Although Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference was centered almost exclusively on
AI-related announcements and
demonstrations, the search giant did (discreetly) unveil a few other cool features
coming to Android phones soon and even an entirely new Wear OS version.
That latter launch nearly went completely unnoticed, both because the wearable platform is… still not very popular around the world and because
Google didn’t have much to announce about what’s new in Wear OS.
All about battery life!
Ironically, Wear OS 5 is based on
Android 14 rather than 15, and in those two paragraphs, the main idea is that the platform aims to improve your current and future smartwatch’s battery life pretty substantially.
The Pixel Watch 2 (pictured here) should last significantly longer between charges on Wear OS 5.
That’s definitely a noble and important goal given that most smartwatch users (regardless of their “ecosystem”) have been frustrated with the running times between charges of their wearable devices since… these products have been created essentially.
Of course, you shouldn’t expect the
Pixel Watch 3 and
Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 to go a week without hugging a wall all of a sudden. But if Wear OS 5 does pull off a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption in various outdoor running scenarios compared to Wear OS 4, that’s clearly something many users will greatly appreciate.
The
Pixel Watch 2 and
Galaxy Watch 6 duo, mind you, have themselves managed to boost the battery endurance scores of their forerunners (a little) thanks to similar optimizations brought to the table by
Wear OS 4 over Wear OS 3.
Although they’re not mentioned by name (or by anything else), Google and Samsung’s next-gen smartwatches are likely to become the first products to run Wear OS 5… at some point by the end of the year. The platform’s battery life optimizations, of course, should then spread to current and previous-gen Pixel Watches and Galaxy Watches, as well as other devices from a few other brands via over-the-air updates.
A few other features are also (finally) coming to Wear OS this year
Speaking of brands, it’s worth pointing out that Google found the time and space in its brief Wear OS 5 announcement to remind us all that
OnePlus,
Oppo, and
Xiaomi have recently joined the platform. That proves that Wear OS is actually growing at a healthy pace, as does the expansion of its user base by a solid 40 percent in 2023 alone.
Of course, Google and its partners still have a long way to go before they can challenge Apple in both mainstream popularity and, well, ease of use and functionality. To highlight that latter point, Wear OS 5 is also gearing up to support “more data types like ground contact time, stride length, and vertical oscillation” in your go-to fitness apps.
The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (pictured here) will gain a few valuable fitness tracking tools with Wear OS 5.
If those capabilities happen to sound familiar, that’s probably because Apple Watches and even Garmin timepieces can already monitor them all… and more such stats designed to improve your running and general health.
Hopefully, this is just a taste of a much more expansive list of features and enhancements set to come with Wear OS 5 in the next few months to some of the
best smartwatches in the world (both existing and as-yet-unreleased).
