Google’s Wear OS 2.1 update cares more about future smartwatches than your old one (sorry) - smithdismithey

The Wear OS update that Google announced at IFA has arrived. With new navigational shortcuts, tighter Google Help integration, and a smartphone-style notice "stream," your old Android Wear smartwatch will for certain feel different erstwhile it's installed.

But fair because it's different, doesn't mean it's finer. While older watches wish enjoy some port improvements, Google's update isn't nearly fixing your current device. IT's all but making the next crop of wearables way better. Android Wear and Fag OS smartwatches won't ascertain a good deal of a speed OR battery life boost with the update, for instance. But close yr's models, which will likewise utilise the new Qualcomm Hold out 3100 chip, absolutely will.

A original foundation

The changes Google made are largely about taking Wear OS to the adjacent phase, one where Assistant is front and center and hardware and software seamlessly blend into each other. That will compel manufacturers to afterthought what a Wear Atomic number 76 smartwatch should be.

Contempt its new name, Wear OS is still in search of a leader. I thought that would follow in the form of the Pixel Watch, but Google squashed those rumors last month. With nothing connected the horizon else than both holiday-timed fashion watches, Wear Operating system is hush up suffering from an individuality crisis.

Google

Assistant has a starring role on the new redesigned Wear OS.

Variant 2.1 is the beginning step toward solving it. Qualcomm's chip is the second. The third testament be the first manufacturer who builds a Wear Atomic number 76 watch that can truly compete with the Apple Follow. As it stands, Apple's square wearable is running play circles around anything running Wear OS, and the new update isn't active to make much headway. The update Orchard apple tree released to its watchOS in the first place in September sports fres features like Walky-talky mode, personalized good shape coaching, and raise-to-speak Siri funding. Fall apart OS 2.1 still rump't vie with all that.

But that's not the point. WearOS 2.1 International Relations and Security Network't about challenging Apple Watch right now, IT's about raising Google's smartwatch platform to a stage where IT has some hope for the future.

Wrist reboot

When Miles Barr, director of engineering for Fatigu OS, confirmed to Tom's Guide that Google wouldn't be releasing the intemperately rumored Picture element Ticker this class, he said that Google's vision of a "one-size-fits-all watch" International Relations and Security Network't possible thus far. That's true. All of the watches available for purchase now are big, clunky, and underpowered. I Don River't expect Have on OS 2.1 to variety that dramatically.

Doug Duvall/IDG

The LG Watch Manner (left) is dramatically chunkier than the Fitbit Subatomic particle (center) and Apple Vigil (right).

But it's a start. When watchmakers fetch to know the 2.1 update, whatsoever things will become plain that weren't earlier. There's a new elegance and hunch to the UI. Assistant has a much greater role. Emphasis is being understood off apps with the virgin at-a-coup d'oeil, Assistant-powered suggestions. The radical Google Convulsion makes exercising and activity goals easier to use.

How brands like LG, Huawei, and Fossil will apply these changes to their hardware remains to be seen. But for the first time, Google is giving its partners a roadmap for what a WearOS watch should be. That will, we Bob Hope, bring the design changes that Wear OS watches desperately need, with smarter faces, better integration with software, and an overall rethinking of how the screens connected our wrists should relate to the ones in our pockets.

Wear OS 2.1 is a reboot, and As with completely reboots, the departed isn't the focus. It's about the future. Still, unless you have a really old smartwatch, like the LG G Watch, Samsung Power train Live, Moto 360, Sony Smartwatch 3, operating theater Asus ZenWatch—every of which are unable to receive the update—you should absolutely junk off your less-hoar watch and give it a whirl.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402668/wear-os-update-available.html

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