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Jetpack Compose debuts new Material Design 3 controls and expands to Android TV
Developers shouldn’t have to dread yearly OS updates anymore thanks to the new Android SDK Upgrade Assistant
Google is kicking off its annual Android Dev Summit with a welcome lineup of updates, new development libraries, and enhanced tooling. This year's big talking points feature Jetpack Compose, Material Design 3, and Android Studio Flamingo, but most of the individual form factors are also making appearances.
Fossil teases Gen 6 Wear OS watches for early next week
"First access" is coming monday — that might be a release, a pre-order, or something else
The excitement surrounding Fossil's already-leaked Gen 6 watch lineup may have waned a bit now that we know it won't get Wear OS 3 until the middle of next year, but we do have one new fact to share that could bring a little bit of hype back into the equation. You may not have long to wait for it to land.
Fossil's Gen 6 smartwatch leaks, for those who prefer Wear OS
It may be coming as soon as next month
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The Galaxy Watch4 turned a lot of heads recently, both for being a pretty darn good watch in its own right and the first model that uses the third-gen version of Wear OS, infused with Samsung's Tizen software. But early reviews indicate that the watch is, well, very Samsung: you'll have to dig deep to find the Wear foundations. A new leak from Fossil might catch the eye of anyone excited for a new generation of Wear OS hardware — admittedly, expected to run older software.
Samsung tells the three people still using the OG Galaxy Gear that it's time for a mandatory update
Switch to Tizen or lose app support via the Galaxy Store
Remember the original Galaxy Gear? It was among the very first Android Wear devices, released way back in the halcyon days of 2013. A huge experiment in wearable tech, it was every inch a first-gen product, including an oddball 1.9MP camera mounted on the proprietary wristband. In the years since Samsung switched from Wear to its internal Tizen OS, eventually sending an update that completely overwrote the original OS in 2014.
How do you feel about Google's big Wear OS (and Tizen and Fitbit) news today?
Google's announcement at I/O will shape the future of Android wearables
Wear OS isn't great. That's an opinion that seems to be fairly universal (with the usual exceptions), especially when you start comparing Android-powered wearables to those from Samsung, Fitbit, and of course, Apple. Google knows this, and they're working on it. Never has that been more apparent than at today's Google I/O developer conference keynote.
Google's Wear OS removes maximum limit on Tiles
Because accessing key information at a glance shouldn't be limited
Wear OS is far from being the most praised smartwatch operating system, an issue Google is well aware of. Thankfully, the company worked on improving it and introduced widget-like tiles in May. Sadly, these were capped to just five, a restriction that's now being lifted.
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Google announced a pretty substantial Wear OS update last month, stating that it would be coming in the fall. We're still a couple weeks out from fall, but Finnish brand Suunto is already pushing this performance-improving update to its Suunto 7 watch.
Google Fit adds new Wear OS Tiles, prioritizes step counter, and improves Heart Point recommendations (Update: APK download)
Now there's a reason to keep checking your watch while you're stuck inside
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Just as many people are getting a bit stir crazy from staying indoors, the Google Fit team is delivering some long overdue attention to the Android app and Wear OS. Over the next week or so, several enhancements to the interface are set to roll out, meant to make information more visible while streamlining the interface so users can quickly pull up the most important bits of data.
Possibly frustrated by leaks, more companies seem to be going ahead and leaking upcoming products themselves — Google did so yesterday with the Pixel 4, and now Mobvoi has published (and then taken down) a landing page which revealed a new LTE equipped TicWatch Pro.
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Wear OS has gone through quite a few evolutions over the last five years as it adopted apps, watch faces with custom complications, changes to notifications, and so on. The next big change is coming soon as Google prepares to take another step on the path it began with the last major update, and it's going to be called Tiles.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the original announcement of Wear OS (née Android Wear). The platform has iterated through several different generations of hardware, a change of name, and its software has evolved a lot through the years. With half a decade of experience now behind it, some of us here at Android Police decided to sit down and hash out our feelings for Wear OS in 2019.
Take these estimates with an appropriate grain of salt, but reading between the lines of a recent analysis by The NPD Group indicates that smartwatches running Wear OS account for at most 12% of unit sales in the US, and the real numbers are likely much lower than that. Although Google continues investing in, redesigning and rebranding the platform, which now boasts plenty of hardware partners, it has barely made a dent in the market.
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The second generation Vapor smartwatch from US company Misfit (Fossil Group) has been rumored for some time, but we now have some clear details on the device from an unlikely source. Even though the follow up to last year's Vapor hasn't been officially announced, a Dutch online retailer has already started listing the device for sale.
Android Wear, or Wear OS as it's now known, seems to have found renewed momentum lately with fresh efforts in fitness, updates to the interface, and new hardware coming on the horizon. The latest update brings one notable change the improves the interface for managing notifications, but also carries with it the signs of many other changes and additions to come.
A teaser for the Ticwatch E2 is now live on Mobvoi’s website. The company's Ticwatch line has proven popular in the wearable marketplace and it just recently launched the Ticwatch Pro, which we reviewed. The E and S models were first released in July 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Wear OS apps and faces that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous seven months or so. It's been a slow process cataloging each Wear release since February, but I think we finally have enough to push out another roundup of the best Wear OS has to offer.
As we've learned over the past few years, having a Google service available in your country isn't enough to use it on all your devices. Google Pay, for example, is supported for in-store payments in twenty countries, but only if you're using your phone to make the transaction. If you have a Wear OS smartwatch, however, the Google Pay app won't show up on the watch unless you're in a few countries. At first, the feature came to the US and UK, then it spread to Spain, Canada, and Australia, followed by Poland and Russia. The latest country to join the ranks is Germany.
Diesel debuted its first full smartwatch last year, the On Full Guard, a bulky, 1.4-inch display-toting device powered by a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor that was clearly aimed more at achieving a particular aesthetic than serious functionality. After middling reviews and a year to mull over the original product's strengths and weaknesses, Diesel came to an important conclusion: it needed to be bigger. Thus, the Diesel Full Guard 2.5 was introduced today at IFA, with a 47 by 56mm case, roughly 10mm or so larger than most Wear OS watches on the market.
While you can run apps on Wear OS, the main reason for it to exist is to serve notifications. But for as much as notifications are useful, too many can be counterproductive. If you're finding that one or more of your apps is getting too noisy, but you're not quite ready to shut down notifications altogether, one good solution is to block those notifications from reaching your watch. Soon, you'll be able to access the settings screen to configure blocked apps by using a launcher shortcut.
A day or two of uptime for a smartwatch is accepted as the norm these days — a sad state of affairs, indeed. So when a nifty feature is introduced, excitement is immediately doused with the reality that it almost certainly means conceding some already-scanty battery life. Facer recently announced watch face games for Wear OS and Tizen smartwatches, and they seem like a clever take on uber-casual gaming worth your while if you're fine keeping that charger nearby.