Google announces biggest Wear OS update ever

With new navigation capabilities, Google has made it easier and faster to manage tasks with your watch. For instance, you can access shortcuts to important functions, like switching to your previous app. You can also customize your home screen carousel with Tiles from your favourite apps and choose what information you want at a glance.

At the I/O 2021 developer conference, Google on Tuesday announced the biggest update to the Wear OS ever. The company revealed that it has collaborated with Samsung to bring the best of their platforms together into one unified experience.

"Samsung and Google have a long history of collaboration. Now, we're bringing the best of Wear and Tizen into a single, unified platform. By working together we have been able to take the strengths of each and combine them into an experience that has faster performance, longer battery life and more of the apps you love available for the watch," the search giant wrote in a blog post.

Google and Samsung teams have joined forces to make apps start up to 30% faster on the latest chipsets as well as to achieve longer battery life.

We’re combining the best of @wearosbygoogle and @SamsungMobile Tizen into a unified wearable platform. ⌚ Apps will start faster, battery life will be longer and you'll have more choice than ever before, from devices to apps and watch faces. #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/vj2aYZD81x

— Google (@Google) May 18, 2021

Here are some of the major changes coming to Wear OS:

With new navigation capabilities, Google has made it easier and faster to manage tasks with your watch. For instance, you can access shortcuts to important functions, like switching to your previous app. You can also customize your home screen carousel with Tiles from your favourite apps and choose what information you want at a glance.

Secondly, with the latest Wear OS update, Google is adding new capabilities to apps like turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, or smart downloads in YouTube Music for offline listening. Next, Google Pay will add support for 26 new countries, in addition to the 11 countries currently available.

As for health and fitness tracking, Fitbit's popular features like tracking your health progress throughout your day and on-wrist goal celebrations are coming to Wear OS.

Lastly, with new tools like a Tiles API and a watch face design editor built by Samsung, Google is making it easier for the developer community to build great apps for the platform.