Wear OS 5: Four critical reveals from Google I/O 2024

As expected, Google has used its annual I/O developer conference to speak about Wear OS 5, its upcoming smartwatch operating system update and here are the four most important pieces of news.

There’s a buzz around Wear OS this year, and that’s come out of many interesting smartwatches hitting the market over the last year or two – including Google’s own Pixel Watch 2.

Google says its user base grew 40% in 2023 so you no doubt want to know what’s coming to the wearable platform in the next full version upgrade.

When is Wear OS 5 launching?

Although Google was only talking about the developer preview during its I/O keynote, it did confirm that Wear OS 5, which is based on Android 14, is “arriving later this year”.

And there might not be long to wait as Wear OS 4 arrived in August 2023 with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series.

If the same thing happens this year, then we’ll see Wear OS 5 launch in July at Samsung’s next Unpacked event where it will unveil the Galaxy Watch 7 range.

Longer battery life

It’s no secret that one of the downsides of many Wear OS smartwatches – with the odd exception such as the OnePlus Watch 2 – is limited battery life.

Google is making this a priority in the next version and says that “Wear OS 5 brings performance improvements over Wear OS 4.”

The search giant isn’t being too specific but says that if you’re tracking a workout, the device will be more efficient and running a marathon – which takes most people around four hours – will consume 20% less power in Wear OS 5 compared to its predecessor.

That sounds impressive but is specific to a heavy load scenario so whether Wear OS 5 can go longer during lighter usage periods as well remains to be seen.

Better watch faces

This year, Google is making improvements to Watch Face Format – the tool used to make watch faces for Wear OS – and these will be primarily focused around ‘Flavors’, complications and weather.

Flavors will essentially allow you to see and choose different versions of a watch face with differences including the colour theme and included complications.

Complications – the small parts of a watch face that give you useful data – will support ‘goal progress’ (for data like step count) as well as ‘weighted elements’ which “can represent discrete subsets of data, showing their relative sizes, where you might otherwise use something like a pie chart.”

The final key upgrade is the ability to show weather data as part of a watch face so it could provide you with the current temperature and weather or even a forecast for the next few hours.

Larger smartwatch screens

Although a common complaint with smartwatches is how big and heavy they are – especially for those with smaller wrists – Google suggests we may see even bigger displays in the future.

In a section of the press materials for I/O entitled ‘Larger screens’ Google said, “With the momentum surrounding Wear OS, we’re seeing a wider variety of round screen sizes and resolutions, which provides more choices for the user.”

With this, the firm is releasing new guidelines on how developers can create responsive users interfaces for a range of watch screen sizes.

These guidelines were unavailable to peruse at the time of writing, but it certainly seems that Google is expecting even bigger smartwatch screens than the ones we have already.

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