Wear OS

The first two generations of Samsung Galaxy Gear watches in the early 2010s had cameras. Coming in at around 2 megapixels, the quality was unsurprisingly mediocre. With Wear OS having a renaissance, it would be interesting if Google and its partners experimented with cameras.

Following the announcement in late February at MWC 2024 and the March Pixel Feature Drop, Google Maps for Wear OS is more widely rolling out public transit directions. 

As a platform and ecosystem, Wear OS is in a good place right now. That wasn’t the case three years ago before the Samsung partnership. Wear OS 3 reinvigorated the operating system with the Galaxy Watch 4 serving as the flagship device until the Pixel Watch over a year later. The next hardware milestone was the Snapdragon W5 in mid-2022 giving manufacturers a more capable chip to work with. Also, keep in mind how Google and Qualcomm are working on a RISC-V chip for Wear OS.

The first OnePlus Watch was one of the worst products in the brand’s history, but with a revamped vision, clever tricks, and Wear OS at its core, the OnePlus Watch 2 is drastically improved. It’s still not perfect, but its redeeming qualities make up for its deficiencies.

Google today announced a new text-to-speech (TTS) engine for Wear OS 4 (and higher) that is faster and more reliable.

Google introduced the Watch Face Format (WFF) with Wear OS 4 and is now encouraging developers to migrate to access complications.

The OnePlus Watch 2 powered by Wear OS 4 touts “dramatically extended battery life of up to 100 hours of regular use with all functionalities accessible in Smart Mode.” This is due to the “substantially expanded” Wear OS hybrid interface, with Google touting how it has made “fundamental design changes to the platform” that improve performance and power.

At Mobile World Congress 2024, Google announced a handful of wearable and navigation-related updates, starting with public transit directions in Google Maps for Wear OS. 

We’re just a few days away from the launch of the OnePlus Watch 2 but we still don’t officially know whether or not it runs Wear OS. If Oppo’s identical-looking Watch X is any indication, though, it most certainly will.

Xiaomi is preparing to launch another Wear OS smartwatch with the upcoming “Xiaomi Watch 2” surfacing in Europe with a great chip and an affordable price.

Last week, we reported that Wear OS (at least on the Pixel Watch) was preparing a new grid-style app drawer to replace the scrolling list. Now, instructions have surfaced to show off the feature early and even enable it on your own watch.

The Pixel Camera app on Wear OS that acts as a controller was recently updated with the ability to switch to the various photo and video modes on your Pixel Watch.

Ahead of this year’s expected arrival of Wear OS 5, Google is finally preparing to launch Material You color theming alongside a hint at a redesign for the app launcher.

Fossil announced this month that it was done with smartwatches, with no more Wear OS models coming. And, according to new data, despite really being the only name in Wear OS for years, Fossil struggled to make any real impact on the market.

After over a year of silence, Fossil has officially confirmed that it will not be making any more smartwatches based on Google’s Wear OS, or at all.

The next generation of Wear OS is coming possibly as soon as this year, with Samsung and Google preparing a Wear OS 5 update based on Android 14.

According to a recent update, Google is shutting down the dedicated Tile that provided Google News headlines on Wear OS 2 watches.

After adding loyalty card support in December, Google Wallet for Wear OS has gained support for showing airline boarding passes.

Best Buy has started to accept trade-ins of Wear OS smartwatches for the first time including the original Pixel Watch and select models from Fossil.

For quite a while, Fossil was pretty much the only name in the Wear OS game, but as Samsung and Google have reinvigorated the platform, Fossil seems to be falling behind, leaving more questions than answers about the brand’s future.