Fossil Gen 5 loses dozens of watch faces after its latest update

More than half of the original list has vanished.

What you need to know

• The Fossil Gen 5 series recently got an update via the Play Store that took away dozens of watch faces.
• On the other hand, the update introduced two new watch faces in exchange.
• You will see the default face on your smartwatch if you used any of the removed watch faces.

Fossil recently rolled out an update to the Fossil Gen 5 series that added two new watch faces. However, owners of the smartwatch were greeted with a frustrating surprise: dozens of watch faces are gone.

Some Fossil Gen 5 users took to Reddit to share how their favorite watch face has been removed after installing the latest update from the Google Play Store. According to 9to5Google, at least 33 watch faces have vanished, including the following:

• Big Tic
• Blue
• Candice Huffine
• Colorist
• Compass
• Cory Richards
• Darryl Westly
• Defender
• Ettore
• Flip Digital
• Fred
• Grant
• KJ Apa
• Magic 8-Ball
• Mandy Moore
• McKinney
• Mechanical Digital
• Men's Fashion Digital
• Minimal Dressy
• Minimalist Analog
• Mood
• Movember
• Movember Analog
• Movember Digital
• No Icon Digital
• P-51
• Rainbow
• Robot
• Roulette
• Sail Dial
• Scarlette Shimmer
• Speedometer
• Turn Table

The removal marks a stark decrease from the original 55 watch faces to just 24 after the culling. The minor gain is the addition of two new watch face options: "Fitness Digital" and "Dashboard Digital."

That said, the latest change is quite a bummer for many Gen 5 owners who are already frustrated after Fossil announced that its older smartwatches, including the Gen 5 series, won't be upgraded to Wear OS 3.

The ability to swap the look of a smartwatch is one of its best features, and the loss of dozens of Gen 5 watch faces quite compounds the recent setback for users. If you were using any of the removed watch faces, Fossil automatically resets the face on your Gen 5 watch to its default appearance. Of course, you can change it at any time, but not to the ones you previously had.

It looks like the Gen 5 is primarily affected by the update. However, the watch face catalog on the other variants in the series appears to be reduced in number as well, including some of the best Fossil smartwatches like the Gen 5E and the LTE model.

Fossil did not immediately respond to Android Central when asked for a comment on the update. We'll update this post as soon as we can.

Fossil Gen 6

$299 at Fossil $299 at Best Buy

The Fossil Gen 6 boasts faster performance, improved fitness features, and longer battery life. The smartwatch sports a 1.28-inch circular AMOLED display and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 4100+.