, crashes every few days (OS issue , not a hardware issue anyway) - Very little impact on your phone if you are using an iPhone. Enough to make ends meet, but no more. - Unreliable connection, won't connect properly to WiFi. Even 5 feet away from my router, "Hey Google" can't reach their servers because it doesn't connect most of the time. - Can't find a place to get free space. Online resources say it's in the app, maybe it's only for Android phones since it doesn't show up in the iPhone version. Wear OS is at best a minimum viable product at the moment. I would either save my money for later or just buy an Apple Watch if you need a watch at all. It's not a fun and useful gadget; it's kind of another disappointment of the day. It still does what I bought it for. It just doesn't do what it's supposed to.