The launch of the Galaxy Watch 4 series marked a replacement chapter in Wear OS history. New features, including the power to use OEM skins on top of the platform, are coming alongside performance improvements under the hood. A number of these features could be exclusive to Wear OS 3 smartwatches, which currently only have one representative, but owners of wear and tear OS 2 devices needn’t be too jealous as some essential features will arrive on their smartwatches within the coming weeks.
Google announced a couple of new experiences for Wear OS 3 on the Galaxy Watch 4, including a replacement Maps app and a YouTube Music app supporting offline downloads. Of these five experiences, three will, fortunately, be available for existing Wear OS 2 smartwatches also. For one, Google Pay support is expanding to Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the UAE, with more promised to hitch the fray.
However, one of the foremost notable is the updated Messages by Google app, which will allow you to answer messages without requiring out your phone more efficiently. That’s primarily because a replacement UI makes it easier to type out text, even on a small screen. In addition, messages on Wear OS syncs with the smartphone counterpart, so you’ll never miss out on important, well, messages.
New Tiles are also coming; wear OS‘ version of home screen widgets gives quick access to an associated app’s content and controls. Those new third-party tiles include ones from Strava, Calm, and Spotify. Spotify recently announced offline listening coming to existing Wear OS devices also.
This is excellent news for Wear OS smartwatch owners who may feel abandoned by the entire Wear OS 3 situation. However, it still isn’t clear if smartwatches launched within the last 12 months will even get the prospect to be upgraded to the newest version of wear and tear OS. This way, albeit they don’t, they’re going to get a number of the juiciest features still also.
