Traditional watchmakers are thirsty to break into the smartwatch world and today, Fossil announced its plans to do so. The new Fossil Q line is an entire range of connected wearables, with the Android Wear-powered Q Founder as its flagship.
Three of the four Q watches are standard analog timepieces with electronics integrated into their bands for activity tracking. The Q Reveler and Q Dreamer are priced at $125, while the Q Grant runs $175-$195. These watches will be available starting October 25th and are compatible with Fossil's app for both iOS and Android, which provides the ability to mirror notifications to the watches and track activity.
But the top of the line (and arguably most interesting) model is the Q Founder, which runs Android Wear and incorporates a full touchscreen display. It's powered by Intel chips and will start at $275, which is a little less than the latest crop of mainstream Android Wear watches from Motorola and Huawei. Fossil isn't providing a firm release date for the Founder, but it notes that it will be available in time for the holiday season.

Fossil isn't the only traditional watchmaker jumping into smartwatches - Tag Heuer will announce its long-awaited "luxury" smartwatch with Android Wear in November. But Fossil is perhaps the most approachable and mainstream watch brand to offer a full-featured smartwatch, and its retail footprint means that these watches will likely be seen by many more people than those that are only available for purchase online or at electronics stores. We'll have more to say on Fossil's new connected watches once we've been able to test them ourselves.
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