Review on 🕰️ Fossil Gen 4 Venture HR Women's Stainless Steel Touchscreen Smartwatch with Heart Rate, GPS, NFC, and Smartphone Notifications by Chad Overturf

First things first - this watch is not fully compatible with iPhone. You get texts you can read, but you can't reply like you can on Android. You can't get your photos from your phone to use as a custom watch face. You cannot access your pictures from the watch at all. If you go into the custom watch face settings and select the option to change one of your own images, you get a message that you need a separate app for this and that it is unsupported and won't be available for iOS (I'm attaching the image to the post). Okay, now that that info is out of the way I'll move on to general information about the watch and features etc. It's a great watch. Nice large dial with easy to read graphics. However, it's not big enough to be sticky. It's embellished with just enough crystals to draw attention and look pretty, but not enough to make it look ostentatious. Worn at work on an 8 hour workday, this watch received many compliments and people looked at it all the time. The rose gold has the perfect peachy undertone and isn't too coppery. It just looks great. The ribbon is huge but the links can be removed. I took it to the fossil store and removed 4 links - they do it for free. The seller was thrilled to see this watch - she said it was the first new generation watch she had seen and held in her hands. She explained that the reason you can't reply to texts when using the watch with an iPhone is because "Apple isn't lifting the restrictions." because they want you to buy an Apple Watch. Then I don't really understand how to get them to read them, but whatever. look through the clock but don't speak. This is especially useful when you're in a situation where you don't have a phone - you can see who's calling on the watch, answer them for a while while you're looking for your phone, or apologize to them answer a call, etc. You can also reject a call from the watch. No log for texts, possibly due to not being able to reply when used with iPhone, not sure. I'd love to test it on Android and see how the experience changes, but I don't want to mess up the current settings and delete the fossil app account and create a new one for Android, etc. I'm very curious to see how it would be different. Hopefully someone else will do an Android review with more useful information. There are several watch faces to choose from that already come with the Fossil app. Other settings are text font, brightness, wake command, gesture commands. For the different functions of the watch, you need to download apps on the watch and the phone. You can use the Google Assistant to ask questions and such, but it won't text you or call you on your iPhone. The status monitor is really good. He monitors sleep, steps, heart rate. You can put it in training mode and indicate what you are doing and it will keep a log for that too. You're supposed to be able to access your music and manage your music apps, but that doesn't work. When the app is open on the watch and phone, they both appear to be playing different playlists, although the music isn't actually playing anywhere. A Fossil employee said the watch should theoretically be able to control the music playing through your phone, and she's not sure why that doesn't work, and she gave a tech support number for it Smartwatches but we can't call until after on weekends and bank holidays as they work during regular business hours. Once I've spoken to them and found out more I'll come back to update them. I asked if the phone could play music through wireless headphones or wireless speakers etc and she said she didn't think so but wasn't sure about this new generation. This could be one of the new changes. I'll know all this when I call, but so far he doesn't seem to be able to identify with anything like that. Battery life is ok. After a 10-hour work day, it's ready to charge. This is with fairly heavy usage - as far as possible with the limitations of the iPhone. Plenty of checks for messages, notifications, activity monitor, etc. All in all, even without the ability to reply to texts or social media posts, it offers some nice perks, and on top of that it's beautiful, which is why it's mostly loved. It's nice to be able to at least see who's texting and what it's about in situations where you can't just pick up the phone, e.g. B. working face to face with clients all day etc. You can decide if it is important to see if it works and then get your phone to answer and call back what you need to do. The health monitoring app is really good. It has a lot of features, so it's a really great feature. I suspect if you use Android you will enjoy this watch even more as you can use all the features as intended. It would really make it even more of an experience. Someday when I have more time I can just switch everything back and forth and connect it to my S9 and see how it works. At the moment it is on the iPhone X for reference. Updates: A way to get your own photos on your watch if you have an iPhone - you can access it from your social network account. Any photos you have on social networks, you can extract from there by contacting social networks. In the watch face settings there is an option to link. It will open different social media platforms and you click on the ones you want to use to get photos and then it will ask you to login and link the watch. Once connected, your photos will be displayed and available to browse. So, for example, if you're someone who doesn't post photos of your child online and you want to use their photo on the watch, you'll need to add them to Facebook, which can see privacy on "only you" (so no one can see when you doesn't usually post him/her) and then drag it from there to the clock. A bit of a process but gets the job done. The photos also look really good on the watch in terms of graphics, clarity etc. I uploaded a picture to the review showing a personal watch face with the picture. It was originally processed with a vintage filter, so I can say that the resolution and color are excellent. Adding unedited baby photos (also uploaded) made them look even better. Not the ideal way to add photos, but definitely glad to be able to do so no matter what. Still working on the music.