Wear OS

Back in August, Google provided a roadmap on all of its non-mobile Android platforms. Wear OS was promised a fall update, and it’s now officially rolling out to the first device.

Google’s Wear OS platform is hopefully going to get a shot in the arm this Fall when watches with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100 chipset start shipping to customers. Today, the first of those watches has leaked with the TicWatch 3 Pro, coming this October.

Earlier this month, Fossil released a huge update for its latest Wear OS catalog, but an issue hindering Google Pay quickly popped up. Now, Fossil is restarting the fall update with a Google Pay fix in tow.

As hinted at over a week ago, the update for Fossil Gen 5 Wear OS smartwatches is now rolling out bring with it a slew of updated and enhanced health-tracking features.

To cap off “Android Beyond Phones” week — following TV, Auto, and Chrome OS developments, Google today is talking about its wearable platform. A Wear OS OTA update this fall will improve performance, while a new weather app was previewed.

A sequel to one of our favorite Wear OS smartwatches, the TicWatch C2+ is essentially a minor bump to what was formerly a solid wearable.

Google’s Wear OS platform isn’t a huge success, but it powers quite a few solid smartwatches. Fossil is perhaps the biggest name currently on the platform, and now, Fossil Gen 5 smartwatches are preparing to add some new health features.

Google is preparing to shift all Google Play Music users over to YouTube Music in just a matter of weeks, but there are still a lot of loose ends to tie up to get to feature parity. Today, Google has confirmed that the Play Music app for Wear OS will die in just a couple of weeks, but YouTube Music isn’t coming any time soon.

With the Wear OS segment lacking any real innovation thanks to an almost monopoly of Fossil-branded hardware, it’s great to see new players enter the space. Oppo’s first Wear OS device, the Oppo Watch is now officially going global today with a familiar design but an interesting take on the Google wearable OS.

Five new Wear OS watches from Fossil have been listed with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), suggesting Gen 6 Fossil watches may be coming soon.

The most important form factor Android operates on is phones, and yearly updates reflect that focus. Following the launch of Beta 2, Google today hosted an Android 11 AMA where they received a number of questions about other platforms. In talking about Wear OS, the company all but confirmed that Android 11 will be the next major wearable update.

Google’s wearable platform has struggled in recent years, to the point where its market share is so minimal it’s essentially a no-show in most reports. Today, Qualcomm announced a brand-new Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor which brings a lot of improvements. With those improvements in mind, it’s got us wondering — what actually is the worst part of Wear OS?

Expand
Expanding
Close

In other wearable computing news this morning, Qualcomm just announced its next chip for Wear OS. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 and 4100+ look to deliver a meaningful performance boost for smartwatches.

Expand
Expanding
Close

While Android 11 for phones and tablets is expected to launch in Q3, Wear OS is still running Android 9 Pie. That said, the wearable platform is still getting updates with watch faces now able to take advantage of hardware acceleration.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Following the death of Dark Sky at the hands of Apple, AccuWeather has become one of the better choices for a weather app on Android devices. Today, AccuWeather has released a new beta update that debuts a Wear OS app as well as improving the app on your phone too.

Expand
Expanding
Close