While Apple’s wearables business has seen growth according to the company’s earnings call earlier this week, Google’s Wear OS hasn’t managed to capture the same sort of market share. But the company hopes to remedy that as it continues to add new features. Google has added the ability to swipe across the screen to display application tiles.
In a blog article describing the introduction of Tiles for Wear OS, Google’s Wear OS product manager Frank Deschanes says five new Tiles are being added to Wear OS.
- Goals
- Next event
- Forecast (weather)
- Heart rate
- Headlines
- Timer
When you swipe left across a Wear OS smartwatch display, you’ll see the first Tile. Keep swiping and the next one appears. You can customise the order in which they appear by touching and holding any Tile on your smartwatch. Although it might be easier to drag and drop them into the order you like in the Wear OS by Google app on your smartphone.
The challenge for Google is that several of its biggest partners offer smartwatches but have bypassed Wear OS. Samsung prefer to use Tizen for the Galaxy Gear range and Huawei uses its own proprietary software.
So, while the Apple Watch seems to be the obvious competitor, the reality is the Android smartwatch world is fractured and that’s affecting Google’s ability to stamp its authority rather than competition from Apple.
The Wear OS update will be rolled out over the next month.
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