At I/O 2021, Wear OS 3.0 was unveiled as a significant revamp — if not revival — of Google’s plans for wearables. There are three tentpoles to this effort and is the company’s best chance in years to be competitive in this market.
This renewed effort comes five years after Android Wear 2.0 was announced as a big leap for the platform. Google reiterated that today with Wear OS 3.0.
By working with Samsung, there is faster performance (up to 30% on “latest chipsets”), longer battery life, and a “thriving developer community.” The unified platform is available for all device makers.
To achieve longer battery life, we’ve worked to optimize the lower layers of the operating system – taking advantage of low-power hardware cores to enable better battery life. That includes handy optimizations like the ability to run the heart rate sensor continuously during the day, track your sleep overnight and still have battery for the next day.
Visually, a new navigation system makes it faster to get things done. A double-press action lets you quickly switch to your last used app, while Tiles are now open to all developers.
On the apps front, there is turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, Google Pay, and YouTube Music.
Fitbit is also powering the fitness features on Wear OS, like tracking and on-wrist celebrations
These updates will begin rolling out this fall.
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